| As a railroad system the Pennsy is by far the most mature of the
Big Four. By the early 1870's it had already taken for its
province almost all that it has now. At the turn of the century President
Alexander Johnston Cassatt, the brains of the Pennsylvania," launched the campaign that drove the Pennsy under the Hudson River and into Manhattan, then pushed it under the East River to its great gateway to New England, the Hell Gate Bridge. Presidents Samuel Rea and Atterbury continued the march north by gaining a working control of the New Haven and Boston & Maine. Then President Atterbury launched his greatest
project - electrification of the Pennsy - completed last month from New York to Philadelphia, last week on down to Wilmington, soon to Baltimore and Washington.
Pennsylvania's 28,000 Mi. of track, its
$ 2,191,000,000 assets, give it undisputed claim to the title of "biggest U. S. railroad." Its 5,500 locomotives are one-tenth the U. S. total, its 270,000 freight cars 12%, its 7,000 passenger cars
14%. With this equipment it justifies its boast: "Carries more passengers, hauls more freight than any railroad in America.".
Despite its huge plant President Atterbury found in 1928 that Pennsylvania's eastern region had nearly reached traffic capacity under steam operations. He promptly started a $ 100,000,000 program to electrify all main lines from New York to Washington and west to Harrisburg. Some 6,000 men were set to work erecting 8,000 steel poles, stringing 38,000,000 lb. of copper cable. At an average cost of
$160,000 apiece, 150 electric locomotives were ordered. Electrification was coordinated with another $75,000,000 program of station and terminal improvement in Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Electrification west to Harrisburg has not begun. But when work now under way is finished the Pennsy can add another superlative to its long list: "Most electrified U. S. railroad."
Though Kuhn, Loeb & Co. have been its bankers, Pennsylvania has never been a banker's road. It is a Pennsylvania institution, socially, financially, politically. President Atterbury runs the road. He has been a Pennsy man since he left college in 1886. Son of a lawyer who quit a Detroit practice to become a Presbyterian preacher and who wanted his son to enter the ministry, President Atterbury started in the Pennsylvania's great Altoona shops. In 1903 President Cassatt jumped him to general manager of the eastern region, a key post. Thereafter his rise, like all railroadmen's, was slow. There are no young railroad presidents. William Wallace Atterbury, now 67, was just under 6o when he stepped into Samuel Rea's shoes.
When General Pershing cabled for the "best railroad man in the U. S." President Wilson sent him Atterbury, then vice president in charge of operations.
Commissioned a brigadier general, he quickly brought order to the jumble of troops, trucks, guns, docks, railways and munitions that he found piled up in all the ports of France. Since then he has always been General Atterbury and he likes it. He has a military abruptness, a military insistence on having things done right. His clothes are always faultlessly cut, his shirt and starched collar always crisp, his ties always
polka dot. He always dresses for dinner, even on his private car between New York and Philadelphia. It bothers him to see a friend light the wrong end of a cigar.
Tall, baldish, with piercing blue eyes and a cropped mustache, he keeps himself in as rigorous trim as when he was a locomotive mechanic in the Altoona shops. His big-toothed grin is familiar to all Pennsylvania's 115,000
employees. When at home (which is seldom) he lives simply in Radnor outside Philadelphia. He claims that his house is so furnished that he can put his feet up whenever he sits down. A railroad man to the core, he has only one automobile, a Cadillac which he turns in every August for a new model. His two younger sons take to railroading, but his eldest is determined to be a singer.
Railroader Atterbury once remarked: "If you become the greatest musician in the world, what of it?" He reads very light novels, likes
duck shooting, plays his own rules at contract with a stern righteousness and no little success. While working he smokes endless
cigarettes, whistles most of the time. Once on the coast of Alaska his 110 - ft. yacht was boarded by revenue agents who seized his stock of rye whiskey and champagne. General Atterbury fumed.
General Atterbury will retire three years hence when he reaches the Pennsylvania's retiring age of 7o. He will probably
see the completion of his electrification program-his greatest job. He hopes most devoutly be will not live to see the day that the Pennsylvania, or any other big U. S. railroad, is state-owned. |
