TRANSPORTATION: Seatrain

Wind & wave were not the only hazards faced by a strange looking craft which set out from Hoboken, N. J. via Havana for New Orleans last week. At the last moment, the Seatrain New York was almost scuttled by a Shipping Board ruling.

Atlantic shipping lines, Seaboard Railways and unfriendly shippers protested bitterly to the Shipping Board and the Interstate Commerce Commission that the Seatrain, a floating railroad yard with a mile of track below-deck to hold 100 loaded freight cars, was damagingly unfair competition. Seatrain New York has a speed of 16 knots, can carry freight faster than any coastwise freighter, can lighter it from Hoboken to New Orleans in six days for half the rail fare. The Shipping Board handed down a last-minute decision while Seatrain New York was fidgeting in New York Harbor: Seatrain Lines Inc. will be suffered a six-month trial period. The vessel cleared South with a cargo of cotton manufacturing machinery, paper, beans, steel, olive oil, whale oil, soap grease, soap stock, cement.

President of Seatrain Lines Inc. is Graham M. Brush, onetime shipping executive. Since 1929 he has operated Seatrain New Orleans between New Orleans and Havana. Using a giant crane at each terminal, he has cut 40% off the usual stevedore charges, saved two loadings for shippers using rail-water transportation between the U. S. and Cuba. In the past three years Seatrain Lines Inc. has carried twice as much tonnage between New Orleans and Havana as the three competing shipping lines which operate four times as many vessels.