This superintendent has his division 400 miles away from New York, a clean stretch of busy railroad, making a link in one of the stoutest of the transcontinental chains, 300 miles of line, making traffic and handling it. The superintendent is a personage in the little inland city where headquarters are located; his opinion is eagerly sought by the local reporters each time a new civic problem is tackled. If he were in the metropolitan district he would be unknown except to a little coterie of railroaders; up here he is the voice of the railroad. He is far more real to the folk of half a dozen populous counties than is the president of the road, a stuffy gentleman who comes up in a private car once in a dozen years to the dinner of the local Chamber of Commerce and tells the townspeople to thank God that they have the main line of the K. & M.
running through their "lovely little city."
You may listen for the clatter of the telegraph key in his house and be entirely disappointed.
"I would have poor system if I had to listen to all the gossip of the wire," he tells you quietly. "We've organization on this stretch of line."
He says this with a bit of pride. "We have men and we have system. My train-masters are in effect assistant superintendents: they are expected to organize beneath them."
Watch this sort of man. He is the kind that American railroading is hungry for to-day. Of him the big executives are being made each year. He enters his office in the morning and gets a few brief reports of the situation on the line: first weather, then congestion conditions in the big yards.
After that he talks over the long-distance 'phone with the G. M., four hundred miles away. He gives a summary of the situation to headquarters, just as the summaries came in to him from his train-masters at junctions and at terminals. He holds the telephone receiver for a minute: the 'phone is rapidly coming into general railroad use since the telegraphers made Congress pass a bill limiting their working hours to eight each day. That bill promises to make trouble yet for the men who were supposed to benefit by it.
The telephone speaks to him a moment. He hangs up the receiver and speaks to his chief clerk.
"W. H. T. is coming up the line this afternoon. Tell the boys not to get rattled," he says.
That is all. The passage of the President of the United States over his three hundred miles of well-ordered track makes no flutter in this superintendent's heart. If it were Europe--the troops would be drawn out, all other trains brought to a standstill, pilot engines run in advance of the royal train, in infinite pow-wow over the railroading of nobility. But it is not Europe, it is this blessed United States, partly blessed because it so excessively differs from Europe.
Only the military aides of the President lament upon the informality of his travel. Some time since a great executive was making the familiar loop throughout the West. The superintendent of a division of line the far side of the Missouri was a worrier, and was personally watching the progress.
In order to facilitate rear platform oratory the President's cars were placed at the rear of a train that hardly ranked as express. Between towns the delays grew frequent and a stuffy little aide in uniform protested to the superintendent.
"Look a' here, sir," he said stiffly, "why don't you let these other trains up the line wait?" The division was single-track. "You know this is the President's train."
A twinkle came into the super's eye.
"You're wrong," he said, in the positive tones of a real executive. "This is _not_ the President's special. This is train number 67 of the B----main line, and she hasn't many more rights on the time-card than a gravel limited. Now if you were snitching along on our cracker-jack Nippon Limited--there's some train, sir. They wouldn't lay her out. She's double-extra first-class all the way through to the coast."
The point of that was not lost.
An instance of a different sort occurred some years ago, when Mr.
Roosevelt went up into Northern New York to make a speech. The superintendent of the old Black River road was pretty proud of his stretch of line, and invited the then Governor to ride in his neat inspection engine.
"Dee-lighted," said he of the gleaming teeth, and he climbed up into the big cab. The superintendent wondered what he'd think of that nifty stretch of track just north of Lewville. Col. Roosevelt never thought. As soon as he was settled in the cab he picked a well-thumbed copy of Carlyle's "French Revolution" out of his pocket and read it every inch of the way from Utica to Watertown. The Republican party had to worry along thereafter without that superintendent's vote.
All the superintendents cannot become general managers or railroad presidents; there is not room at the top for even a decent proportion of the best of them. The real tragedy on the division comes when a Prince grows old and for the first time realizes that he is never to be King.
When such tragedy shows its head it is time for the stove committee--the men who gossip in roundhouse corners and the yardmaster's office--to talk in whispers.
Buffalo is no mean principality in the railroad world--it is near kingdom in itself--miles and miles and still more miles of congested freight yards, tonnage in breath-taking volume rolling in from the wonderful lakes eight months out of the twelve, a nervous traffic that never ceases. For years there reigned in Buffalo, in calm command of the situation for a great railroad system, a man who was entitled by every virtue of the word to be called superintendent. They called him "the lion" and did not misuse that word either. He was a lion, guardian of a great railroad gate, a stern old lion whose word and whose law were unquestioned.
But time aged the man, and the day came when the clerks in his outer office began to talk in whispers; they were having the audacity to wonder who the new Prince would be. Two men thought that they were capable--one an assistant superintendent in the great yard at East Buffalo, the other holding similar rank over at Rochester. Each of these men was prepared to assume greater honor, to sit in command at the lion's great desk.
That old fellow sat aloof. His ears were not too deaf to hear the whisperings of his clerks in the outer office, and sometimes when one of them would creep in upon him unawares they would find him sitting alone there, head in hands, holding the fort. The two assistant superintendents gained courage; they went to the picayune business of pulling wires. At other times they locked horns.
They locked horns over one great question. It was not operation that set them at odds, not a vexing practical question of how some congested yard might be lanced so that traffic should flow the more freely, or a main line section be aided to give a greater daily tonnage. Nothing of that sort for the two ambitious assistants.
A new pony inspection engine, with an observation room built forward over the boiler--just the sort that Col. Roosevelt had once used as a reading-room--was to be built for the division, and each assistant thought that he needed that engine for the dignity of his job. Each in turn went before the lion and stated his claims for the possession of the pretty toy. The old man listened with grave dignity. A week later he sent down to the master mechanic at the big Depew shops and had him deliver a brand new hand-car, with his compliments, to each.
The pony-engine went into the roundhouse until the real Prince should come. Then he sat long hours alone at his desk once more.
Finally they brought a man to him, a fine, upstanding man. The lion rose from his comfy old chair and gave greeting to the newcomer.
"I'm glad to see you," was all he said; but to the general manager, who had come up from New York, his eyes seemed to ask: "You've brought the right man here at last?" He turned to the stranger.
"Would you like a pony engine to get over the division?" was his question.
"I'm willing to go to hell, and go in a caboose," laughed the stranger.
The old superintendent grasped him by the hand.
"Thank God, they've sent a real man to be superintendent at Buffalo," was all he said. That was the only recognition that he gave to one who since has become one of the master railroaders of America, but in that moment the act of succession had been consummated.
CHAPTER XIV
OPERATING THE RAILROAD
AUTHORITY OF THE CHIEF CLERK AND THAT OF THE ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT-- RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, MASTER MECHANIC, TRAIN-MASTER, TRAIN-DESPATCHER--ARRANGING THE TIME-TABLE--FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF OPERATION--SIGNALS--SELECTING ENGINE AND CARS FOR A TRAIN--CLERICAL WORK OF CONDUCTORS--A TRIP WITH THE CONDUCTOR--THE DESPATCHER'S AUTHORITY--SIGNALS ALONG THE LINE--MAINTENANCE OF WAY--SUPERINTENDENT OF BRIDGES AND BUILDINGS--ROAD-MASTER--SECTION BOSS.
The administration of the division runs quite naturally into several channels. The routine of the work, the making and filing of records and reports, the handling of the mass of correspondence that must constantly arise, is usually in the hands of a chief clerk, who has control over the office force at division headquarters. If there is an assistant superintendent, the chief clerk will divide responsibility with him, the theory at all times being to cut off the detail wherever possible. This office work is not radically different from the office management of any other large business. Its clerks are about the only unorganized force in railroad employ.
If the management of the road is of the divisional type, the superintendent of course is a more important executive than if it is of the departmental type. In either of these cases, as we have seen, he will probably have at least partial authority over the engineer of maintenance of way, whose force keeps the line and track structures in full repair, and also looks after ordinary construction work along the division. In the road of divisional type, he will also have partial authority over the master mechanic, in charge of the shops and roundhouses and the locomotives of the division. These last are regarded by the railroad as part of its machinery, like the planers and drills in the shops themselves; and for the care and operation of the locomotives the engineers and firemen are held responsible to the mechanical department.
This is the case even upon those railroads where, under the departmental system, the superintendent has no direct authority over the master mechanic upon his division. For the conduct of the trains which their locomotives pull, both engineers and firemen are directly responsible to the operating department. The master mechanic simply sees to it that the railroad's property is maintained to a certain degree of efficiency and that the man who operates the locomotives is capable from every point of view. A reasonable amount of deterioration is expected, and each locomotive is expected to turn in to the shops for inspection, overhauling and repairs, at certain stated intervals.
The superintendent has absolute authority over the two officials who are chiefly interested in the conduct of the trains over the division--the train-master and the train-despatcher. The first of these two officers, who must dove-tail their work both night and day, has the assignment of the train crews. His opinion will be called for whenever the vexed questions of seniority and promotion arise, and he will be asked to help to plan all extra or special freight and passenger trains. To show how this is done brings us close to the question of schedules, and we may pause for a moment to consider how this important phase of the railroad's operating is builded together.
That time-table that you have just pulled from the folder rack seems at first glance an interminable mass of meaningless figures; yet when you come to find your journey upon it, it quickly simplifies itself, and you begin to marvel at the relation the figures bear to one another, how easily you may pick your course through the long columns of numerals. The more extensive time-tables that the railroad employees carry are quite as simple, and yet they are great feats of typographical composition. In reality, both these forms of printed time-tables are but transcripts of the real time-table of the division, which is kept set out upon a great board.
This board is ruled in two directions. The regularly spaced intervals in one direction are marked as time, and represent time--one entire day of twenty-four hours. In the other direction of the board the stations are spaced in proportion to their actual spacing upon the line.
The reproduction of a portion of such a board for an imaginary division of a railroad will illustrate. This line runs from Somerset to Rockville, 120 miles; and portions of it are double-tracked, the rest single-track, as shown at the top of the diagram. On the double-track, trains going in the same direction may pass one another only at the vertical lines, which represent station passing sidings, and on the single-track sections this rule holds, with the additional one, of course, that trains running in opposite directions may also pass one another at the vertical station lines. For economy of room only the seven hours from six o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon are shown here. Following an old-time practice, odd numbers will represent up-bound trains, from Somerset to Rockville; even numbers, the down trains.
So we have an early morning accommodation passenger train, No. 1, leaving Rockville at 6:10 o'clock and proceeding at a leisurely rate of about twenty miles an hour (which makes allowances for local stops) all the way to Somerset at the far end of the division, which it is due to reach at 11:45 A. M. It is halted for any length of time only at Honeytown, where upbound No. 8--local accommodation--and upbound No. 6--fast express--will pass it. At 6:20 o'clock an upbound local accommodation of the same nature as No. 1, and hence known as No. 2, leaves Somerset and, halting only at Robbins's Corners to permit the fast upbound No. 6 to overhaul and pass it, reaches Rockville at 1 P. M. Train No. 31, which follows No. 1 out of Rockville forty minutes later, is a milk train, and so must have a liberal allowance for stops. It proceeds only as far as Stoneville, where the dairy country ends, stops there long enough to turn and to water the engine, and then returns to Rockville as No. 32. Train No. 117 is a way-freight, and still slower. So it follows the milk-train. It is known as a "low-class" train by the railroaders. It must wait everywhere for better class trains to pass it. Train No. 118 is the same class of train, proceeding in the opposing direction. Train No. 5 is a down express.
[Illustration: HOW THE REAL TIME TABLE OF THE DIVISION LOOKS--THE ONE USED IN HEADQUARTERS]
Sometimes unforeseen demands of traffic necessitate the running of extra trains, and these may be strung across the board. This board, in reality, has all its trains placed upon it by strings and pins, to admit of the constant changes that the schedules are always undergoing, and the addition of a new train is a quick proceeding. As a matter of fact, a skilled train-master or despatcher will rarely take the time actually to string an extra train. He carries the schedule too completely in his head to admit of such a necessity.
But the extra train is best placed following, as a second section, some good passenger train, as indicated on the diagram. The regular train will then carry signals showing that it is followed on this particular day.
While the train orders protect its movement in any event, as will be shown in a moment, the billing of the extra train as a second section is less of an upset to the regular operation of the division. Practised operating men found years ago that the fewer deviations made from the regular programme of the day, the higher the proportion of safety arose.
Now you begin to see the use of the train-despatcher. If the unforeseen never came to pass upon the railroad, instead of coming to pass nearly every hour, there might be no need of that officer. Each engineer, each conductor, each station agent would have his complete time-tables, and the road would run every day in full accordance with them. That was the very earliest and the most primitive way of operating railroads. Almost as early the need arose of having a special direction over the operation of the trains. Emergencies arose daily. Trains were often late; storms beat down upon the line; the snow covered its rails; what might have been, according to the time-card, an orderly operation of line, became chaos. If a train was ordered by schedule to meet a train bound in the opposite direction at P----, it might wait there for long hours, not knowing that the other engine was broken down at A----.
The invention of the telegraph and its almost instant application to the railroad service made such special direction possible. So now we find the explicit directions of the schedule supplemented by even more explicit directions from the train-despatcher at the head of the train movements upon each division. Briefly stated, it may be said that the engineer and the conductor in charge of a train are first guided by the schedule, which, after many revisions, has been compiled with great care, and in reference to connecting lines, branches, and adjoining divisions. This schedule acts in conjunction with certain simple fundamental rules of operation, the A, B, C of every railroader. By one of these, trains of the same class bound north or east are given precedence, all other things being equal, over trains bound south or west. This rule is sometimes superseded by one giving right-of-way to trains bound up the line--or the reverse.
High-class trains, like the fastest limited expresses, have precedence over trains of graduated lower classes--down to the slow-moving heavy freights. When any sort of train loses a certain length of time--usually half an hour or more--it loses all rights that it might ever have had, and everything else on the line has precedence over it. A train may lose time if it has to, but there are never any circumstances that will justify it in running ahead of time.