Railway Educational Training.

This educational training extends even beyond the correspondence school. Officers have been appointed, designated as Outdoor Transportation Assistants, whose duty it is to go round the stations advising the staffs in the best methods of handling their duties. There are two ways of doing everything, and these men, out of a wide practical railway experience, know the best way. They can give advice on every point of railway working from the best way to break up a rake of wagons to the making up of a duty roster to the best advantage.

The almost purely technical form of this railway education is apt to blind one to the other benefits accruing from the course. The officer who has, by special study, attained proficiency in a wider field of work than his own has shown proof of his keenness which cannot readily be passed over. The service is continually growing, and as it grows there are more positions of responsibility offering to those qualified to grasp them.

But, and here is a point generally overlooked, there is even more to be gained from these courses by the individual than the deliberate cultivation of his service value, and that is the increase of his personal value. A man whose brain is undergoing the mental discipline of a course of study, and whose will is being strengthened by the self control called forth by following it, is a better man for himself as well as for the Service than the one who is content to jog along with his daily job, satisfied with his present stock of knowledge. Study widens the receptivity of the [gap — reason: illegible] in more direction, that that of the page 35 mere subject studied, and it increases self control and the power of concentration.