(2 of 2)
Linking North & South. Some lines prosper because of quirks of nature or of men. The biggest, busiest and most profitable of the bridge roads is the 129-year-old Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, whose 117-mile main line between Washington and Richmond—protected from competition in earlier decades by its part-owner, the state of Virginia—is still the only coastal link between North and South. All North-South traffic takes the R.F. & P.; over it daily thunder 23 passenger trains and ten freights bound from one to another of the six Class I roads (the Pennsy, the Southern, and the merging C. & O.-B. & O. and Atlantic Coast Line-Seaboard) that have controlled it jointly since 1901. Gathering 80% of its traffic from its bridge operation, the road last year cleared about $4,000,000 on operating revenues of $24 million.
For all their glamour and hustle, short lines will go on being short. Their less than 2% share of total rail revenues last year was a tiny tweet amid the mighty roar of the main lines. Mergers, of course, still take place. The Lehigh & Susquehanna disappeared last year into the Reading, and the Mohoning & Shenango into the New York Central. But one thing is certain: in 1964, the nation's short lines are too various, too scattered—and too content with their tiny place in the sun—for another Pennsy or Central ever to emerge from them.