Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - British Railways and the War (1917).djvu/37

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BRITISH RAILWAYS AND THE WAR

(one for infectious cases), a staff car, a personnel car, and two brake vans. Accommodation was provided for 144 beds and 384 sitting-up cases. The train was 930 feet 8 inches long, with buffers, and it weighed 429 tons. Its equipment was the final word in comfort and convenience. The absence of vibration, the ease with which cases could be taken in and out, the facilities for carrying patients to the treatment room, and the arrangements for the staff excited the greatest admiration in the numerous places where the train was put on show before it was brought into service. Not that the Brighton Railway was exceptional in this. All the great English railway works devoted their utmost skill and care to the ambulance trains, and each pitted itself against the others in providing the best for our wounded men. He would have been a bold judge to decide which did best.

PROBLEMS AFTER THE WAR

The responsible men on our railways recognise that the problems in railway management and control raised by the war will not altogether come to an end when the war is over. A new era has begun in railway management, and it will be impossible to go back completely to pre-war conditions. Even if it were possible it would be highly undesirable. While no definite schemes have yet been arranged, it can safely be foretold that there will be greater unity of administration when peace returns than in the old days before

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