Word: freight
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Instead of the old four-track main line, the Central's electronic system needs just two tracks, will be able to shunt swift express trains around rumbling freights by cross-over switches every seven miles, also step up the speed of freight trains from 30 to 60 m.p.h. The dispatchers can also send passenger trains hurtling east and west at 80 m.p.h. on the same track, switch one to the opposite track to pass. Cost of the Central's electronic progress: $6,238,000 for the first step, as much as $50 million by the time it extends...
...their increased efficiency, the 113 Class 1 U.S. railroads (more than $3,000,000 annual revenue) have been able to cut their road mileage from 249,000 mi. in 1929 to about 220,000 mi. today, the number of locomotives from 61,300 to 34,000, the number of freight cars from 2,600,000 to 2,000,000, the number of employees from 1,600,000 to 1,000,000. But by getting vastly more work out of man and machine power, railroaders have been able to boost the total amount of freight by 45% to 650 billion...
...virtual monopoly, and the public could be damned. Even as late as World War II, U.S. railroads had an antiquated plant far behind other industries. Cars, buses and planes started eating into passenger revenues; the booming young trucking industry, along with barges and fast-expanding pipelines, cut into freight traffic. Between 1943 and 1949 the railroad share of the $30 billion U.S. transportation market crumbled from...
...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...
...Because freight produces nearly 90% of 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...