Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

On Sunday, August 24th, His Royal Highness came under the sway of that benevolent despot in the Kingdom of Efficiency, the Canadian Pacific Railway.

He motored out along a road that Quebec is proud of, because it has a reputable surface for automobiles in a world of natural earth tracks, through delightful country to a small station which [had?] a Gallic air, Three Rivers. Here he boarded the Royal Train.

It was a remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the idealist's dream of perfection in travelling came true.

It might be truer to say the Royal Party did not take the train, it took them. As each member of the party mounted into his compartment, or Pullman car, he at once ceased to concern himself with his own well-being. To think of oneself was unnecessary. The C.P.R. had not only arranged to do the thinking, but had also arranged to do it better.

The external facts concerning the train were but a part of its wonder. And the minor part. It was the largest train of its kind to accomplish so great a single run—it weighed over a thousand tons, and travelled nearly ten thousand miles. It was a fifth of a mile in length. Its ten splendid cars were all steel. Some of them were ordinary sleepers, some were compartment and drawing-room cars. Those for the Prince and his Staff were sumptuous private cars with state-rooms, dining-rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and cosy observation rooms and platforms, beautifully fitted and appointed.

The train was a modern hotel strayed accidentally on to wheels. It had its telephone system; its own electricity; its own individually controlled central heat. It had a laundry service for its passengers, and its valets always on the spot to renew the crease of youth in all trousers. It had its own newspaper, or, rather, bulletin, by which all on board learnt the news of the external world twice a day, no matter in what wild spot the train happened to be. It had its dark-room for photographers, its dispensary for the doctor and its untiring telegraph expert to handle all wired messages, including the correspondents' cables. It had its dining-rooms and kitchens and its staff of first-class chefs, who worked miracles of cuisine in the small space of their kitchen, giving over a hundred people three meals a day that no hotel in London could exceed in style, and no hotel in England could hope to equal in abundance. It carried baggage, and transferred it to Government Houses or hotels, and transferred it back to its cars and baggage vans in a manner so perfect that one came to look upon the matter almost as a process of nature, and not as a breathless phenomenon.

It was the train de luxe, but it was really more than that. It was a train handled by experts from Mr. A. B. Calder, who represented the President of the Company, down to the cleaning boy, who swept up the cars, and they were experts of a curious quality of their own.

Whatever the Canadian Pacific Railway is (and it has its critics), there can be no doubt that, as an organization, it captures the loyalty, as it calls forth all the keenness and ability of its servants. It is something that quickens their imagination and stimulates their enthusiasm. There was something warm and invigorating about the way each man set up within himself a counsel of perfection—which he intended to exceed. Waiters, negro car porters, brakemen, secretaries—every man on that staff of sixty odd determined that his department was going to be a living example, not of what he could do, but of what the C.P.R. could do.

The esprit de corps was remarkable. Mr. Calder told us at the end of the trip that as far as the staff working of the train was concerned he need not have been in control. He had not issued a single order, nor a single reprimand in the three months. The men knew their work perfectly; they did it perfectly.

When one thinks of a great organization animated from the lowest worker to the President by so lively and extraordinarily human a spirit of loyalty that each worker finds delight in improving on instructions, one must admit that it has the elements of greatness in it.