Charles DeLano Hine

“ The amount of mileage a superintendent can economically handle depends, then, for the most part upon the location of his headquarters. Such location in turn admits of no hard and fast rule. Cities and towns spring up and industries develop quite regardless of the limits of a hundred-mile freight district and a speed of ten miles per hour on the ruling grade. A railroad usually begins and ends at a large city which is either a seaport or a gateway. It is normally better to locate a division superintendent at such beginning and ending city. ”

“ Self-preservation is the first law of nature. We must so organize that this law will operate to keep the company into clear, not to put some other fellow in the hole. All of these questions are largely matters of opinion. After working with every kind of terminal organization all over the country, your old dad believes that the best is to have a division superintendent at the big terminal with an assistant superintendent in direct charge of and responsible for such terminal, the superintendent controlling every diverging freight district to include the next terminal. ”

“ Why not have the office of the superintendent know so much about the cars on his division that he will tell the general offices that certain cars are being delayed on his division for lack of motive power, loading or disposition, conditions which, perhaps, the general office, with its larger view, can remedy? This would also permit, when desirable, the checking of the agents’ car reports against the conductors’ reports. The more closely to actual transactions we can do our checking the more intelligent should be the process and the smaller its volume. ”

“ It should always be remembered that a large terminal demands preferred consideration, because owing to restricted area its problems are intensive and expensive. A dispatcher has a hundred miles or more over which to keep his trains apart, while a yardmaster finds his engines bunched within a mile or two. Again, if the cost of terminal switching does occasionally happen to be reflected in a freight rate, the genial gentlemen of the traffic department are prone to recommend its absorption. ”

“ The superintendent can run his power wherever most needed. He can hold back at the farther end of one district cars that he knows the connecting district cannot possibly load or unload for several days. He can preserve a balance which is impossible when jurisdictions divide at the hub. In the latter case each superintendent hurries freight to the end of the division to avoid a paper record showing delay on his territory. The result is that the next man has terminal indigestion because he has been fed too fast. ”

“ Too often it has happened that the experience of the new dispatcher, a telegrapher specialist, was limited to the office end, with no first-hand experience in train service. The telephone, fulfilling the immutable laws of evolution, will take us back to first principles. The dispatchers of the future will graduate from the train, engine and yard service, through the dispatcher’s office to higher official positions. The man who gives the order will be a man who has once carried out such an order himself. ”

“ The intense conditions of a terminal complicate such differentiation as among yard conductors.
Another factor of prime importance in determining the size of an operating division is the location of train dispatchers. The dispatcher’s table should always be considered an integral part of the superintendent’s headquarters offices. The train sheet is perhaps the best record on a railroad. It is never fudged by being made up in advance. ”

“ The military, the pioneers of civilization, the forerunners of stability, have their periods of enervating peace. Transportation, the first handmaiden of progress, is in active attendance every day of the year. ”

“ In these days of overtime and complex working schedules, a timekeeper should check the time slips against the original train sheet, not against a copy, a transcript or an excerpt. A division accounting bureau handling all that it should handle has also much other use for the train sheet. ”

“ I believe as a broad proposition that the management of railroads is more scientific than that of most modern industries. I would not like, however, to file much of their terminal operation as an exhibit. A majority of the switch engines in the United States have one superfluous man in the crew. ”

“ Some roads now have a carbon copy of the wheel report made for the use of the accounting department. Why not send this carbon to division headquarters and let the division accounting bureau make up the ton miles and the car miles, subject to proper check after the fact? ”

“ Thereupon he loses full touch with his freight crews on the second district, which is left out in the air. The other attempted remedy is to appoint a superintendent of terminals reporting direct to the general offices. The difference in viewpoint thus legalized may cost the stockholders much money. To the terminal superintendent the trains are always made up on time and the power and road crews are seldom ready. To the division superintendent the trains are seldom made up on time and the power and road crews are always ready. ”