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As two trains thunder along the single track, approaching each other, the operator simply presses a button and switches one into a passing track while the other whizzes by. Then the train on the passing track is switched back to the main line. Many of the tracks are long enough so that neither train even has to stop. Result: by cutting down the running time of trains, this system permits the track to carry 50% more traffic, saves some 150,000 man-hours a year, releases seven locomotives and 229 freight cars a day for other routes.
Like other roads, the U.P. has been starved for manpower. Yet Bill Jeffers, by using women for many a tough job, has managed to boost his working force from 35,000 to 60,000. He opened a school for women telegraphers, even put women to work as brakemen. By these and other tricks he has stretched U.P.'s workers and equipment till they were able to move 7,156,785 passengers last year and handle 37,000,000,000 ton-miles of revenue freight, up 185% over 1939. While doing this, he has set the best safety record of any big U.S. railroad. His books make nice reading, too. On U.P.'s operating revenue of $159,444,197 in the first four months of this year.* U.P. shows a net profit of $11,440,666 ($4.55 a share on its common stock).
Now, Bill Jeffers has one more improvement in mind. He plans to move soon with his wife and adopted daughter from Omaha to the West Coast, so that he can keep an even closer eye on his railroad. He has no doubt that the U.P. will do its job, that the long trains of troops and freight will be at the ports when the ships are there to take them. But he wants to be there to see for himself.
In Los Angeles he has bought a big, tree-shaded house, next door to Comedian Bob Hope. At 69, Jeffers is only five months away from the age at which U.P. presidents usually retire. But to any suggestion that his move west has any connection with retirement, his square face turns a light shade of purple.
"Hell," he snorts, "quit as long as there's a war on?"
Trouble Ahead. And now that the big push is actually starting, there seems small chance of Bill Jeffers quitting. He knows, as well as his fellow railroadmen, that too many things can go wrong and knock the best plans galley west. Traffic at Los Angeles is already near the port's capacity. At San Francisco, government freight is arriving at the rate of 13,000 cars a day v. only 1,000 a year ago. Smooth, efficient management here, as on the East Coast, is keeping ports and railyards from becoming clogged.
But none of these roads, nor the rest of the U.S. railroads, have all the equipment they want, even though they have spent the whopping sum of $2 billion for equipment and improvements since war began. If they had, the Army might now have nearly all the coaches and Pullmans it wants, without crippling civilian travel. The plain fact is that WPB, with the tacit approval of the Army, has shortsightedly kept the roads on starvation rations.