Rail fans turn the heat on ICC to save the picturesque little road to Yosemite from the scrap heap. Bond issue is proposed.

      That a boy can be president of a railroad at 18 is a plank in our national economy. And it might happen in California.

       Link to Dream World The road is the Yosemite Valley Ry., the picturesque link between the dream world of Yosemite National Park, in the heart of California, and the world of reality which ends at its gates. The boy is John M. McFadden of Pasadena, president of the Pacific Coast Railroading Assn., a group of some 40 young railroad fans sworn to make friends for railroads and oppose their abandonment.

      For 38 years the Y. V. has spanned the 77 mountainous miles from Merced, Calif., to El Portal, the entrance to Yosemite, carrying a variety of cargo and passengers ranging through the years from lumber and oil and limestone to a President of the United States, a King of the Belgians, a Crown Prince of Sweden, and the garden variety tourist.

       Abandonment Sought Now the Interstate Commerce Commission is weighing a petition for permission to abandon the Y. V. The Machine Tool & Equipment Co. of New York, the major stock and bondholder, stands ready to scrap it.

       Fans to the Rescue-Staunchest among the Y. V.'s friends is McFadden's Los Angeles railroading group which has enough faith in the rail road's revenue producing ability to bid a tentative $400,000 for it.

      Directing the association's fight is young McFadden, who is employed in a the engineering department of the Pacific Electric Ry. Co., and whose love for railroading persuaded him to leave school at 15 and take a job with the Santa Fe. Neither he nor his association has $400,000. They would raise it by public bond issue; McFadden claims it is already virtually subscribed.

       Not a Has-Been-If you have not seen the Y. V., you might picture it as a relic of the Old West two lines of rust cradling an old wood burner and slowly decaying as it yields its life blood to the automobile, the truck, and the motor coach.

      This would be a romantic picture but hardly in consonance with the reality of the Y. V.'s seven locomotives, 50 freight cars, five passenger cars, its 73-lb; rails, its trim passenger stations, and ; its million dollar steel bridge which spans the waters of Lake McClure.

Big Revenues Lost Time has taken its toll of the Y. V. through isolation of the timber that was a principal source of revenue and the dismantling of a cement mill, purchased by Henry Kaiser.

      In 1902, when the trip from Merced to the park was a two day jaunt on or behind horses, N. C. Ray, a gold mine superintendent in that area, induced Oakland capitalists to build the road. It was a rugged construction job. Except for one spot where it was possible to maneuver a steam shovel, mule pack hauled the necessary materials along the canyon of the Merced River, and they were lowered to the site.

       Glamorous Business From the time it was opened to traffic in 1907 until well into the twenties, the Y. V. did a glamorous passenger business, hauling the private cars of visiting royalty and business tycoons reduced to role of tourist by the common denominator of Yosemite's scenic wonders. A hundred thousand passengers a year was not uncommon.

      Freight added cream to the revenues oil and gasoline for the bulk plants in the El Portal area; return loads of barytes for the agua gel required by California's oil drillers; logs from the lumber camps of the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Co.; limestone from the quarry at Emory.

       Park Enlarged Two blows knocked the props from under the road's freight income extension of the national park in 1942 to embrace the area of the logging operations, and Kaiser's purchase and retirement of the cement mill in 1944.

      The road still carries five or six cars of barytes on each trip to Merced, two reefers from the Coast, a few tank cars, and quantities of Navy and l.c.l. freight, but schedules have been cut to three trains a week in each direction, and passenger revenues well, a load of nine passengers per trip in the combination car looks like prosperity to L. A. Foster, the general manager. Only 30 regular employees remain on the payroll.

       Other Friends The Pacific Coast Railroading Assn. is not alone in its ambition to keep the Y. V. in business. The National Lead Co, which produces the barytes for the oil fields, protested the ICC examiner's recommendation that the road be abandoned. The War Production Board and the Petroleum Administration for War also have lifted challenging voices.

      McFadden is confident the road can get more freight, that it's worth more as a going concern than as scrap. The U. S. Dept. of Agriculture has conducted some quiet studies of the fertilizer properties of the rock in Kaiser's limestone quarry, and the young railroad enthusiasts contend that large deposits of jasper, the quartz used in coating roofing paper, suggest a new industry for the area.

      They will argue these points before the nest ICC hearing. If the ICC sticks to its guns, it will know it has been through a fight.