May 1954 page 2

KEEPING TRACK

P & N BUSINESS, from the standpoint of
carloads handled, was a little better in 1953
than in 1952. Last year the railroad handled
107,930 carloads of freight as compared with
106,097 the previous year—an increase of
1,833 cars. Important gains were made in
the carload volume of packing house
products, sand and stone, fertilizer and ferti-
lizer products, and automobiles. But losses
were suffered in building materials, gas-
oline and oil, and textile products.

RAILROAD INITIALS have always been a
source of interest to railroaders and rail-
road fans. After looking over a recent issue
of SEMAPHORE and testing her knowledge
of reporting intials, Mrs. Edithe Dunbar,
steno-clerk in the Chicago traffic office,
wrote in to see if the editor had ever heard
of the LS & BC RR. We confess that we
never had. But any wide awake rail fan
could tell you she was talking about the
LaSalle and Bureau County Railroad.

MAINE CENTRAL Railroad Magazine has
gone 3-D . . . at least for one issue. The
April issue boasted a 3-D cover picture of
the Dragon Cement plant at Thomaston,
Me. To be certain that its readers were
properly equipped to enjoy the third dimen-
sion, the editors inserted a pair of 3-D glass-
es, one eye blue and one pink.

WOOD AND STONE are still important ma-
terials in modern railroading. Although a
relatively small railroad, the P & N has
used 246,500 treated crossties within the
past ten years. During the same period
236,500 tons of stone ballast were used.

A NATIONAL CONCERN was inadvertently
omitted from a story in last month's SEMA-
PHORE describing the large number of
national companies which established facili-
ties in the P & N's Thrift Road industrial
development in Charlotte. The company was
E. J. Feeley Chemical Company.

Sempahore
Volume 10 Number 5

MAY, 1954

Published by the Piedmont & Northern
Railway Company. Address all communica-
tions to Editor, Semaphore, P. O. Box 480,
Charlotte, N. C.

EDITOR
THOMAS G. LYNCH
Director of Industrial Development
and Public Relations

CORRESPONDENTS
Elizabeth N. Watt...............Anderson
Lennie Featherstone..........Belmont
Elsie K. Walker...................Charlotte
Jean Greene.......................Gastonia
Delia H. Brown..................Greenville
Evelyn Williams.................Greenville
Sarah Yeager......................Greenwood
Lucille M. Dameron...........Mt. Holly
H. W. Kay...........................Spartanburg

IN THIS ISSUE . . .
Bridge Work.....................4
Meet Your Directors..........6
Major Leagues Go Rail......7
Mount Holly Agency.........8
Tar Heel Railroad.............10
Profile—R. M. Torrence.....14
Forest Products Industry...15
Along the Line.................16

THIS MONTH'S COVER . . .

Locomotive 1606 had the un-
glamorous assignment of pulling
the work train when a span of the
Saluda River bridge was replaced
last month. When this picture was
made the engine was idling on the
bridge 50 feet above the lazy
Saluda. It would have been a good
day for the engineer to catch up on
his fishing—except for the ticklish
construction work that was in prog-
ress only a few feet from the loco-
motive.