The Railway Storekeeper.

Of the thousand and one jobs within the railway service, few carry such heavy responsibility as that of the storekeeper. In theory, maintaining stocks of stores appears a relatively simple task, but when one thinks of the hundreds of thousands of items of equipment involved, upon the soundness and suitability of many of which depends the safety of human life and limb, there comes realisation of the importance of the storekeeper's work.

With the idea of enabling a sample of every item of equipment in use on the system to be available for inspection either by railway officers or suppliers, the L. & N.E. Railway has opened in London a new department, classed as a “stores museum.” Here there have been gathered together sealed samples or drawings of every conceivable article used on the system, and a staff of four men spend their days classifying and testing new “exhibits.” Altogether, there are about 5,000 samples and 2,000 drawings in the building, and the equipment includes machines for testing all manner of stores supplied. It is part of the policy of the L. & N.E. Company, in cases where contracting firms supply articles superior to those standardised, to scrap the standard pattern and replace it by the improved article.