If, when winter comes, there were a freezing of the track, and no thaw until the spring break, care of lines would be comparatively simple. But the all-powerful temperature is as changeable as an April sky. Thaws and rains arrive, switches and sidings must be kept clear of ice, so that when trains pass or turn in there is no uncertainty about where they will go. Depressions and elevations in the roadbed, through the freaks of frost, compel the adjustment of the rail levels--shimming it is called--which makes spring travel somewhat unstable. The item of station and water-tank fuel is big. How many people realize that every water tank must be heated, night as well as day, from fall to spring, and that in most cases the water supply must be maintained by a man who patrols perhaps fifty miles of line on a gasoline-driven jigger, doing nothing but pumping and warming water? It isn’t all lavender, this running of railways in a Canadian winter. One’s admiration for the constancy of the men who are out on the line never diminishes--it is good medicine to have walked half the night in thirty below zero to obtain help for a frozen-up train on a pioneer line. As we are touching on the service of workmen, perhaps this is a suitable place to name a feature of the Railway War Board’s work which deserves far more appreciation than can be given to it here. Formerly each railway was a separate entity, as far as the trade unions were concerned. The war brought about a unification which is still effective in many respects. For all labor matters we formed a Board of Adjustment on which the railways and the unions had equal representation. The chairman was changed every six months, the companies and the unions supplying him alternately. Every contested case of discipline came before the Board, as before a Court. It was threshed out, and a decision arrived at, by which the company concerned stood, even though it was against the grain to reinstate a man whose dismissal was believed to have been justified. In no case was it necessary to call in an independent authority to review a judgment of the Board of Adjustment. The labor representatives were as judicially minded as their colleagues. I did not sit on this Board, but was, of course, in the closest touch with its work and results. Nothing finer in desire for, and capacity to get at the truth could have been displayed than the men’s representatives invariably showed. It must not be supposed that one’s admiration is confined to what, for the want of a better word, must still be called the lower ranks of the service. After all, a railway is an entity of vast ramifications. To be a true success it must work effectively in all its parts, and win the goodwill of those whom it serves. It would take pages and pages to sketch, ever so fragmentarily, the wealth of comradeship, official and otherwise, which was woven into half a century’s railway service.