Word: freighting
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...candidate for the carriage trade, the Media was built for utility and solid comfort rather than flash. Her ample holds can carry 7,000 tons of freight. Her 250 single-class passengers have enough elbowroom in air-conditioned lounges to permit the illusion that they are traveling first class on one of the Queens-for the price of a cabin-class ticket ($260 to $290 each way). Facilities include a library, and separate bars and recreation areas for both passengers and crew...
Meanwhile, there were signs that the Media might yet run into heavy weather of a different sort. On her first trip, she had carried almost a full complement of passengers but only 887 tons of freight -13% of her capacity. And with the peak of the summer tourist season past, there was a noticeable drop in eastbound passengers. For the first time since the war, there were vacant bookings even on the Europe-bound Queens...
Cried he: "Thousands of cars could be freed by a single decision-if old-line railroad managements would act. . . . There is good reason to believe that by lifting deliberate freight slowdowns on the roads that still practice them, we could provide more cars this summer and fall than our shops can possibly build. . . . Write to your newspaper and your congressman...
Young drew.blood. Like every railroadman, Young had heard of the reported "gentleman's agreement" by which western railroads since 1934 have slowed their fastest freight lines to the speed of their slowest competitors. The railroads justify it by saying that to speed them up would congest freight yards, disrupt passenger service and create locomotive shortages (by increasing the number of short, fast trains). But the U.S. Government, in an antitrust suit, charged that the slowdown was primarily to prevent rate cuts by slower lines trying to compete with faster ones...
Young's critics thought they could see a large cinder in his own bloodthirsty eye. They said Young's Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co., a major hauler of coal, operates some of the longest, slowest freight trains in the country. Said William T. Faricy, president of the Association of American Railroads: "The C. & O.'s record for average freight train speed is nearly one-tenth below the [national] average." The cynical also thought they could discern a bid for public sympathy in Bob Young's imminent proxy battle for control of the Missouri Pacific Railroad...