November 24, 1986

From precinct houses to prisons, the criminal justice system in New York City is bulging and straining to cope with the rise of crack. Six months after the Police Department and Federal agencies began new efforts against the potent form of cocaine, the state courts are backlogged and overcrowded with all kinds of criminal cases. Demand has exploded for more trial space, prosecutors, public defenders and jail cells. ''The special anti-crack unit has been very, very successful,'' the commander of the Police Department's narcotics division, Deputy Chief Francis C. Hall, said of one key effort against the drug. ''You don't have to be a mathematical genius to see we are pushing more people into the system than the system can handle.''

Here at the gleaming skyscraper headquarters of Suntrust Banks Inc., the bank holding company's top executives often wondered whether Suntrust's Florida banking operations could be even remotely as successful as its Georgia bank. Few industry experts believed so when Suntrust was formed in 1985, a merger of the venerable Trust Company of Atlanta with Sun Banks Inc. of Orlando, Fla. Although the creation of Suntrust marked the first interstate banking combination in the Southeast and has led to other regional interstate mergers, analysts were critical of the merger. Many said they were worried by the linking of such a proud and profitable institution as the Trust Company with the newer, flashier and less successful Sun Banks. Now, though, just 16 months later, the critics are fewer in number. Shortly after it took over Sun Banks, the Trust Company dispatched its vice chairman to Florida to try to improve profitability there. Since then, the vice chairman, James B. Williams, has been relentless, increasing interest income while cutting expenses, and in general lighting a fire under some sleepy managers.

On a long, high curve outside Bartlick, Va., where the railroad winds through steep canyons smudged with black seams of coal, a woman and two small girls squatted below a narrow rock ledge this morning, tending the dying embers of a trackside fire and waiting for Christmas to come to Appalachia. It arrived right on schedule, a few minutes before 9 o'clock, when the four-car Santa Express appeared through the brittle morning fog, its two diesel engines straining against the grade. On the rear platform of the last car stood Frank Brogden, a Kingsport businessman with bushy white whiskers, a basso profundo voice and a red suit. ''Ho-ho-ho, Santa sees you there, little darlings!'' he boomed, his amplified greeting mixing with the recorded Christmas music echoing off the canyon walls. As the train lumbered past at 10 miles per hour, helpers standing beside him flung out handfuls of candy and small toys that sent the two little girls scrambling onto the rails, chasing after the train as they stuffed the goodies into paper sacks.

New orders for American-made machine tools rose 30.1 percent in October from the disappointing levels of September, according to a report to be released today by the National Machine Tool Builders' Association. Industry analysts attributed the sharp increase to a delayed batch of new orders that followed the International Machine Tool Show in Chicago in early September. The trade association said that new orders for machine tools rose to $176 million, up from $135.3 million in September. Despite the increase, new orders were still down 23.4 percent from October 1985, reflecting the industry's continuing malaise, caused largely by declining orders from the automobile industry.

On paper, the outlook at the Toyota Motor Corporation is anything but rosy these days. The company is forecasting a 2.3 percent decline in car shipments in the current, 1987, fiscal year and a 4.8 percent drop in revenues. Profits could fall to one-third of their level in the 1986 fiscal year that ended June 30, top executives warn. The culprit, of course, is the strong yen, which has forced up car and truck prices in the United States, the company's most lucrative foreign market, and squeezed profit margins so much that export earnings declined 66 percent last year, according to company officials. But there is no sense of panic in this tightly knit industrial community that was the boyhood home of Ieyasu Tokogawa, the great shogun, or military leader, of 16th century Japan. The Social Contract Instead, top Toyota executives say they will deal with an increasingly crowded world car market by relying on advanced technology, higher-priced luxury and performance car models and the painstakingly forged social contract between the company and its employees.