May 23, 1986

Orders to factories for big-ticket durable goods fell for the third consecutive month in April, to eight-tenths of 1 percent, the Commerce Department said today. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige attributed the drop to a 26.9 percent decline in military orders, which are extremely volatile on a monthly basis. If military orders were excluded, new orders would have increased 2.1 percent.

For motorist and traffic engineer alike, it is likely to be a Dickensian summer: the best of times, the worst of times. Taken together, the experts say, falling gasoline prices, extensive road construction and a projected surge in domestic tourism - each in some ways a boon - may leave roads and highways in the New York metropolitan area more snarled and congested with traffic than they have been in a decade. The signs of trouble, the experts say, are already here. With gasoline selling Traffic, fueled by cheap gasoline -unleaded regular is below $1 a gallon for the first time since Memorial Day 1979, - traffic increased by 4.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared with the corresponding period last year, Samuel I. Schwartz, New York City's First Deputy Commissioner of Transportation, said yesterday.

Despite deep reservations from several Western allies, NATO defense ministers today formally approved a Reagan Administration plan to resume production of chemical weapons for the first time since 1969. The Administration has said the plan is necessary to counter a large arsenal of Soviet chemical weapons in Eastern Europe. The unanimous NATO action today was in response to stipulations by the United States Congress, which last year linked its approval of production of new chemical weapons to consulations with the NATO allies. The congressional condition marked an unusually detailed attempt to link Administration policy to the wishes of the allies.

The column ''At the Movies'' in Weekend last Friday misstated Robert Wise's connection with the film ''Wisdom.'' He is executive producer.

OUTDOOR enticements abound this Memorial Day weekend, from guided meanderings, a feast and parades to a plunge back five centuries. But on Sunday, the focus for thousands of New Yorkers and their neighbors will be two marathon events: Hands Across America, a coast-to-coast, human-chain spectacular intended to raise money for the hungry and the homeless in the United States, and Race Against Time, a worldwide fund-raising event for relief and development in Africa. Attracting the largest crowds within New York will be Hands Across America. At last count, more than 130,000 people were planning to link hands at 3 P.M. from Battery Park to the George Washington Bridge, according to the sponsor, U.S.A. for Africa. If hopes are realized, they will join at least six million other hand-holding Americans to form an almost unbroken line clear across the country to Los Angeles.