Linesman

“ The staff is supplementary to the line as equity is supplementary to law. The staff officer is the playwright. The line officer is the actor. The actor is usually too much absorbed with the technique of his art to write new plays. The line officer, as such, seldom originates new methods, because he is too close to his everyday problems of administration to cultivate perspective. The ideal staff officer has had experience in the line.
The line with a railroad—its fighting force, so to speak—is the operating department. ”

“ In all ages and in all callings it has been one of the numerous mysteries that make life so attractive. There is may a veteran conductor, many a gray-haired station agent, who, if he could have had the chance to start, would have become a general manager. ”

“ A personal interview with a conductor, however, is worth a dozen letters by a trainmaster.
These same observations apply to the general manager as well as to the trainmaster. The higher one goes, the more consideration must he cultivate. If you have something disagreeable to get out of your system and the typewriter is your only recourse, take it out on your superiors rather than your subordinates. It is better for the company to have you fired for insubordination than for you to demoralize the service by rawhiding men below. ”

“ Man's wits once more against the upreaching of the sea! The Chief, who knew that somewhere above was his woman and her child, which was not his, stood under a ventilator and said the few devout words with which he commenced each voyage:
"With Thy help!" And then, snapping his watch: "Three minutes past ten!"
The chief engineer of a liner is always a gentleman and frequently a Christian. He knows, you see, how much his engines can do and how little. It is not his engines alone that conquer the sea, nor his engines plus his own mother wit. ”

“ She whose heart cried out for the distinction of train-boy, conductor, engineer, brakeman, or fireman, in the order named, had been forced into the only degrading post in the game—a mere passenger without voice or office in those delicate feats of administration. ”

“ The brave station agent is an old man now, and one of his legs is shorter than the other,—the one that was shot that night. The baby, having recovered from her severe tussle with colic and paregoric, is now one of the most charming women in a Western city. The conductor of the soldier train is at this writing a general superintendent of a well-known railway. ”

“ HERE come the line-gang pioneering by.
They throw a forest down less cut than broken.
They plant dead trees for living, and the dead
They string together with a living thread.
They string an instrument against the sky
Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken
Will run as hushed as when they were a thought. ”

“ A letter demanding an explanation accumulates much momentum of censure while traveling, perhaps from the general offices, through the channels to an agent, a yardmaster, a conductor, or a foreman. The tendency of each office is to unbottle a little more of a never-failing supply of suppressed indignation. ”

“ The mere fact that one has had a varied and lifelong experience as an engineman or a conductor would be only partially significant. But a man who has been a telegraph operator and towerman for twenty-seven years and part of the time chief clerk to a railroad superintendent has certainly some claims to an all-round knowledge of his subject. ”

“ Every member of a train crew, whether porter, brakeman or conductor, must carry a book of rules; more as a matter of form than to show to passengers as Knight had done. A trainman should, and does, depend more on his judgment than on any set of rules, and permits the rule to be stretched now and then to fit circumstances. ”

“ This may involve giving him more help or a shorter section.
One of the problems of line and staff is to determine what is intelligent rotation between the two. The line officer, dealing with men rather than ideas, may get into a rut of practice which prevents his seeing the beauty of the rainbow which the untrammeled staff officer may be tempted to chase too far. Some officers succeed brilliantly at originating or developing ideas in the staff and fail miserably at handling men in the line. ”

“ Silent recognitions pass between passengers who meet day after day in the same morning or evening train, on the way to or from work; the faces of omnibus conductors grow familiar; we learn to know perfectly well on what day of the week and at what hour the well-known organ-grinder will make his appearance, and in what street we shall meet the city clerk or the care-worn little daily governess on their way to office or school. ”

“ In calling, one must jump on the train of thought as it speeds by a way station; and there is no happy mean between jumping on a passing train and standing still on the platform—except, as I have suggested, a pleasant wave of the hand as the train passes. ”

“ Whatever be the general character of the work, we are bent on enjoyment during this particular journey. The country through which the train is now proceeding is but thinly supplied with towns, hence the number of letters received is much smaller, and we may avail ourselves of the opportunity which this break in the character of the duty gives us, to examine more closely and from our own point of view, a few of the letters which are waiting to be despatched. ”

“ The great liner, which had seemed a part of the land itself while the stream of passengers passed up the gangways, and their baggage after them, begins to throb with life and movement—to tremble, as it were, with expectation of departure. ”

“ The planning of the line is, in its own way, as wonderful as the natural marvel of the Pass. One is filled with awe at the vision, the genius and the tenacity of those great railway men who had seen a way over this grim mountain barrier, had schemed their line and had mastered nature. ”

“ True individuality about which men prate the most is that which is understood the least. Our Army and Navy are insisting that before being staff officers, all officers, except surgeons and chaplains, must first learn to handle men by serving in the line; that crystallization in the staff must be prevented by periodic rotation to definite tours of duty in the line. The railway of the future will probably carry extra numbers of line officials in the various grades that some may be available for detail to the staff, that we may better co-ordinate our studying and our working activities. ”

“ The most important thing, at all times, is to keep the line clear for the passenger trains, and, as a matter of fact, everything is made to give way to this, for there is nothing that adds so much to the reputation of a line, or redounds so much to the credit of the officers and servants, as a well-appointed and punctual passenger service. ”

“ As you master the details of your profession, as you carry out loyally the policies of your management, keep in mind the possibility of radical changes. We shall not forever keep up the absurdity of a Pullman conductor's snap and a train conductor's busy job. When we each own at least the sleeping and parlor cars local to our own rails, the conductor will run the train and perhaps work the sleepers, while a collector will work the coaches and chair cars. ”

“ Occasionally a clerk, in a moment of mad rebellion, would observe to a passenger who happened to be standing on another man's feet at the time, that the Company did not do them over well, and that more trains would be a convenience. ”

“ You know these men, or men very like them – the guard, the engine driver and the fireman; they represent a whole army of experienced railwaymen whom we trust so confidently every time we travel by train. ”

“ On a small railway the chief engineer as a line officer may be able to do all the engineering himself. As the business grows he requires such special staff advisers as an office engineer, a locating engineer, a bridge engineer, a tunnel engineer, a signal engineer, etc. Some roads make such engineers line officers by giving them extensive authority over working forces. ”

“ You may know that it would be best for the company to have you run around him. All the men on the division may unconsciously feel your superior ability. They may all swear by you and make your name almost sacred around the lunch counter and the caboose track. ”

“ Much of the time on American railroads the chief clerk is in effect an acting official, acting trainmaster, acting superintendent, acting general manager, acting vice-president, and even acting president. ”

“ If we wish to express that a train is on a certain point of the line at a certain hour, we shall point out its position on the table, opposite the station or any point of the line which it occupies, and on the properly chosen division of time. ”

“ We need an expert at the top as chief telegraph and telephone officer to tell us all how to do it. The volume of business will usually warrant making him a line officer with the rank and title of assistant general manager. He should not deal directly with operators and linemen any more than a general superintendent under normal conditions should instruct an individual conductor or a chief engineer communicate direct with a section foreman. The integrity of the division as an operating unit should be respected. ”

“ A main line is scornful of the station in whose heart it consents for a moment to linger, its eyes are staring forward towards the vast cities who are impatiently awaiting it; but a side line has its very home here. ”

“ A conductor on a local train who has grown familiar with scores of passengers is no longer a ticket-punching, station-shouting automaton. He bears himself in friendly fashion towards all travellers, because he has established with some of them a rational foothold of communication. ”

“ I know you in hurry, so freight train he make me nervous. I say polite to conductor I like to go faster. He laugh. I say polite to brakeman we must go faster. He make abusing speech. I climb into engine an' say polite to engineer to turn on steam. ”

“ Design is staff work. Execution is line work. I do not doubt the ability of one man to direct the carrying out of a scheme practically designed. When one man tells me that unassisted he can furnish a design to meet all requirements I am from beyond Missouri and have to be shown several times.
I have been writing you all these things because of interest in you and pride in our profession. With four or five other professions and occupations at command, I stick to the railroad game because it is the greatest of ancient or modern times. ”

“ Why should he try to get us if he knew that his line could not transport us?"
"For the credit of his father's district, of course. If he can persuade you to buy tickets over his line, it's not his fault or his father's if the line can't carry you." ”

“ Short of royalty, there is no one nowadays may not be met with “on the rail;” and from the Duke to Daniel O’Connell—a pretty long interval—your vis-à-vis may be any illustrious character in politics, literature, or art. I intend, in some of these tales, to make mention of some of the most interesting characters it has been my fortune to encounter; meanwhile let me make a note of the most singular railroad traveller of whom I have ever heard, and to the knowledge of whom I accidentally came when travelling abroad. ”

“ The superintendent laughed mirthlessly. “If I could only find the amateur I’d hire him, Calvin,—if it took a year’s salary. I don’t know what the wire-devil’s object is, but I can catalogue the results. These periodical scares are demoralizing [Pg 23] the entire Short Line. The service is on the ragged edge of a chaotic blow-up. Half the men in the train crews are running on their bare nerves, and the operators who have to handle train-orders are not much better.” ”

“ Our passengers were our prisoners. That made the situation somewhat unusual and added a bit of spice. I've served as an officer aboard a dozen or more liners, and have seen all kinds and strata of society aboard, including dull, delightful, ill-natured, jovial—both the quick and the dead. Yes, I have had some splendid passenger lists on voyages where every hour was gay and bubbling with fun. But no group of passengers on a liner ever enjoyed such happy comradeship as did we aboard our buccaneering craft. ”

“ A cripple maimed in the company’s service, or a married servant of a director or secretary, superseded the first batch of stragglers and assumed responsibility by express appointment. The responsibility, in truth, was not very great at starting. Railway travelling, at the time referred to, occupied but a very small portion of a man’s time. The longest line reached only thirty miles, and no traveller required anything more solid than his newspaper for his hour’s steaming. ”

“ THE MAN-DAY AS A UNIT. Tucson, Ariz., August 26, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—If people's eyes were never too large for their stomachs there would be less overeating. If human concepts were never too vast for practical performance there would be fewer disappointments in administration. Because the railroads have grown so fast and have become so large, our imagination has sometimes run too far ahead of our judgment. This is a big world full of big things and big men. ”

“ He has every opportunity to observe just how trainmen of all classes obey the rules and the signals. Add to this opportunity to become conversant with the practical side of railroad life, the knowledge that is derived from attending to the correspondence of a superintendent and the general work of the office. This includes supervision of pay-rolls, the hiring and examination of men, the investigation of accidents, the tracing of trouble of every description, and the handling and movements of both freight and passenger trains. ”