Word: railroads
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...hardly afford to leave Wuhan in the hands of their enemies. The fifth largest city in China, Wuhan (pop. 2,800,000) is really three cities-Hankow, Wuchang and Hanyang-and is the Chicago of China-the transportation hub of the vast country. Its great double-decked vehicular and railroad bridge is the only span across the 3,100-mile length of the Yangtze between Nanking near the coast and Chungking in the western mountains. It is also one of Communist China's key industrial centers, pouring a quarter of the country's steel and producing such important...
...rival Hausa tribe, whose members last year slaughtered thousands of Ibos in Northern Nigeria. The Biafran volunteers searched automobiles at roadblocks, practiced grenade throwing and ambushing. At a Port Harcourt automotive assembly plant, Biafran engineers rolled out their first homemade tanks-trucks plated with armor. Mechanics in the railroad repair shop at Enugu, Biafra's capital, were busy making bombs for Biafra's lone B-26 bomber out of casings filled with nails, broken bottles and kerosene...
Since the end of World War II, the Railway Express Agency and its rum bling green trucks have been rolling toward a dead end. Jointly owned by 58 railroads, the sprawling company has been plagued by inefficiency and red tape. The main reason: its ties to railroads impose on it the same night marish maze of regulations that the Interstate Commerce Commission ap plies to REA's parents. Without special ICC permission, REA cannot haul goods from city to city by truck; instead it must put the goods on a train - no mat ter how bad the connection...
...back to the stagecoach. In its present form, REA's history dates to 1917 when, to speed up transportation to the World War I effort, the Government forced the seven major express companies to merge. In 1929 the transportation assets of the amalgam were purchased by the railroads and designated Railway Express Agency. After World War II, the combination began to fail, and in 1959 there was even talk of nationalizing it. Giving in to pressure from Washington, the railroads in 1961 changed Railway Express from a cooperative to a profit-and-loss company. Though still railroad-owned...
...seven and stay till closing. The old TV bought years ago to encourage business after a new highway isolated the place from traffic, is never turned on. Once in a while a stranger will come, attracted by the pasteboard sign hanging in the window: "McNulty's--Next to the railroad potato yards, come in and meet the real spuds." The real spuds always have something to say, and its always about politics...