THAT NEW ECONOMIC POWER. With neither stack trains nor the Powder River Line?

The traffic jams are part of continuing congestion along the Beijing-Tibet highway that began escalating in mid-August -- fueled by road construction on the nearby Beijing-Xinjiang highway and the opening up of coal mines in the northwest.

Trucks hauling coal from regions like Inner Mongolia to industrial and urban centers on the coast are a major contributor to China's overloaded highway system. Most of the country's power plants are fueled by coal, vital for the booming economy that recently surpassed Japan's in size and now second only to that of the U.S.

Although the Chinese railroads have purchased some big General Electric freight diesels, and they run honest-to-Daniel Willard wagon-top cabooses behind freight trains that actually look like freight trains, apparently they're neither set up for stack trains nor for unit coal trains. From the smog over their cities, they could probably keep several Norfolk and Westerns going.