Perils of Penn Central

The Penn Central railroad made an unscheduled stop just short of chaos last week. Within hours after 28,000 members of the United Transportation Union shut down the line in 16 states an emergency back-to-work law was whipped through both houses of Congress and jet-shipped to San Clemente where President Nixon signed it in the middle of the night. That Perils of Pauline save marked the eighth time in six years that Congress has had to intervene at the last minute to prevent or stop a major rail strike.

The latest crisis was right out of a grade-B melodrama. A bankrupt railroad was being struck by a union that had seen better days over the fate of 5,700 superfluous brakemen. A bankruptcy court ordered a reduction in the work force last December, and management decided to drop the brakemen through attrition. Even though no workers were to be fired, the union's president, Al Chesser, did not care to see his ranks depleted, and he authorized a strike. Before Chesser's men went back to work some 160,000 commuters had to find alternate ways to work, and the nation's three major auto companies were about to close some of their plants tor lack of raw materials.

The congressional action provides for a 90-day cooling-off Period and calls on the Nixon Administration to submit a plan within 45 days for the preservation of essential rail service in the Northeast. One of the first problems facing the planners is how big the Penn Central net should be. The railroad has some 20,000 miles of tracks, including scores of little-used spurs to sparsely populated areas; much of this money-draining mileage will have to be abandoned. Chesser has suggested that the Government buy Penn Central's right of way, repair the sadly deteriorated tracks and then let Penn Central trains --and perhaps others--use the tracks for a fee. Before the 90-day respite expires, Congress may well be moved to enact compulsory arbitration legislation tor all transportation industry disputes lest there be more eleventh-hour crises'. The Administration prepared such a bill last year but abandoned support for it after the Teamsters endorsed Nixon's candidacy for reelection.

At the heart of Penn Central's trouble is the question of its future ownership. The company's trustees figure that merely to replace its aging equipment and roadbed the line will need from $600 million to $800 million in s new capital--a sum no bankers would be willing to advance to a bankrupt line. Few members of Congress are eager to bail out Penn Central, and the Administration opposes such a move. Full nationalization of the line is supported by some labor leaders, but has few fans in either management or Government Unprofitable and unwanted, the line will probably continue to lurch from crisis to crisis until some day, more by default than design, it ends up a ward or U.S. taxpayers.

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