New Trains

Railroad news last week centred about the Yankee Clipper. Named by a committee headed by John Coolidge, which, of course, gave it much prenatal publicity, the new New York, New Haven and Hartford's Boston-to-New York express made its first trip from Manhattan last week. Time: 4 hr. 45 min.--a quarter-hour less than it take the N. Y., N. H. & H.'s other crack Boston-New York trains, the Merchants and the Knickerbocker. More expensive by $1.30 than either of these two, a ride on the Yankee Clipper costs $12.26. The train, all Pullman, is in two sections of seven cars, each named after a famed oldtime clipper ship. To suggest the sea, car interiors are blue-green. Windows open like windows in limousines, are said by the company not to stick. One Grace Harriet McKay, great-granddaughter of Clipper Ship Builder Donald McKay, christened the train in Manhattan's Grand Central Station. A band of Red Caps played.

Sportsman. Another new train, the Chesapeake & Ohio's Sportsman connecting Great Lakes points with the southerly Atlantic coast last week started from Detroit on an exhibition tour. It visited Toledo, Fostoria, Marion, Columbus, Ohio, Huntington, W. Va., Charleston, S. C., Richmond, Norfolk. Regular service was scheduled to begin March 30.

Gold Spike. To commemorate the laying of the world's longest stretch of ''heaviest rail" (130 pounds a yard) between Chicago and New York, Pennsylvania Railroad officials last fortnight observed an ancient custom and drove a gold spike in the last link. The ceremonies took place on the Pennsylvania main line tracks at Chicago's 41st Street. Chosen to drive the spike was Foreman

Ed Brown, longest (47 years) in the service of the Chicago Terminal Division. Total weight of the Pennsylvania's 130 pound rails between Chicago and Manhattan: 831,001,600 Ibs.

Atterbury. In an American Magazine interview published last week P. R. R.'s president, General William Wallace Atterbury prophesied that from eight to ten billion dollars would be spent in railroad improvements in the next ten years, that a 14-hour schedule between Chicago and Manhattan would be developed.

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