CHAPTER XIV
OPERATING THE RAILROAD
Authority of the Chief Clerk and That of the Assistant Superintendent—Responsibilities of Engineers, Firemen, Master Mechanic, Train-master, Train-despatcher—Arranging the Time-table—Fundamental Rules of Operation—Signals—Selecting Engine and Cars for a Train—Clerical Work of Conductors—A Trip with the Conductor—The Despatcher’s Authority—Signals Along the Line—Maintenance of Way—Superintendent of Bridges and Buildings—Road-master—Section Boss.
The administration of the division runs quite naturally into several channels. The routine of the work, the making and filing of records and reports, the handling of the mass of correspondence that must constantly arise, is usually in the hands of a chief clerk, who has control over the office force at division headquarters. If there is an assistant superintendent, the chief clerk will divide responsibility with him, the theory at all times being to cut off the detail wherever possible. This office work is not radically different from the office management of any other large business. Its clerks are about the only unorganized force in railroad employ.
If the management of the road is of the divisional type, the superintendent of course is a more important executive than if it is of the departmental type. In either of these cases, as we have seen, he will probably have at least partial authority over the engineer of maintenance of way, whose force keeps the line and track structures in full repair, and also looks after ordinary construction work along the division. In the road of divisional type, he will also have partial authority over the master mechanic, in charge of the shops and roundhouses and the locomotives of the division. These last are regarded by the railroad as part of its machinery, like the planers and drills in the shops themselves; and for the care and operation of the locomotives the engineers and firemen are held responsible to the mechanical department. This is the case even upon those railroads where, under the departmental system, the superintendent has no direct authority over the master mechanic upon his division. For the conduct of the trains which their locomotives pull, both engineers and firemen are directly responsible to the operating department. The master mechanic simply sees to it that the railroad’s property is maintained to a certain degree of efficiency and that the man who operates the locomotives is capable from every point of view. A reasonable amount of deterioration is expected, and each locomotive is expected to turn in to the shops for inspection, overhauling and repairs, at certain stated intervals.
The superintendent has absolute authority over the two officials who are chiefly interested in the conduct of the trains over the division—the train-master and the train-despatcher. The first of these two officers, who must dove-tail their work both night and day, has the assignment of the train crews. His opinion will be called for whenever the vexed questions of seniority and promotion arise, and he will be asked to help to plan all extra or special freight and passenger trains. To show how this is done brings us close to the question of schedules, and we may pause for a moment to consider how this important phase of the railroad’s operating is builded together.
That time-table that you have just pulled from the folder rack seems at first glance an interminable mass of meaningless figures; yet when you come to find your journey upon it, it quickly simplifies itself, and you begin to marvel at the relation the figures bear to one another, how easily you may pick your course through the long columns of numerals. The more extensive time-tables that the railroad employees carry are quite as simple, and yet they are great feats of typographical composition. In reality, both these forms of printed time-tables are but transcripts of the real time-table of the division, which is kept set out upon a great board.
This board is ruled in two directions. The regularly spaced intervals in one direction are marked as time, and represent time—one entire day of twenty-four hours. In the other direction of the board the stations are spaced in proportion to their actual spacing upon the line.
The reproduction of a portion of such a board for an imaginary division of a railroad will illustrate. This line runs from Somerset to Rockville, 120 miles; and portions of it are double-tracked, the rest single-track, as shown at the top of the diagram. On the double-track, trains going in the same direction may pass one another only at the vertical lines, which represent station passing sidings, and on the single-track sections this rule holds, with the additional one, of course, that trains running in opposite directions may also pass one another at the vertical station lines. For economy of room only the seven hours from six o’clock in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon are shown here. Following an old-time practice, odd numbers will represent up-bound trains, from Somerset to Rockville; even numbers, the down trains.