Dear TIME-Reader:

FARMERS north of Louisville, Ky. were startled late one afternoon last fall by a strange spectacle coming down the B. & 0. railroad tracks. Rolling along at 3 m.p.h. was a Speno rail-grinding train. Six feet out from the last car was mounted a camera on a makeshift brace of 2 by 6 planks and spikes. Behind the camera a 6-ft.-5-in., 250-lb. man trotted along the ties, triggering the camera to catch the brilliant constellations of sparks thrown off by the rail grinders.

The trotting photographer was William Vandivert, taking a series of color pictures for this week's story on the modernization of U.S. railroads (see BUSINESS). Vandivert's previous color portfolios for TIME have included such varied pictorial reports as Abilene's Eisenhower Museum (TIME, April 5, 1954), Anderson Hospital in Houston (TIME, Dec. 13, 1954), automation in industry (TIME, March 19) and football at Michigan State University (TIME, Oct. 8).

For this week's color story on railroading, Vandivert traveled for two months and some 23,000 miles up and down and across the U.S. To help him get his pictures, railroaders everywhere set up special timetables for their prized new rolling stock. Union Pacific blocked its main line 30 minutes at Green River, Wyo., while Vandivert photographed three different types of power plants used in mountain hauling. Southern Pacific trainmen, not to be outdone, tape-measured the 4,745-11. length of an 87-car piggyback freight train, laid out the same distance along California's San Luis Obispo horseshoe curve and carefully spotted the train for Vandivert's dramatic storytelling picture of piggyback hauling (see cut).

WHEN TIME'S Art Researcher Martha Peter Welch began to check the story of the Mount Vernon Museum's miniature of Martha Custis Washington (see ART), supposedly a 1772 work of Charles Willson Peale, she discovered Yale University had another miniature, also thought to be the 1772 Peale portrait. Since both were acquired from direct descendants of the nation's first First Lady, the museum and university quietly began to reconcile their claims.

The result was of particular interest to Researcher Welch.

She is also a direct descendant of Martha Washington (see cut).

Cordially yours,

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