The past two winters have seen the great black-breasted yards of all our American railroads congested with traffic almost to the breaking point. Executives, high and low, have lived in the yards for days and weeks and months at a time trying to relieve the congestion. This terminal yard of the West Shore Railroad at Weehawken, N. J., opposite New York City, is typical of many, many others.] Come back to the United States. Last winter, when the railroads of the East struggled under a perfect flood tide of freight, due to the rush of war munitions toward the seaboard for transshipment, they were compelled to issue embargoes. That means, plainly speaking, that for days and sometimes weeks at a time they were compelled to refuse to accept or deliver many classes of freight. They gave their first efforts to moving coal and milk and the other vital necessities for the towns which they served with the rigors of an unusually hard winter to combat. It was a long time before the embargoes were all raised--even with all the big operating men in the East working from eighteen to twenty hours out of twenty-four--in many cases living in their private cars set in the heart of the most congested yards. Bridgeport was one of the towns that was hardest hit by these embargoes. While it is served by a single railroad, it is upon the main stem of that road--a system that is reputed to be well equipped for the handling of high-grade freight. But the conditions were unusual, to say the least. Bridgeport found herself transformed almost overnight from a brisk and average Connecticut manufacturing town into one of the world's greatest munition centers. Prosperity hit her between the eyes. For a time people slept all night in the railroad station because they had nowhere else to go. And the fine new county almshouse was hurriedly transformed into a huge hotel. Bridgeport swarmed with people. A single munition factory there employed close to 20,000 people. The railroad, long since hemmed in by the growing factory town, could not rebuild its yards overnight. Neither could it look for relief toward the other Connecticut towns. They, too, were making munitions and were in turn congested. But by far the worst congestion of all was at Bridgeport. The railroad people worked unceasingly, but for a time to apparently no purpose. And for a time it was almost impossible for a package to reach Bridgeport from New York or the West.