“Bring the fireman to me,” commanded the chief.
That fireman was not of the sort that is easily feazed. He stood stockily and in a low voice gave a very circumstantial explanation of the whole occurrence. It seemed that he had missed the rake that morning when they had started out from the yard roundhouse to take the Limited down over the division. He was just going back for another, when they were called to lend a hand at a small yard wreck. When they were done shoving and bunting there, they had no time to run back to the roundhouse and get a rake. They had barely enough time to get to the passenger station for the engine change. That was a good story, with a deal of explanation, and the fireman thought that the G. M. must be impressed with it.
The G. M. was not in the least impressed. He looked the coal shover up and down, from head to feet, then said:
“How about those seven freights that you passed laid out on sidings? You could have forced any one of those engineers to lend you his rake rather than lay out this train.”
The effect of that slight observation from the G. M.’s car was not lost on a man on the system. The new man made good. From that time forward word went out to the far corners of his road that the “new boss” knew railroading; that he had four eyes in his head and that you had to be pretty careful what sort of a story you put up to him. Calculate, if you can, in dollars and cents the moral effect of such a stand upon the rank and file of the king’s army. The general manager, as we have already said, must know men.
You are back with your first general manager again. He is tired of all these problems, and yet he is now turning to another. This is formally entitled the Situation. It is placed upon his big desk every morning. It is a morning paper, if you please, prepared for a single reader. The general manager is “Old Subscriber,” in good measure; and if the paper lacks both editorials and advertising, it is none the less interesting to its star reader. Its news is as exclusive as its reader, and exclusively the news of his system.
By it he knows first of the traffic that has been handled in twenty-four hours, by cars and by trains. He knows by it the reserve forces of the railroad, in cars and in locomotives, and just where they are located. By the Situation, he can discover the over-massing of equipment upon one division, the shortage upon another. After that he can begin to give orders to his general superintendents and his superintendents of transportation—these last the men who are directly responsible for car movement—toward bringing a better balance between traffic and equipment. The Situation is on his desk at ten o’clock in the morning. By eleven, whole brigades of locomotives may be under way, moving from their stalls in some giant roundhouse out toward another division whose superintendent is fairly shrieking for power.
But the Situation tells more than merely this. It goes into history, and in its own cold-blooded fashion tells what the road is doing by comparison. It gives weather conditions and traffic for the corresponding day, one year, two years, three years, five years before; and the general manager will do well if he avoids giving mere cursory examination of such tables. The Situation not only notes weather conditions, it brings to the eyes of the man whom we have called king in railroad operation the more important train delays and the reasons that have caused them. Every fact or incident that may affect the traffic or the operation of the road is noted in its fine-filled pages. It is in every way a guide and a barometer of the condition of a great property up to the very hour that the general manager comes to his desk.
But the Situation does not tell the entire story. Out in the nearest passenger yard is a big private-car, almost as handsome and as well equipped as that of the president of the road, and that car is in service as many days as it stands idle there upon the siding. This man has 4,000 miles of railroad empire in his domain; there are nearly 70,000 faithful privates for his army. To cover that territory means constant travel. There are side-lines of less importance that sometimes do not see him for six months at a time.