Word: cars
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Exurbanite Osborn (TIME, April 6, 1953), who personally drives a four-passenger 1951 British-made Riley ("It's the most marvelous green color and the wheels aren't square"), thinks the 1957 cars are "ludicrous" ("Why, you can't even get into the things"). His idea of what a car should be: a cross between a French Bugatti and the 1914 Packard he grew up in. One is beautifully disciplined; the other, "once you "got in you could walk around in it." Asks Osborn: "Why is it, when Detroit can produce an engine as fine as they...
...whistle. Regulatory agencies know that every road has similar lines that should be eliminated so that the money saved could be used to improve service elsewhere. But they are reluctant to pare the costs, because they want railroads as a stand-by service in case weather makes plane and car travel impossible. Sighs one railroader: "What we are is foul-weather friends...
Heavy Wager. The big if in the industry is whether an upsurge in auto buying will start another scramble for steel, and a shortage like last year's. That will not be known for sure until spring, when automakers learn whether expectations for a 6,500,000-car year are being met. Prospects for meeting that target looked good last week. Ford Motor Co. said that in the first ten days of January it sold 59% more Fords and 30% more Lincolns than the like period last year, the best year-opening period for Fords in history. Steelmen themselves...
...Rock Island's Jenks is no dreamer. As a research-conscious vice president, who moved up to the presidency last year, he installed electronic gadgets in freight yards to check and sort cars faster, was the first to use lightweight, economical (seat cost: $2,300 v. $3,800 for standard cars) "Jet Rocket" trains, which are equipped with radio communications so that trainmen no longer had to drop notes to station masters from speeding trains. Jenks has even put to work the U.S. Army's sniperscope, which uses infrared rays to see through darkness; a modified version keeps...
...operating revenue, the railroads are concentrating on ways to improve freight handling. The Pennsylvania, for example, is in the midst of a $34 million program to turn its 74-year-old Conway yard near Pittsburgh into the nation's most modern electronic freight system, handling 9,000 cars daily from remote-control panels. Electronic brains made by International Business Machines will sort, classify, route and guide all freight cars from an inclined switching hump to their proper tracks automatically; electronic signals will operate all switches; electronic scales will record each car's weight; radar-operated speed retarders will...