Amongst the most prominent railway men I have met were Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the South-Eastern Railway, and the following general managers:--Mr. Allport, Midland, the exalted railway monarch of my early railway days; Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Oakley, Great Northern; Mr. Grierson, Great Western; Mr. Underdown, Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire; and Mr. (afterwards Sir Myles) Fenton, South Eastern. Of Sir Edward Watkin a good story was told. When he was general manager of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (he was Mr. Watkin then) many complaints had arisen from coal merchants on the line that coal was being stolen from wagons in transit by engine drivers. Nothing so disgraceful could possibly occur, always answered Mr. Watkin. Down the line one day, with his officers at a country station, a driver was seen in the very act of transferring from a coal wagon standing on an outlying siding some good big lumps to his tender. This was pointed out to Mr. Watkin, who only said--"The d---d fool, _in broad daylight_!" When Mr. Allport learned that I came from Derby, and was the son of an old Midland official, he treated me with marked kindness. Mr. Oakley came in the year 1880 to Glasgow, where he sat for several days as arbitrator between the Glasgow and South-Western and Caledonian Railway Companies, on a matter concerning the management, working, and maintenance of Kilmarnock Station, of which the companies were joint owners, and I learned for the first time how an arbitration case should be conducted, for Mr. Oakley was an expert at such work. This experience stood me in good stead, when, not many years later, I was appointed arbitrator in a railway dispute in the North of Ireland.