Word: freights
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...gaily decorated siding under Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, railroad men saw something new in freight cars this week. It was the "Unicel," a gleaming white freight car made almost entirely of plywood. "This," said John I. Snyder, 40, chairman-president of the Pressed Steel Car Co., "is the first really new freight car built in the U.S. in half a century...
...Though it is 30% lighter than a steel car, the plywood car has withstood three times as much pressure in "squeeze" (collision) tests between two cars. Thus it is not only cheaper to haul but could trim the big-$115 million in 1949-railroad bill for damage to freight...
...meanwhile went on ordering old-style cars (New York Central this week ordered $38 million worth of the standard type). But Snyder, who had put three years of research and $250,000 into Unicel, hoped to change their old habits, was betting that the new car would eventually revolutionize freight car building. In a rearming U.S., which would need all the steel and all the freight cars it could make, Snyder had one big fact on his side: plywood is not nearly as scarce as steel...
...estimated, for example, that 100,-ooo casualties would require 600,000 pints of blood over a period of six weeks. It would take 17 freight cars to hold that many pint bottles. To distribute it to casualty stations the city would have to mobilize every vehicle with a refrigeration unit, from meat trucks down to Good Humor wagons...
...such deals, plus new scheduled routes from CAB (TIME, May 9, 1949), the line has built its monthly payload to 2,000,000 Ibs. in 1949-50, as much as it carried its entire first year. Last week the freight future looked so bright that Bob Prescott planned to expand his 24-plane fleet. He placed a bid for 18 mothballed Air Force C-46s. But Prescott, who has clawed his way through more than one freight-rate battle with the scheduled passenger lines, thinks he still has plenty of fighting to do. Complained he: "As long as [the passenger...