A Sherlock Holmes.

Nearby are the ticket-selling windows, behind which are rows of multi-coloured pasteboards, marked “single,” “return” and “child,” numbered successively and strung up like tiny hams These are the open sesames to home and friends and far-away places. Next door the clerks are entering up the waybills for all manner of goods, destined for stations large and small over the rolling miles ahead. At Thorndon station there is a big influx of parcels at 4.45 p.m. daily, intended for the “Limited” Express, in fulfilment of orders received during the day by city firms. page 30 That is when trucks are filled up rapidly and formed into a caravan of tempting offerings that are later poured into the cavernous mouth of the “Limited's” van. Sometimes a parcel goes astray—perhaps a ham, some fruit or other edible goods, at Christmas time—and then the station-master is called upon to exercise the powers of a Sherlock Holmes. And sometimes the problem is anything but elementary, my dear Watson. Losses like this occur in the best of regulated circles, but the percentage is infinitesimal—perhaps one parcel will be lost out of the 10,000 handled each month.

In another department porters are weighing the luggage of intending passengers. Just as an ordinary passenger is allowed lcwt. of luggage free, so a workman is permitted lcwt. of tools free in addition, charges being made in each case only on excess weight. Over in the yards the shunting gangs are marshalling trains in accordance with instructions, and in the locomotive sheds the drivers and firemen are preparing their engines for the next run. Nearer at hand, a large staff

The Men Who Keep Our Passenger Carriages Spick And Span.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Mr. P. Garlick, Stationmaster at Lambton Station, Wellington, and members of his carriage-cleaning staff.

is engaged cleaning the passenger cars, washing and polishing windows, dusting seats, sheening the brasswork, providing paper drinking cups and so on. Round and about the station railway operations are proceeding in all divisions. The walls of the stationmaster's room are covered with charts showing regular train arrangements for every day, covering trunk lines, as well as the suburban lines that carry 4,700 passengers daily. Throughout those intricate charts, with their train lines, is balance—balance—that brings back scuttling trains as if on the end of a length of elastic. All day pens are flying, trains are coming and going, the ticket machine is grunting, parcels and luggage are speeding along the platform.

But the schedule duties of a station-master do not end his day. He is often the friend and counsellor of his staff, and even family troubles find settlement in the quiet of his room.

All of which shows there is more to a stationmaster's job than parading in gold brocade and signalling a train's departure.