Letters from an Old Railway Official. Second Series: [To] His Son, a General Manager

by Charles De Lano Hine

A striking violation of the unit principle in organization is to have the master mechanic report to the division superintendent in transportation matters and to the superintendent of motive power in technical matters. This is a half-way attempt at divisional organization which lacks the courage of conviction. Better have a straight departmental organization with its divided authority and expensive duplication than thus to straddle the question. If the division is to be a real unit, it must be complete and self-contained. The lack of balance in this attempt at divisional organization comes from the fact that units are mixed. The superintendent of motive power, a general officer with jurisdiction over the entire road, is a member of the general manager's staff. He has a rank and value superior to that of a divisional officer, the superintendent. The poor master mechanic is often puzzled which superior to please. His natural inclination will be toward the man higher up, the superintendent of motive power. Again, it is difficult for any three men to agree upon what are technical matters. The chief of staff method is not applicable to this phase of the problem, because units have been mixed. The master mechanic and the superintendent of motive power are not components of the same integral unit. The unit system of organization requires a superintendent of motive power to transact all business of record with the office of the superintendent of the division, a component unit of the general jurisdiction. The senior assistant general manager and the senior assistant superintendent, each, as a chief of staff for the head of his unit, decides promptly in the absence of the head of the unit, what matters are sufficiently technical to demand the attention of a particular official. Clear-cut, definite and prompt action is possible, with proper checks and balances, because units are not mixed. The governor can introduce a balance without throwing the administrative machine out of gear to avoid stripping its cogs. The splendid personal equation of railroad officials often serves to carry an illogical organization in spite of its fundamental defects. Similar violations of scientific principles in material things would cause bridges to collapse and locomotives to break down. The showing made by the railroads is a tribute to the administrative ability of their officials rather than to their knowledge of organization. The Pennsylvania a half century ago, and the Harriman Lines in more recent years, are said to be the only roads that have made comprehensive studies of the science of organization. Both of these great railways are prepared to stand the test of time. Both will grow stronger as the years roll by. So feudal is the conception of organization on most railways that the essential elements of self-perpetuation are sadly lacking. Fortunately their traffic strength is so great and our country develops so fast that errors due to preconceived misconceptions and personal caprice are covered up by increased earnings. One encouraging sign is that railway officials have ceased to be quite so cocksure of themselves and are seeking the underlying reason for the faith that is in them. True science ever finds its vindication in impartial inquiry and intelligent investigation. The world advances by definite steps rather than by leaps and bounds. Do not lament the fact that some roads are groping ahead only to occupy the abandoned organization camps of the Harriman Lines. Be thankful rather that they have moved forward at all, that though lacking in faith they are coming to a position admitting of enlarged perspective.

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER XV.
THE SIZE OF AN OPERATING DIVISION.

Los Angeles, Cal., July 15, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—How many miles of road should one division superintendent handle? Like the old lady's recipe for pie crust, it all depends. Some superintendents in the east with two hundred miles handle as much business as do their western brothers with a thousand. As a matter of fact mileage has little to do with the question. On the ideal division the superintendent is in the middle with territory extending one freight district in each direction. If he happens to be at a hub he can comfortably handle several freight district spokes, which will increase his mileage accordingly. Under such a condition the advantages of a seemingly large mileage are numerous. 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. Therefore, divisional jurisdiction should, when possible, change at an outlying district terminal away from a large city. This avoids the added complication due to industrial switching, suburban trains, restricted area, etc., etc. A congestion of cars is often caused by a congestion of jurisdictions. You may avoid the one by diffusing the other. Several roads in the country have saved heavy expenditures for larger terminal facilities by more scientific organizations.

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. He can then handle its terminals and the one or more diverging freight districts. His division should include the terminal at the farther end of such districts, to afford him opportunity both to hold back stuff whose inopportune arrival might congest the more complicated terminals at headquarters and to relieve such terminals promptly by movement outward. In other words, owing to his important terminals this superintendent should have less mileage than his country brother who would be in the middle between the second and third districts.

Some roads try to solve the problem by giving the superintendent the first and second districts with headquarters in the middle. If in such case the general offices happen to be at the initial point they soon ignore the superintendent and do business direct with his terminal subordinates. When this condition becomes intolerable, one of two things usually happens. Perhaps the superintendent's office is moved to the first terminal where it really belongs. 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. Much energy of both officials and their offices as well as that of the general superintendent and his office is then directed to holding useless post mortems and negotiating unnecessary treaties of peace. Remember, my boy, that typewriters exert no tractive power and explanations move no cars. 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.

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. 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. This is partly because so few operating officials have sufficient practical knowledge of switching to go out and intelligently handle a crew all day. If you don't believe this, make some time and motion studies of switching. Compare the relative performance of your yard conductors. The tasks of road conductors are relatively so well defined that comparison of individual performance is not so difficult. 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. It is a history usually unimpeachable because it is so close to the actual transactions which it records. It deals with the essence of railway operation, train movement. Few are the important records on a railway that do not derive their primary data from the train sheet. The sheet may be graphic, like a daily time card chart, or may be cut up into card strips, as under the A B C system. In any form, it is a fundamental of operating history.