Among Jim Christie's many skills is his ability to find really interesting historical articles in archived professional journals. Earlier this week, he sent me a link to one which details the procedures used in the car department of the CPR in 1920.
In addition to the office procedures used, it describes the then recent continental change to billing per diem for cars interchanged to foreign roads. As the railways became interconnected consignors could, and wanted to, ship goods beyond the limits of their local railway.
Prior to the change to per diem charging, mileage run by the car on a foreign road was the basis for paying the home road for the use of its car. While fraud would be tempting and easy (and difficult for the owning road to prove) with the mileage basis ... per diem was pretty cut and dried. And when you're paying per diem, there's an incentive to get an unneeded empty off your system and back to the car owner.
The topic of Jim's article is particularly interesting to me because my father worked in the car department circa 1950. Although advances were probably made in office machines between 1920 and 1950, I'm sure my father would recognize the regular car reports submitted to 'Windsor Station' and the flow of information within the department.
He was in the early stages of training as an accountant at this point - as his Auditor of Freight Receipts department title suggests. Some of his work would probably have entailed routine checks on the accuracy of the reporting and of the records being kept.
(His 1947 orientation manual to the Accounting Department is reproduced elsewhere in this blog - see the 'Railway Technology and Systems' Index for the link if you're interested.)
In addition to the office procedures used, it describes the then recent continental change to billing per diem for cars interchanged to foreign roads. As the railways became interconnected consignors could, and wanted to, ship goods beyond the limits of their local railway.
Prior to the change to per diem charging, mileage run by the car on a foreign road was the basis for paying the home road for the use of its car. While fraud would be tempting and easy (and difficult for the owning road to prove) with the mileage basis ... per diem was pretty cut and dried. And when you're paying per diem, there's an incentive to get an unneeded empty off your system and back to the car owner.
The topic of Jim's article is particularly interesting to me because my father worked in the car department circa 1950. Although advances were probably made in office machines between 1920 and 1950, I'm sure my father would recognize the regular car reports submitted to 'Windsor Station' and the flow of information within the department.
He was in the early stages of training as an accountant at this point - as his Auditor of Freight Receipts department title suggests. Some of his work would probably have entailed routine checks on the accuracy of the reporting and of the records being kept.
(His 1947 orientation manual to the Accounting Department is reproduced elsewhere in this blog - see the 'Railway Technology and Systems' Index for the link if you're interested.)
Teletype machinery was introduced in White River for the purposes of submitting car reports around 1958. Some details on that can be found in my general article on Schreiber and White River (link below). In the article, Bob Mura states that the new system was just about the best thing since the invention of the wheel. In 1977, yard clerks like Bob (and we trainees) were still winding those teletype tapes into figure-8s on our thumbs and pinky fingers and securing them with an elastic band.
Before the teletypes, paper forms were used for short term data storage (and archiving) and this data medium was physically transmitted from yard offices to 'Montreal' in analog format.
During the post-WW2 economic boom (when my father worked) computers were used for some 'higher' functions, but the car department was dealing with ever increasing quantities of paper - shipped in from the far corners of the CPR railway system. AAR railway accountancy rules (350 pages in 1948) were also more complex than they were in the early per diem days described in Jim Christie's article below.
Going through some of my father's non-railway archived correspondence records, filed articles and slides I have obtained some ability to imagine 'the human experience' of clerical work at Windsor station in 1950.
Instead of costly staples (which would require a stapler on every CPR desk) ... my father's early filed articles are collated with straight pins. You can imagine a small container of straight pins on each desk and clerks quickly pinning related sheets together.
Instead of costly cardboard 'bankers boxes' (if they were even commonly available back then) or filing cabinets for the reports which were unlikely to be used again ... my father's own 'deep archive' bundles of correspondence and partitioned chocolate box slide containers are secured with string. You can imagine that where large quantities of reports were gathered, to be taken away for 'records retention' purposes you'd find string dispensers to make the job a little easier. When these old bundles of reports were no longer required, they'd probably be taken to a nearby CPR furnace to be burned.
... In my father's oldest archives I found those little glimpses of what office life may have been like in the car department, circa 1950.
Carbon paper, typewriters, bakelite dial telephones and fountain pens (for proud guardians of tradition, and also for signing letters, and certificates of CPR service) would also have been found in quantity.
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The pages from Jim Christie's historical article are posted below.
Here is his link if you want to see the original. Every time Jim sends me a reference I always enjoy seeing all the interesting articles or advertisements around it. You will too.
In May 1961 my father took this slide photo of his old employer's offices.