RAILWAY MANAGEMENT. Railway manage ment in the United States is primarily under the control of the directors of the railway companies, who are elected by the stockholders. A presi dent is the chief executive officer of a railway, and the other officers are generally one or more vice-presidents, a treasurer and secretary. and a general manager. The treasurer has charge of all moneys collected and disbursed, and is respon sible directly to the president, who is assisted in certain duties by the vice-president. The duties of the general manager extend to every depart ment of the service, all of which are under his control. A superintendent is at the head of each department, who is responsible for every detail of the work in every division and subdivision of his department, and each sub-department is in turn under the control of a single head, and so un down to the end of the scale. In this way the lines of responsibility of each employee, from the car-cleaner up to the president, are clearly de fined. The heads of the prinicipal departments directly in charge of the general manager are the superintendent of roadway, the superinten dent of machinery, and the superintendent of transportation. The controller, the traffic man ager, and the ear accountant are also classed in the same rank. The subdivisions of these de partments are too numerous to trace in detail. The superintendent of roadway is responsible for the maintenance of all the construction work of the railway, including the track, trestles, bridges, buildings, etc., each of which depart ments is assigned to supervisors, whose work covers a certain allotted territory. Each super visor divides his territory into sections which are in charge of a resident section master, who employs a section gang. Track walkers from these gangs patrol their entire section several times a day and report any needed repairs, which are attended to by the section men. The super intendent of machinery attends to the provision and maintenance of all the rolling stock. The
locomotives are in charge of a master mechanic, who keeps a record of the performance of each of them, and the ears are under the care of a master ear-builder, who attends to the manufac ture, repairing, and inspection of all the com pany's cars. The superintendent of transporta tion is in charge of the movements of all the trains on the road and all employees connected with the train service, including telegraphic operators, train dispatchers, conductors, etc. In addition to arranging the regular time schedule, he provides for the extra trains ordered by the traffic manager. A graphical representation of the regular trains is used, from which the rela tive positions of the trains on the road at any time during the day can be seen at once if the runs are made on time. From this diagram the opportunities for sending out extra trains are determined, and any chances of collisions become apparent and can be guarded against.
The traffic manager's department is divided into two principal branches—the passenger traffic and the freight traffic—each in charge of a gen eral agent. In this department the rates and tolls are made, and the advertising. soliciting of business, etc., carried on. The duties of the ear accountant are keeping a record of all cars on the road, which is made up from the conductors' reports, and notifying the owners of the number and movements of other companies' cars on his road. This is made necessary from the custom of sending through freight cars over different roads without unloading, and in this way they are often scattered widely over the country. There are two other departments, less intimately con nected with the management of the roads than those mentioned above. These are the purchasing and the legal departments. The controller's de partment. where the accounts and statistics are kept, completes thq general outline of the organi zation of a railway.