Word: flatcar
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Some yards up the flagpole, Alvin ("Shipwreck") Kelly was soon compiling a world sitting record (49 days, one hour), Sir Harry Lauder was acrrracking jokes in the Music Hall, and Gertrude Ederle was finning around in adjacent waters. For five years, a whale on a flatcar was a pier feature. The long tradition of diving horses was largely established by a formidable gelding named John the Baptist, a sort of box office Seabiscuit, who plunged for 30 years, always carrying a bareback and more or less barebodied female rider. Over the years, a prodigious, petition-length list of big names...
...crucial battle in their campaign to regain some of the business they have lost to the trucking industry. By a vote of 10 to 1, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that the railroads could offer cut rates on piggybacking-the carrying of freight-loaded truck bodies on railroad flatcars-in cases where the shipper himself provides either the trailer or trailer and flatcar...
Even before the ruling, piggybacking volume had trebled since 1955. While other carloadings were declining, there were 554,000 flatcar piggyback trips last year. Barring a reversal in the courts, the new decision should enable the railroads to regain a substantial percentage of the nation's freight business. Railroad men see almost unlimited possibilities for a sensible idea with the awkward name of "containerization"-moving a sealed cargo container from door to door without any repackaging of its contents. Though the Teamsters charge that piggybacking is designed to destroy the trucking industry entirely, the railroads are already cooperating with...
...flatcars that are helping them win back a big slice of the new-car hauling business lost to truckers. Once, the railroads moved 75% of all new autos. But the truckers devised efficient trailers that undercut railroad charges, by 1959 had left the rails only 8% of the business. Now the rails are grabbing a bigger share by charging only half as much as truckers on long hauls. One reason: on a cross-country haul, each flatcar replaces at least three high-wage truck drivers. By year's end, Ford expects to ship 35% of its cars by rail...
Frisco's Gilliland also put Frisco engineers to work to design a special auto-carrying freight car. They devised a triple-deck, 85-ft. flatcar capable of carrying twelve standard or 15 compact cars v. eight or ten cars piggybacked. The Frisco commissioned Pullman Inc. to build a prototype, and after testing it ordered 129 more. The first went into service in August, proved so economical that the St. Louis-Dallas delivery charge was reduced to $65.05 for a standard car, $54 for a compact. By the end of this month, when all 130 of the new cars...