THERE was a time when loyalty to one’s employer was as sacred as a belief in the hereafter. Grousing was per­mitted over minor disagreements in policy, deferred mainte­nance, wind-swept engine cabs, and other mundane matters. But, in the larger picture, The Company was Number One.

In our family, the object of all that affection was the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, “Linking 13 Great States With The Nation”—and don’t you forget it. B&O per­meated every corner of the early days of life for my sister and me. School pencils carried the B&O No. 2 marking, the B&O Magazine dominated the coffee table, and someone had even stamped B&O on the handle of the coal scoop down by the cellar furnace.

At grade school, it was always a bit unsettling to hear my classmates talk of their parents going on vacation on the Broadway Limited to New York or hopping the Iron City Ex­press to Chicago. It must have been some sort of inferiority complex, for though we knew that the B&O was better than the Pennsylvania Railroad, there was no denying that around Pittsburgh we sure were outnumbered. It seemed that no matter where you looked, there was another red keystone staring at you from something or other; a building, a bridge, a string of hoppers. And, even though the PRR had none of “our” mammoth Vanderbilt tenders and only a few of the mighty Malleys that were the glory of Glenwood, they sure had a lot of whatever it was they had.

As kids, I think we carried this fealty a bit further than the adults, for I recall once or twice that my dad admitted that they “ran a pretty good outfit over there.”

Regardless, I felt that, like the Pittsburgh Pirates of my youth, the B&O needed some strong rooters in the slugfest with the PRR, and I appointed myself as Chief Cheerleader. As with the Bucs in those days, it involved no small amount of pain.

There was the afternoon I was returning on the street­car from a dental appointment in downtown Pittsburgh. As the wonderfully noisy old “58 Greenfield” screeched out of the triangle, we were hung up at a red traffic light just as a Pennsylvania passenger train hove into view crossing the bridge that took it down on the Panhandle Division. What a break! It was only Pennsy, but it was a train.

As the K4’s set the overpass into a deep vibrating rum­ble and the long line of Tuscan red coaches followed, the joy of train-watching began to diminish. In every window was a smiling, contented face. They were dozing, reading maga­zines, watching scenery, staring ahead blankly. It was a sell-out. Standing Room Only.

Number One Fan furrowed his brow. Why weren’t all those people on his beloved B&O?

I pondered the matter all the way home and waited till after dinner and homework to propose the matter for consid­eration when my father woke up. He was firing on “Five and Six,” the Capitol Limited, in those days, and that meant an early evening arousal. Over his wake-up coffee, I laid it out for him: the first-hand report of a matter of grave con­cern, a capacity load on the Pennsy. “Is business that good on the Capitol?”

He pondered. “Not bad. But not quite that good.” I frowned. “But, I wouldn’t worry about it though.”

“Why not?” My grade-school logic was creating visions of an ever-widening red keystone.

“I know their secret,” he rumbled in a conspiratorial tone.

My eyes closed to slits. “What is it?”

“Every time there’s an empty seat on a Pennsylvania Railroad train, the conductor has strict orders to pull down the window blind at that seat.”

“But I didn’t see any window blinds pulled down.”

He allowed a dramatic pause. “Oh, yes you did.”

“I—I what?”

“On the outside of every window blind, they’ve painted the picture of a phony passenger, so that when all those blinds are down, to people who don’t know the secret, it looks like the train is filled.”

“Well I’ll be—---”

Additional details were not forthcoming as a call from the trainmaster informed us that the odd new “Diesel” would be on “Six” tonight, so it was going to be a relatively easy trip.

Appalled as I was by the dastardly deception of the PRR, I could not help but admire its cunning. Later that night, to my great shame, the idea actually began to appeal to me. They must have some pretty clever guys over there to think that one up! But, from then on, I was a lot more suspi­cious of the smiling aces framed by Tuscan red.

As time passed, the great hoax diminished in magni­tude to a mind facing the mysteries of fractions, compound sentences, and the development of a blazing fastball. It would not be until later that it returned sharply to my memory during a vacation visit to relatives in Plymouth, md., whose main claim to fame in my book was the proxim­ity of their home to the PRR main line—right across the street. Sitting trackside to watch a brace of K4’s flash into sight across the flatlands and decelerate for the station stop, I observed many woefully empty windows glide by on the Depression-decimated limiteds. No smiling window-blind deadheads. A little older now, I could smile at my father’s creative sense of humor.

In my adult years, I counted in my circle of friends a number of Pennsy people. At a bar or over dinner, I would be enjoined to tell one of the newcomers about “The Pennsy Secret.” One of the most appreciative was a wonderful Gary Cooper-type gentleman named “Boots” Tyler, a PRR civil engineer who took me on my first Pennsy engine ride. I thought his explosion of laughter would never end. He fi­nally concluded, “God, we could have used something like that over here in those Depression years—just to keep our spirits up. And you can tell your old man that he’s forgiven for telling little kids lies about us.” Another gulp of coffee. “And you can tell him that I think they run a pretty good outfit over there, too.”

I did. - REGE CORDIC.