Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/40

 and efficiency, is being gradually extended within certain limits.

To carry on the traffic of a great railway one of the main essentials is a highly-trained and thoroughly qualified staff, and it may justly be said that the companies spare neither trouble nor expense in securing and maintaining this most important requirement. The practice adopted by the London and North-Western Company, and it is, in the main, the one which is observed by all English Railway Companies, is to appoint lads about fourteen years of age as boy porters, telegraph boys, and for other similar employments; these lads grow up in the service, and by the time they reach manhood they have become experienced in railway duties in their various branches, and are eligible for filling such posts as become vacant. The most scrupulous attention is paid to the training of signal-men, a class of men the difficult and responsible nature of whose enployment [sic] can hardly be exaggerated, and they are never entrusted with the sole charge of signals until they have received a specific course of instruction in the duties. The period of training varies according to the importance of the posts at which the men are to be stationed, but their appointments are not confirmed until the superintendent of the division has certified that he has examined the men, and finds them to possess every qualification for the posts they are to fill, including freedom from colour-blindness, which is a fatal defect in a railway servant. The guards of passenger trains are usually chosen from the ranks of the porters; and the goods train guards, or brakesmen, are selected from the goods porters, shunters, and men of that class; but all these men are subjected to a rigid examination