RAILWAY STRIKE. CROWDED STATIONS. SERVICES KEPT GOING.

Yesterday at the London termini of the great trunk lines harassed staffs, working more or less in the dark, spent a feverish day endeavouring to work out the details of proposed emergency services. The difficulty under which all the railways laboured was that they had no credible information in advance as to the number of men who would absent themselves from duty. It was a matter of waiting until the men working on each particular shift were due before their response to the strike call was apparent, and for that reason almost the full twenty-four hours had to elapse before the numbers available for work became known. In these circumstances the task of the traffic organisers for the first day of the strike was, confined in most instances to an attempt to deal with the emergency with which they were immediately confronted, leaving the compilation of new time schedules for later attention.

There remained at many of the London stations a deal of leeway to make up owing to the confusion in which matters had been left by the early morning stoppage. Trains were run into the platforms and left without engines, and these had to be cleared away into sidings before there could be any thought of accepting new traffic. In the course of the morning a few main-line trains were got off from King’s-cross, St. Pancras, Euston, Liverpool-street, and Paddington, and these relieved to an appreciable degree the accommodation of platforms, waiting-rooms, and refreshment rooms already crowded by intending passengers. There were frequent conferences between divisional managers and their staffs, to examine reports as they came in from the provinces and to formulate emergency services as the numbers of men remaining loyal in the different districts became known. Passengers meanwhile accepted the discomfort and anxieties of the situation with praiseworthy calm. They waited patiently for the posting of the traffic notices, sat philosophically around on their baggage, or communed sympathetically in groups over coffee or other cheering beverages in the station buffets. They dissembled with surprising success the inward irritation which was assuredly theirs. CHEERFULNESS AT PADDINGTON.

Great Western Railway officials were gratified at the way in which the provincial services were maintained. Both goods and passenger trains were being dealt with in many of the divisions, and the information at Paddington, where things at one time did not look so promising, was distinctly encouraging. In the Cardiff division, serving the Welsh valleys, thirty-five trains were dealt with between midnight and six in the morning. Certainly, so far as the country was concerned, the company was doing better than it expected. Cheered by the success, Paddington rapidly got itself in order to deal with some of the West Country trains, which many passengers were eagerly anticipating. A start was made on a small scale with a local train to West Drayton, followed at 10.30 by one for Slough, and later another for Ealing, Oxford, Birmingham, and Chester. Having felt its way successfully so far, the company arranged other trains for Bristol and the West of England in the early afternoon.

Local services, relied upon by thousands of City workers daily, suffered in varying degrees. Unfortunate dwellers on the Great Northern section of the London and North-eastern Railway found the trains practically suspended, and besieged tram and bus services bound for Finsbury Park, the Tube terminus, in desperation. They were comforted by the information that the company would attempt to run a restricted service later. At Liverpool-street the trains from the eastern suburbs arrived in greatly depleted numbers. Main-line trains were got on from King’s-cross and Liverpool-street when it became possible to make them up. The midnight trains went away without hindrance, and the next to follow was ten o’clock, for Scotland and the West Riding. Other composite

trains left in the course of the day. Milk and fish trains arrived satisfactorily from the North and East, and the overnight express from Aberdeen arrived in London at ten.

The London Midland and Scottish Railway put into operation as early as possible its temporary emergency schedules, and was able to claim satisfactory results. Suburban travellers ware catered for by half-a-dozen trains running from Bletchley to Euston in the early business hours, while they also enjoyed the substantial advantage of the alternative Tube service from Watford to the West-end. Boat trains to London ran late. Trains for Carlisle, Holyhead, and Northampton left Euston in the course of the morning, to be followed later by a restricted service for the northern industrial districts. Confusion was reduced to a minimum at St. Pancras by the simple expedient of posting the full day’s departure times on a notice-board in a prominent part of the station. Passengers were often saved a long scrutiny of the temporary time-tables by the neatly-chalked announcements on the blackboard, which predicted the despatch of some three dozen trains between midday and midnight. Four of these were for Manchester and four for Leeds, with intermediate stations served in correspondingly higher proportion. The emergency programme was successfully adhered to throughout the day. PLATFORM COMEDIES.

There are few, if indeed any, circumstances, however depressing they may be, out of which the philosopher and the humorist fails to extract either solace or amusement, and it was refreshing to note the host of philosophers and humorists which yesterday thronged Waterloo, that vast centre of the Southern Railway. For a couple of hours the principal theatre of merriment was the vicinity of the notice-board on which one is informed, in normal times, of the times of the departures of the cross-channel boat trains. Yesterday there was a communication, written, not in chalk, but on a half-sheet of notepaper, and for at least two hours there was an incessant stream of anxious inquirers desirous of ascertaining from this source when their long, long wait for a train was to come to an end.

In order to reach the notice-board the weary would-be passenger had to pass through solid crowds massed on each side; and the observer stationed on the outer fringe of the assembled people wondered why every scrutiny of the announcement was provocative of bursts of laughter from the nearer spectators. Going closer to what may be called the stage of the comedy one found that the circumstances provided ideal material for the study of various types of human nature, as revealed in a time of annoyance and dislocation. Generally speaking, there stole over the face of the investigator for reliable time-table information a gentle smile, and in these, the most numerous cases, the laughter of the audience was correspondingly moderate, and the victim backed his way out again without undue discomfiture.

Obviously the writing on the board could be no serious item of train intelligence. Now and again there came a victim who enjoyed the situation and led in the merriment. There were instances of an opposite sort; now and again there walked laboriously up to the board a person of dour mien, whose imperturbability of countenance, even when the pronouncement had been deciphered, proclaimed him to be absolutely deficient of any sense of humour. Loud outbursts of laughter, accompanied by rounds of cheering, greeted these solemn voyageurs, who walked away wondering what it was all about.

But the enthusiasm of the “house” rose to its highest pitch when an irate lady indignantly exclaimed after reading the notice, “Idiots!” Some people appreciated the comedy so much that they went up more than once to master the contents of what was supposed to be an official communiqué; but this excessive interest may have been due in large part to the circumstance that almost under the board there was seated on a pile of Continental luggage a very attractive girl of 23 summers, who smiled ever so sweetly at every fresh victimisation.

The announcement on this intriguing half-sheet of notepaper was: “Railway for Sale; for particulars apply Woolworths.”

It remained there for a couple of hours, at the end of which time, to the intense disappointment of the hundreds of people ready to accept any diversion to beguile the weariness of waiting for trains, it was pulled down by an employee.