Later, Mr. F. P. Jones resigned for business reasons, Mr. C. M. Hamilton retired to become a candidate for provincial honours in Saskatchewan, (he is still in the Government at Regina), and Col. Thomas Cantley resigned when selected as a candidate in the Federal election of December, 1921; thus accentuating the non-political character of the Board.
It is proper to repeat that these gentlemen gave to the work, shortly to be sketched, exactly the kind of supervision which able, conscientious men give to the management of private concerns. Many an anxious discussion did we have about the broad lines of policy, and the measures essential to laying deep and sound the bases of future success of a business which perhaps had heavier handicaps upon it than were hindering any magnitudinous contemporary enterprise.
One of the most precious qualities in the administration of great businesses, including Governments, is what Napoleon called two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, which is very different from the desperation of battle-heat. A glance at the fundamentals of the Board’s situation, will indicate whether they showed the Napoleonic quality, in the cold, dead hour, when temptations to turn over for a snooze are most potent.
The Board inherited a vast mileage and a traffic volume, which was not likely swiftly to be enlarged, once the troops were returned, and the war shipments, which had taxed the Intercolonial, for instance, almost to its limits, for the first time in its long history, were over. All costs were at a height, which before the war, was unthinkable. Rates had not risen in comparison. The physical property was badly run down, owing to war conditions, in which connection were two especially heavy burdens, the quality and extent of which the general public could not be expected to appreciate.
The life of a tie and of a wooden trestle is from seven to ten years. On the Canadian Northern, the National Transcontinental, and the Grand Trunk Pacific, there were many trestles which must be replaced either by fills or steel bridges. You would be surprised to know how many trestles there were between the Yellowhead and Prince Rupert, where it was popularly assumed that steel bridges had eliminated the old-time feature of pioneer construction.
To those who are not very familiar with an important phase of railway practice, perhaps it may be explained that wooden trestles are built in places where it is intended to make entirely new and costly embankments for roadbed. But it is not done that way in the beginning, because a wooden trestle is quickly and cheaply put up, whereas, to make an embankment with, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of earth or rock, means the employment of innumerable teams at enormous expense, and much delay in laying rails.
Sometimes, indeed, trestles are built because the character of the earth’s foundation makes it uncertain whether the first location is the best, and a trestle is adaptable to whatever slight deflection may be necessary. For several years you can use the trestles, relying on traffic developing sufficiently to pay for the embankment out of revenue. You then build it economically by work train, with the cars loaded by steam shovel and unloaded by a steampower plough, that sweeps the flat cars clean.
The supersession of trestles was a large and expensive element in the Board’s work of putting the National Railways into first class operating efficiency.
There was another costly factor of immense importance which did not enter into the “national” administration of the United States railways. Thirty-five per cent. of all our mileage had been taken over from the contractors during the war. Anybody who has noticed what happens when a gas or water main is disturbed in a street, knows that though the filled earth, when the job is done, is a hump in the road, it becomes a hole as the earth settles. Every motorist has mourned when he hasn’t objurgated, as he comes again, again and again to a piece of new provincial highway where the concrete has not been put down, because the “fill” must have time to settle. Thirty-five per cent. of the National Railway mileage was, to a considerable extent, like the roadway of the disturbed water main, or the disturbed motorist. Besides these factors new roundhouses, section men’s residences, water facilities and many terminal plants had to be provided or improved.
In so general a sketch as this it is impossible to distinguish between expenditures on capital and maintenance accounts. We were compelled to go to Parliament for large sums for ordinary as well as for deferred maintenance, in addition to what was imperative for new equipment, terminals and completion of branch line construction.