Transport: Telephoning in Transit

An inconvenience in trains is the long lurching walk through three or four Pullmans to the diner only to find all the tables taken and a line of people waiting. Last November the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy installed several telephones in one of the streamlined Zephyrs so passengers might telephone the diner to reserve a table. The Southern Pacific’s streamlined City of San Francisco has phones used by porters for service only. Last week Southern Pacific revealed that a new City of San Francisco now abuilding will have telephones in every compartment and in dining and observation cars so that passengers can not only call for service but ring up each other free of charge.

Telephoning in transit is by no means new but is still undeveloped. Some freights have telephone service between engine and caboose at all times, and certain crack limiteds like the Twentieth Century have telephone service to anywhere when the train is at rest in stations, but nowhere can train travelers telephone beyond the train when it is moving. In Canada some five years ago the Canadian National conducted a stunt whereby a conversation was held between London, England, and a train running between Montreal and Chicago. Regular service proved too costly, was discontinued.

Ships have found radiotelephone profitable and 20 liners on the Atlantic and one on the Pacific now have regular ship-shore service, as do fishing smacks out of Boston, a few yachts, tugs and pilot boats in the harbors of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Airlines are eager to have the same facilities, and American, TWA and United have all experimented with passenger telephone service. It is feasible in every way but one—the present radio frequency band available to airplanes is already overcrowded. The airlines are now working with ultra-high frequencies beyond the present band.