Since U.S. railroads are in financial trouble as rarely before, more and more railroad men are thinking of mergers. Last week word leaked out of a merger possibility among seven major eastern and Great Lakes lines, discussed recently at a Cleveland meeting of the lines' executives. The lines: Erie, Baltimore & Ohio, Chesapeake & Ohio, Reading, Delaware & Hudson, Nickel Plate (New York, Chicago & St. Louis), and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western.
The Cleveland meeting was prompted by the proposed merger of the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads, which are going...