BRITISH RAILWAYS IN WARTIME

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2688, 7 February 1916, Page 6

BRITISH RAILWAYS IN WARTIME

WONDERFUL RESULTS OF ORGANISED KNOWLEDGE

LESSONS FOR STATESMEN

War is tlie test of a railway; and it is a test far more long-drawn and difficult than most people suppose. Mobilisation is only its first fierce spasm. There follow tedious days and nights when war's erratic ebb and flow, itg combatant- pressure here or industrial easement there, its push and pull and hurried changes in direction, perpetually threaten to jam the machine. Railways are playing a big part in a game of which nobody knows much more than this—that, other things being equal, Che side whose machine is the most flexible, rapid, and noiseless, and who lias fullest control of that machine, will iv'in. If power is the alpha, control ii the omega of victory. "I am not straining language, therefore (says the special correspondent of tlie London "Daily News"), when I" say that an opportunity to look into the control system of the Midland Railway may teach one a good deal about the first principles of successful warfare. The system was introduced several years ago, when something like chaos in tha system, in consequence of a trade boom, had proved tbo necessity for new methods, but it has only reached the zenith of its development during the course of ■Che war. The Perfeot Control System. There is no control system in the world so highly developed, for it casta into the shade even the elaborate telephonic control on the Western war front. Without it traffic must have got into an almost hopeless tangle not only because of the immense number of special passenger trains, but also because the number of fully loaded fiftywagon freight trains passing over tha system has shown an increase so far of 3770 iu the year. Imagine the handling in c'leven months ot 188,600 loaded wagons, in addition to the vast normal traffic of tire busiest freight line in the country! The figure is as remarkable and significant as any that has yet appeared in war statistics. Derby is the "G.H.Q." of the control system. I stood this morning in a Targe, well-lit room where half a dozen men, with telephone receivers at-their ears, were lined up before two long tables. These men knew everything that was happening in the 24 control areas of the vast system of Midland' metals that stretches from London down to Yorkshire and Lancashire. They knew when a train moved and when it stopped, and why. They knew how many wagons there were at that moment in such-an-such a- siding, and they knew what they contained. They, knew that a slow goods out of Liverpool had got a hot axle, end that tha express from St. l'ancras was five minutes behind time on account of a bit of a bother near Kettering. And not only did they write it all down in diaries, but they moved little cards up and down steel rails, like miniature railway lines, to show the position of each train. These omniscient young men were tha fingers of the hand of Control ; and hebind the hand there was a brain sifting and l l combining the gathered knowledge in order to mako perfect use of the machine. Sometimes the brain would issue orders, the telephonic nerves would transmit them to the ganglia of tha 6ub-control centres, the ganglia would re-transmit to signal boxes and sidings, and trains would start or halt as obediently hundreds of miles away as though they were in Derby Station itself. Two boys witih a toy railway could do the same—rather less quickly and lyAbolition of Time-tables. But "control" does not end there. I was introduced to a method by which the whereabouts are always known of each of the 130,000 Midland wagons, more particularly of the one thousand special wagons for carrying gunpowder, armour-plate, and so on, . which are never for one hour let off the leading strings. A third! elaborate system showed the precise position day by day of the sup« ply of coal to London, each trader being thus assured of 'a steady flow according to his daily requirements. And perhaps most beautiful of all, there was the "train diagram," a sort of space-and-time chart, which abolishes the time-table and enables a man to play with trains rather mora easily than with chessmen, interpolating "specials," anl holding hack "locals," and giving ocular demonstration of possible collisions, with an ease and speed tlint make the old methods look childish and dangerous.