Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/107

Rh tics going to show the care and expense devoted to equipment and machinery. But if you happen to ask for a few human statistics you are likely to be disappointed. For instance, if a certain train crew runs a freight train two hundred times in a year, breaking seventy draw-bars and upon different occasions delaying thirty-seven passenger trains, and another crew under very similar conditions pulls out only thirteen draw-bars and delays only nine passenger trains, you may consider the records quite important; but in the railroad offices you will find no statistics of this nature, no comparative statements and diagrams illustrative of the workmanship and character of different men and of the value and significance of the human element in the running of a railroad. In a word, you will infer from your investigation that if it isn’t a machine or a piece of machinery it isn’t worth bothering about.

Finally, let us take a very significant illustration, in which the traveling public should be somewhat interested. The other day a through passenger train arrived at a junction in the western part of Massachusetts. It was on its way east, and was practically on time. But at this point it became necessary for the engineman to renew the water-supply. Consequently he cut off his engine and ran down some little distance to the water-stand. After an interval of twenty minutes, as the engine had not returned