RAILROADS: Up From the Road Gang

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The Southern Pacific Railroad, the No. 2 U.S. road in trackage (12,441 miles),* prides itself on the fact that it trains its own brass. Its top officers have worked up from shirtsleeves, spent all their working years with the railroad. Last week, as President A. T. Mercier approached the compulsory retirement age of 70, Southern Pacific's directors had no trouble finding his successor: Donald J. Russell, 51, executive vice president, who moves into his new job in January as the youngest president in the railroad's history.

Like Mercier, who began as a transit-man and roadmaster's clerk, Russell trained as an engineer at Stanford, started with Southern Pacific as timekeeper for a road gang, rose to assistant foreman of a section gang. As a civil engineer, Don Russell helped boss the double-tracking of Southern's line across the mile-high Sierra Nevadas, worked up through roadmaster, trainmaster and assistant division superintendent to boss of the Los Angeles division in 1939. There he caught the eye of Mercier, who made him his assistant in 1941, groomed him for his new job.