Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - British Railways and the War (1917).djvu/12

 Railway Executive Committee, was to act as a central organisation, to give instructions, and to co-ordinate the activities of the different railways in war time. Working in co-operation with it was the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps—a volunteer organisation of railway workers whose purpose was to develop schemes, methods, and personnel for the War Railway Service. It was composed of general managers of the leading railways, leading contractors, engineers, and other railwaymen.

Month by month, and year by year, the Staff Corps worked out schemes for the utilisation of our lines under any contingency. It planned how to carry out great movements of troops from one part to the other. Few, if any, then contemplated more than handling bodies of men running into a total figure of from four to five hundred thousand. When, later, the needs of the war raised the total to ten times the old maximum, the plans proved to have been so soundly laid that the greater demands were easily met.

The Railway Executive Committee and the Railway Staff Corps, working in conjunction with the Director-General of Military Transport, gradually completed, during the years preceding the war, their plans of operations. These covered more especially the movements of a British expeditionary force to its embarkation port, the quick concentration of men at any point to repel an invading army, and the evacuation of invaded districts. By 1912 all was in readiness. Every