Word: rails
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Patrons of the nation's most ill-run railroad got encouraging news last week. Major General William H. Draper Jr., onetime (1947-49) Under Secretary of the Army, was expected to be appointed sole trustee of the bankrupt Long Island Rail Road, which in the past nine months, in two accidents, has killed no passengers...
...passengers were part of a scarred, frustrated and endlessly complaining tribe -the 300,000 New York commuters who daily ride the rachitic, mismanaged Long Island Rail Road. They were also resigned. During a decade of endless criticism, the road's ramshackle trains-which link Long Island's sprawling suburbia to Manhattan and carry the biggest daily passenger load in the U.S.-had gone right on running late, bogging down in snowstorms, killing motorists at grade crossings and risking the lives of their passengers...
...Nassau County Transit Commission charged that the Pennsylvania Railroad had milked the Long Island financially for years before allowing it to go into bankruptcy. It was primarily a passenger road with only a minor percentage of the freight business which swelled the coffers of other rail lines. Its equipment was junky and the morale of its 7,500 employees was as low as that of its passengers...
...plant at Garden City was shut down. The paper planned to stay closed over the holiday. Then Reporter Bob Hollingsworth, who had stopped in a bar for a drink on his way home, caught a radio news bulletin. There had been a disastrous wreck on the Long Island Rail Road (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Hollingsworth tried frantically to locate Managing Editor Alan Hathway by phone, made four calls before he ran him down having dinner in a Chinese restaurant. By the time Hathway hustled back to the office, other staffers who had heard the news were also hurrying...
...other side, another blonde female head protruded. Soon afterward the train pulled to a screaming stop in the middle of the desert. Wobbling perceptibly, Engine-driver Fred Leahy dismounted, wove away to the front of his locomotive and lay down on the tracks, his neck on one gleaming rail, his ankles on the other. Fireman George Swetman lightened the pause by trying to play a tune on the engine whistle...