Auckland’s Railways

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 17

Auckland’s Railways

=AND THE MEN WHO RUN THEM

(Written for THE SUN by

O. A. GILLESPIE.)

ATTER of feet, like hail hissing on an iron roof. An orchestra of voices, trundling barrows, escaping steam—rising and falling, rising and falling.

A shrill whistle from the guard, an aswering scream from a locomotive ad a crowded passenger train glides at of the Auckland Railway Station. Except for the simple business of (jrchasiug a ticket and arranging for nggage that is all the average traveler hears as he sinks into a seat with ijg book, or paper, or pipe. Only children are excited as the theels spin faster and faster over the iron rails. For them it is Adventure, fields are Fairyland and every cow jr horse is greeted as though it belonged to a Noah’s Ark; every station is unexplored territory; every distant lillwill be climbed some day. What a comparison with the sated traveller who drowsily wakes to injure, “Where are we now?” * * * But before that train can leave for u destination what effort is required? Behind the scenes hundreds of men ire working, not only for that particu-

lar train but for hundreds of others; working to a ceaseless schedule which makes a vast organisation move and function to perfection. Nothing stays the progress of the trains —their arrival and departure are as the rising and setting sun —except for acts of God, for which no one is responsible. Sundays or Mondays, it is all the same. Trains come and go and the army of officials works on in the interests of that relentless god—the travelling public. Every day, from Monday to Friday, 137 trains arrive and depart from Auckland. Sunday is not a day of rest as far as trains are concerned, though fewer leave the station that day.

Dyring the summer months and at rush times such as Christmas, New Year, and Easter the number of trains arriving at and departing from Auckland grows to over 150 a day. Merchandise is swinging up out of the holds of overseas vessels berthed along the waterfront and its destination may be a hundred and one places through the North Island; the Limited axpress speeds off into the night on her 426 mile run to Wellington; holi-day-makers crowd joyfully into an express bound for the sea. sand and sunshine at Opua: inward trains bring

their cargoes of produce to be shipped from Auckland to the ports of the w orld. They all pass through the station or yards of Auckland —the largand most progressive railway disfrict in the Dominion. In the Auckland Railway District there are 620 miles of track, stretching from Opua and Okaihau in the north to Taneatua and Rotorua in the south hh(l embracing numberless small lines. This all grew from the tiny section rail between Auckland and Onenonga, along which the first tram crept on Christmas Eve 55 years ago. When the Westfield deviation is costPlete another ten miles of track will be ®«ded and a new line is being laid hrough to Dargaville on the *\\ est

Coast, joining with the main North i to Whangarei. A fitting crown to this net of iron tentacles is the new station which is gradually rising from a mass of masonry and timber in the present railway yards.

Altogether approximately 3,560 officers and men are required to keep the Auckland railways in motion. They are made up as follows: Traffic, 1,200; maintenance, 1,019; locomotive, 273; Newmarket workshops, 750; signals and electrical, 100; stores, 60;' refreshments, 6; advertising, 10; architectural, 15.

Before a train can move there are a thousand-and-one duties to perform and every man plays his part that the organisation shall work smoothly. Think of the departments which must take a hand —train control, signals, tickets and enquiry, inward and outward parcels, goods, transport, luggage and lost property, locomotive, engineers. Then there are car and wag on inspectors, train examiners, pas senger and goods foremen, guards engine drivers, porters, firemen shunters, signalmen; not forgetting the men who attend to the lamps and sweep the platforms and cars. All along the line there are gangs

of surfacemen and engineers working to keep these lines safe. And behind the scenes in their offices are the heads of departments and their stalls, handling the enormous quantities of correspondence which is such an essential part of a highly technical organisation where thousands of men are employed. Railway men know their trains by numbers. No one in the service talks of the Thames or Rotorua or Welling* ton expresses. That simply is not <l trains coming into Auckland bear even numbers; the outgoing trains bear odd numbers. For instance, the Limited express, when she

leaves for Wellington is known as the 229; coming into Auckland from the South she is the 688. « Puzzling question of which is up”. and which is “down” has been definitely settled by railwaymen. All trains running into or towards Auck-

Let us pay a rouud of calls on the officials, beginning at headquarters, iu tile Ppst Office Building. We are greeted by the clatter of typewriters, a carillon of telephone hells, the ceaseless hurryiug of clerks bearing their endless sheaves of files, communications and documents. Occasionally, a silk-clad ankle and a dash of colour disappears round the corner of a corridor, denoting the presence of the all-conquering typist, a comparatively recent innovation as far as the -ailway service is concerned. Mr. E. Casey, Divisional Superintendent of the North Island railways, w“ probably be receiving a deputation or discussing some important proposition. He administers the whole of the Island from an operating point of view and keeps the department right with the public by expounding the Department’s policy—surely the work of a tactician.

Mr. Casey is really the general manager’s deputy. His callers are legion, hut he is always ready to receive them. Though still only a comparatively young man, he has reached his high position through sheer ability, for the days when ability in the Government service was never recognised until an obituary notice appeared in the newspapers have gone the way of all such stupidities. Next door is Mr.

C. L. Pettit, liis chief clerk, who is always ready in any emergency. We will probably find Mr. J. F. Mackley, locomotive engineer for the North Island, scheming schemes for some new device which will lower the running cost of locomotives or wagons. Perhaps he i& plotting some improvement to a sleeping car, or adjusting something in a wagon which is not quite right. If he is not surrounded by blue prints or correspondence he is investigating some slight technical fault. Four hundred locomotives are in use in the North Island, all under the supervision of Mr. Mackley and his staff. In addition to these there are 877 cars, 1 rail motor, 256 brake cars, 12,941 wagons, 17 steam cranes, 47

1) L v £L V a 1( locomotive depots and 27 car and Jcl wagon depots. The total staff in his department numbers 1,750. C P c a f n t s o r o t 1 h i p

Mr. Mackley is responsible for llio mechanical side of the organisation, a position which calls for a full technical knowledge of locomotives, wagons and cars. He controls a staff of highly qualified engineers at the head of which is Mr. J. Binsted.

Next we call on Mr. J. K. Lowe district engineer. The whole of the permanent way of the Auckland dis trict comes under his command. He is responsible for the maintenance of this vast array of shining tracks and spends much of his time on visits of inspection to numerous sections of the line. When a new sector is to be taken over from the Public Works Dept., such as that from Tauranga to Taneatua, it must first pass a careful scrutiny by Mr. Lowe. He must inquire into all alterations and send specifications to the head office, as well as perform a hundred other duties. In addition to maintenance there are railway bridges, houses and all land questions to be decided on by Mr. Lowe. Such a large department requires a large staff. Mr. W. T. Lang-

>eiu and Mr. I. J. Howell are Mr. Lowe’s assistant engineers, after s horn come an array of draughtsmen md clerks. The engineering work in connection vith Auckland’s new station and yards sad the Otahuhu workshops is controled by Mr. J. Dow, who holds the position of Engineer New Works. It s an onerous task for a young man vho carries his burden with coniilence. The District Traffic Manager, Mr. J. }. Rickerby, holds sway over a department which is responsible for the •onveyance of goods and passengers md which must attend to the demand :or trucks and cars. His department nust meet all claims, or consider hem. In the rush times and the peak seasons, the question of truck and vagon supply is an urgent one and me which sometimes must require apid decisions. The traffic manager also adjudicates m the question of compensation. Only he other day a consignee refused deivery of a consignment of women’s iats, and the disposal of these feminne ornaments was left to the departnent..

Mr. B. C. Housley, Mr. Rickerby’s right hand man, handles as many as 400 files a day, in addition to watching over the reports which have to be sent to headquarters in Wellington. Nearby is Mr. C. E. Fowke, assistant district traffic manager, who watches over the destinies of the country districts. We slip in for a moment to see Mr. H. C. Couch, head of the train-running department, who can tell where any train is at any given time —even if it is running late. Perhaps the most familiar figure of all in the railway world is Mr. J. C. Duncan, Auckland’s capable stationmaster. One usually finds him dressed in clothes as unassuming as his manner, but on state occasions he dons a gold-braided uniform which would bring tears of envy to the eyes of an officer of the Guards. He sees the trains arrive and the trains depart—in fact, there is nothing on that station platform he does not see particularly if it is contrary to rules and regulations. Mr. Duncan is the man who is responsible for the administration of

all affairs at the station proper, a position which requires tact allied to administrative ability. His duties are as sand on the seashore. They range from appeasing people with imaginary wrongs to seeing that a train leaves on time for its destination. In a set of offices which do not do

him justice, we find Mr. W, Hartley, assistant stationmaster. He presides over the booking office, and when we mention that approximately half-a-mil-lion passengers bought tickets last year, it w r ill give the reader some idea of w-hat he and his office staff contend with.

All round the station are other officials who are concerned with the immediate transport of passengers and their belongings. The coaching foremen are busy men. They check each passenger car as it arrives and departs aad see that the trains are made up to schedule. There are also ticket inspectors who keep a watchful eye on train travellers.

In the outward goods and the inward goods, the left luggage office, and checked luggage office there is continual activity, which at holiday time reach gigantic proportions. Just at present these officials work in cramped and inadequate quarters, but all this will be altered when the new station is opened. Across Breakwater Road, past the man who waves alternate red and green flags, and the signal box wEich is never vacant, we come into the aromatic smoke of the station yards. Here in his office we find Mr. W. H. Walker, the yard foreman, who has charge of this busy department. Among a network of rails, locomotives and rakes of trucks and cars are continually moving, like live jig-saw puzzles. Those yards are never silent. Trains which have just arrived are being shunted into the yards where the carß can be cleaned before going out on to another run; engines snort hither and thither as though in search of something they will never find; alert shunters deftly swing-over a set of points and (as the dazed man in the street thinks) narrowly avoid a collision. To the men on the job, however, it is a simple matter. In one corner of the yard the locomotive sheds belch forth their grime and smoke. Here the engines are being cleaned after their long journeys.

From the clang of anvils, the screech of machinery and the tear and rattle of industry in the Newmarket Workshops come the new cars and wagons with which the service is periodically replenished. Here also, with the most up-to-date plant modern science can supply, repairs to rolling stock and locomotives are effected. Mr. A. D. F. Sampson is the man at the head of this elaborate plant and at present he is preparing for the shift to transfer to the new workshops at Otahuhu the rising Newmarket of Auckland. He is busy, too, with the building of some up-to-date cars for the passenger suburban service, some of which have already been finished. The whole of the work at Newmarket is done to schedule, which has proved a success under Mr. Sampson’s careful scrutiny. All opposition to this mass production method which made Mr. Ford famous, has gone by the board.

From a separate department in Customs Street Mr. A. W. Wellsted, busi ness agent, obtains commissions for the railways. This part of the big organisation has only come into be ing during recent years, and is proving a big success. Special excursions and similar projects are under the w r atchful eyes of Mr. Wellsted and his staff. Behind the heads of departments | is the full force of the working army of clerks and artisans, porters and cleaners, firemen, gt. rds, and enginedrivers, business men, linesmen, fitters, carpenters, and draughtsmen, and hundreds of others, too numerous to mention—but who cannot be overlooked.