Evening star., 1960-01-17
Soviet Railroads
In Boom Period

While in this country the switch
has been almost entirely to diesel
power. the Soviet production tar
get for 1865 is $500 diesels a
year and 2,700 electrics, with each
handling about A per cent Of the
traffic. BY 1870, when steam is
scheduled to disappear, they plan
to have $4,000 miles of track un-
der the overhead wires. The elec-
tries are expensive, but they will
run million miles between capital
repairs and will last 40 years.
They are especially valuable in
mountainous areas, because on the
downgrade they reverse their mo-
tors and feed power back into the
grid.
Northern Siberio Job
The next big railroad Job is to
help unlock the vast wealth of
Northern Siberia. Almost mil
lion square miles are covered with
"permafroSt." The surface thaws
out in the summer, but the ground
underneath remains frozen the
year around. In many areas rail
beds won't stand up. The Reds
are so concerned about this that
they have even experimental with
refrigeration pipes to keep the
surface from thawing in the sum-
mer. If they ever solve this prob
lem. they will increase the effective
area Of the Soviet economy by
several million square miles.
In the United States, the volume
OF rail freight has fallen to less
than half of the total freight VOL
ume; but in Russia the railroad
share has increased during the
Soviet period, and the rails now
haul well over 80 per cent of all
Soviet freight. Russia has nothing
to match our fantastic highway
system. Compared to ours, her
pipeline net is puny indeed. Her
rivers and coastal waters remain
frozen up to half year and more.
How then can the railroads meet
the transport requirements OF an
area 21a times the size Of the
United States?
They use their railroads to ca
pacity. We don't. Only the innate
efficiency Of the steel wheel on the
steel rail explains how the Soviets
can begin to hold their burgeoning
industry together over the gigantic
Russian land mass. The modern
diesel locomotive can produce 625
gross ton-miles on one gallon of
diesel fuel. compared to less than
$50 for diesel truck. The average
automobile produces only 20 to
30 ton-miles on a gallon of gaso-
line With the flanged wheel and
rigid couplings. the railroad repre-
sents built-in automation. It
would take 13 times as many man.
days to move 100000 tons of
freight between New York and
San Francisco by truck as 1t would
by rail. A single track, can trans
port 20 times as many people as
a single lane Of highway.
Doubling Freight Volume
The meaning Of this is apparent
from our own experience In World
War II. Our railroads doubled
their freight volume and more
than tripled their passenger vol
ume, and they did it with no ap-
preciable increase in the railroad
plant. When Nazi submarines hit
the coastwise tankers, the rail-
road haul of oil to the East was
increased nearly a hundredfold to
a million barrels a day. Soviet
Premier Khrushchev, who speaks
OF the production front as though
1t were a battle front, has much
the same transport objectives as
ours during the war-to meet
transport requirements with the
least expenditure of manpower
fuel and steel.
Perhaps the decline of American
railroads is part of the price of
being rich. Soviet motor vehicle
production is less than half that
OF France, while America has
twice as many automobiles as all
the rest of the world. The $29
billion we spent on the purchase
and operation Of automobiles
elusive of trucks and buseS-in one
year. 1855, is greater than the en-
tire net investment, accumulated
over a period Of more than q CEN
tury, Of all our railroads combined.
Perhaps the key word is Con-
venience." Russian potatoes ride
the rails. American cake mixes go
on the highway.
If the American people are rich,
SO, 1t appears, are the Federal,
State and county governments.
The railroads looked huge go
years ago, but they are quite small
alongside the road builders. The
$8.6 billion spent on highway con-
struction and maintenance in 1857
was greater than the total ex-
penditure of all the railroads COM
blned. At the same time, the un-
used capacity of our railroads is
far greater than the total capacity
OF all the trunk highways in the
United States.