The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-07-28

system of priorities such as is used by the airlines.
 If travel rationing comes, it prob- ably will be before the Christmas holidays rush. If the railroads can just manage to squeeze through the holidays with their peak travel loads, there may not have to be travel rationing.
 As far as holiday travel rush is concerned, says Colonel Johnson, paraphrasing the once-popular song, this is Where Every Days A Holiday" Only instead of the next line being, And Skies Are Always Blue," it's Rush, Multiplied by Two"
 Best guess is that U. S. rail travel may be tight for another two years. Only escape is for the war against Japan to end in less than year. LONG, LONG RAIL
 TRAIL A-WINDING
 What most people don't realize about this rail crisis Is that 1t takes seven long train rides to get sol- dier redeployed from Europe to the Pacific. He lands at an Atlantic port. First ride is to the staging area, prior to furlough. Then ride home. Back to assembly center month later. Move to base camp, to training area, to staging area, to port of authorization.
 Peak of all this travel will come in February and March. Moves one and two will end in April. Three and four should be completed by June 1. The others will go on for ar1- other three months.
 What is happening is that all the troops that were moved to Europe in the 40 months after Pearl Harbor are being brought back home and moved to the Pacific in 10 months. And this involves moving all these troops all the way across the con- tinent west-bound, instead of just part way across the continent as they were when east-bound.
 This puts a burden on the seven western trunk line railroads which they are not able to bear. While the excess in both war supplies and troops might move through gulf ports and the Panama Canal, this is too slow. An estimated IS per cent of the Pacific war traf1ic will move over this southern route, but even so it won't relieve the pressure on the continental rail lines.
 Add to this burden a further ball. up-originally it had been planned to string this redeployment over IS months. Some place along the line the Army decided this time should be cut practically in half. So, ia- stead of handling the scheduled 150,000 troops in June, 205, ,000 were unloaded at Atlantic ports. That was when ODT had to get tough and cut off all Pullman rides of under 450 miles.
 CIVILIAN TRAVEL
 BIG PUZZLE
 Tn July the same kind of jump is being made. Instead of 8 mere 250,000 troops to be returned from Europe, the number will be over 300,000. The only way to handle this increased burden is to take more Pullmans away from their regular runs.
 The real cause for worry in this predicament is what to do about the absolutely essential civilian travel. If business men can't move freely, the war effort, the government and the whole civilian economy will suf- fer. But how to give them travel pri- critics and keep unessential travel CTS of the railroads is the great un- answerable. It's no job for OPA, which has enough other things to worry about.
 Travel rationing is the problem of the railroads and the ODT. Rail- way ticket agents now unoflcially give preference to business men wanting preference and are getting by. But barely.
 ODT"s Colonel Johnson makes these statements not with any idea of throwing scare, but simply to state the facts in another effort to make people Stay home, or stay oil the railroads, at least.
 As far as the railroads are con- cerned. the war is just beginning.