Fifth Wheel?

When the Transportation Act of 1920 showed Congress favorably inclined to railroad mergers (TIME, Feb. 4, 1924), three Eastern systems--N. Y. Central, Baltimore & Ohio, and Pennsylvania--sat down and attempted to arrange just how they would absorb the rest of the roads in their territory. Unfortunately, everybody wanted the fat and nobody the lean roads. Meanwhile, the Van Sweringens quietly annexed the Nickel Plate, C. & O., Erie, Pere Marquette and Hocking Valley (TIME, Aug. 11, 18, April 6), and became a fourth party at the prospective feast. Now, while the four cannot agree on details of distributing small roads among them, a fifth would-be claimant appears--Mr. Leonor F. Loree, Chairman of the Delaware and Hudson R. R.

Mr. Loree has long been nationally known as an expert railroad operator, and also on occasion an expert fighter. He now appears in the new role of expert consolidator of railways. His proposed fifth Eastern system would stretch from New York to the Gulf as well as to the Great Lakes. It would consist of the Delaware & Hudson, and also the Kansas City & Southern, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the Wabash, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western or Lehigh Valley or both, and perhaps other small roads.

Mr. Loree's suggested merger differs from its four rivals, actual and prospective, in that it does not stop at the Mississippi River. While in no sense a transcontinental, it would through the K. C. & S. and the M. K. & T. extend into the Southwest, and to the Great Lakes through the D. L. & W. It is thought that this new combination would be most inimical to the New York Central, since it would provide a new and direct route through the Lake territory of the latter road, especially between Detroit and New York.