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SYMES was born only 250 yds. from the Pennsy's main line at Glen Osborne, Pa., the son of a railroader. After high school, he joined the Pennsy as a clerk in Pittsburgh, chiefly because his baseball skill was needed on the Pennsy's semipro team. He had a mild ambition to play professional baseball, but gave it up for railroading. Except for a brief Stateside period as a World War I Army draftee (he married the girl who replaced him as a secretary at the Pennsy) and a four-year hitch as vice president of the Association of American Railroads, he leaped steadily-upward at the Pennsy as a protege of M.W.Clement, who later became the road's president. Symes was never one to fumble for an answer or duck a tough problem. He often flatly overruled the orders of top executives, one of whom later named Symes his assistant, saying: "You were right and I was wrong. If you hadn't done what you did, I wouldn't have you here."
When Symes became president in 1954, he speeded up the huge task of modernizing the antiquated Pennsy. The road has 23,500 miles of track, 79,000 employees, 162,800 pieces of rolling stock, sprawls west to St. Louis, north to Mackinaw City, Mich., south to Cape Charles, Del. Symes streamlined management, spent $182 million on capital improvements. Although deferred maintenance costs will cut 1959 earnings, Pennsy's 1958 earnings were big enough in the fourth quarter to put it $3,544,073 in the black for the year. Symes has cooperated in civic projects and such developments as Penn Center, a 14-acre center that contains the Pennsy's modern new headquarters.
Symes is well aware that his job is far from done, that the Pennsy is still big and unwieldy. Many railroadmen believe that a merger with the Central would create a behemoth that could hardly be run efficiently—one reason the Central may have backed away. That does not faze Jim Symes; he is sure that fewer Government regulations and more rail mergers could turn today's invalid into tomorrow's healthy giant.