Had the scheme in question been matured and adopted on the lines here stated, a still greater degree of importance would have been attached to the position and proceedings of a Corps then--and still--almost unknown to the world at large, since its chief function was to carry out investigations at the request of the authorities, and prepare reports, statements and statistics which have invariably got no further than the War Office and the Horse Guards, where, alone, the value of the services rendered has been fully understood and appreciated. The scheme was, however, allowed to drop, the policy eventually adopted being based, preferably, (1) on the railways of Great Britain being operated in war time as one group instead of in a series of groups or sections; and (2) on such operation being entrusted to a body specially created for the purpose; though prior to the adoption of the latter course there was to be a fresh development in another direction. THE WAR RAILWAY COUNCIL While the Engineer and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps remained, down to 1896, the only organised body which (apart from the individual railway companies) Government departments could consult as to the technical working and traffic facilities of the railways, from the point of view of military transport, it was thought desirable, in the year mentioned, to supplement that Corps by a smaller body known at first as the "Army Railway Council" and afterwards as the "War Railway Council." Designed to act in a purely advisory capacity, without assuming any administrative or executive functions, this Council was eventually constituted as follows:--The Deputy Quartermaster-General (president); six railway managers, who represented the British railway companies and might or might not already be members of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps; one Board of Trade Inspector of Railways; two members (not being railway managers) of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps; the Deputy-Assistant Quartermaster-General; one mobilisation officer; two Naval officers; and one officer of the Royal Engineers, with a representative of the Quartermaster-General's Department as secretary. The Council approximated closely to the "Commission Militaire Superieure des Chemins de Fer" in France, of which an account has been given in Chapter IX. It also undertook many of the duties which in the case of the German Army would be performed by a special section of the General Staff; though some of these duties it took over from the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, reducing the functions and the importance of that body proportionately.