Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles # 165: What Does a Superintendent D

Mad Dog Chronicles #165: What does a Division Superintendent do, anyway?

Just about anything that he chooses to spend his time on with in reason is the simple answer. This assumes that this Superintendent has good judgment and uses common sense. After all, if he didn't have good judgment, he should never have been promoted to this level in the first place.

A good Superintendent is a good delegator. His staff of officers make the day to day decisions under most circumstances. The Superintendent is the long range planner for the division. He is the one who dreams up new programs and new operations but he has lots of help if he learns to listen. I have said this before. Some of my best ideas came from the men on the ground. I am a great believer in MBWA. That is, management by wandering around.

The essence of this approach is to arrange to spend as much time as possible out on the division. You climb up in the yardmasters towers. You walk out on the switch leads. You walk around in the yard offices and the depots. You ride trains. You visit the car repair facilities. You spend a lot of time in a hi-rail car. Stop and talk with the interlocking operators.

Hi-rail with your Trainmasters and with their assistants. Hi-rail with the Division Engineer and with the Roadmasters. Hi-rail with your Assistant Superintendents and your Budget (PACE) Officer and with your Station Supervisors.

Meet with your Local Chairman either out on the road or in the Superintendents Office. Talk with everyone that you can. This includes not only employees under your jurisdiction, but also, with shippers and of course talk with the District sales forces. This was easy to do since the District Sales Office was right there in the other end of my own office at 1707 Wood Street in Oakland.

Don't forget that you have a three shift a day, seven day a week operation. Today we would say 24/7. This means work on Saturdays and on Sundays and after 4 PM and before 6 AM too. Not all the time, but enough so you sample all of the operations and all of the shifts.

The Western Division Dispatchers office was located in Roseville, CA while I was Superintendent. This was also the location for the NWP dispatching. I developed a little routine for working with my dispatchers. I would journey up to Roseville in the middle of the day. Talk with each trick dispatcher and assistant chief on the day shift. Hang around until the afternoon dispatchers had gotten organized and then talk with each of them. Then dinner and tie up at a motel in Roseville. Set the alarm for 4 AM Then visit with all of the midnight trick dispatchers. Then get my morning turnover face to face with my Chief.

I usually arranged to spend some time with the Sacramento Division Superintendent. This could be either at the dispatchers' office or at the Sacramento Division Headquarters over the depot at Sacramento. K A (Ken) Moore was the Sacramento Division Superintendent for the entire time that I was the Western Division Superintendent. Since Roseville Yard performed a lot of blocking for the Western Division and the Western Division Terminals made lots of bypass blocks for the Sacramento Division, we had lots to talk about. If things were quiet, we might even get in a couple of games of racket ball too.

The Division Superintendent is expected to play host to all manner of guests, usually on a business car. Some times these might be shippers, some times visitor from other railroads, even from other countries. Frequently you are playing host to someone from the General Office in San Francisco.

No Superintendent who knows his business will take a trip like this without first previewing the intended route the day before, usually by hi-railing the territory with the Trainmasters. I would take these warm up trips even if I had been over the same route the week before. I just did not like surprises.

2/23/06
mdo

mdo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>. I just did
> not like surprises.
>
> 2/23/06
> mdo

And that is why you did " all of the above". Good management.
C.

You mentioned the Budget Officer... I remember R. W. - "Bill" - Wearne in a small office, 2 desks, papers, records, notes everywhere, tracking numbers on the Western Div. And every time (it seemed) that Bill Jones was summoned to the General Office, he grabbed Wearne and they were off to San Francisco. Wearne always had a briefcase with him, while old Bill carried none. Apparently Wearne was always ready with the numbers to answer the questions from top management. I never met a guy so serious. Wearne even had an assistant, Jerry Ellis, when Dave Medley was Supt. at Oakland. Makes me wonder what position under the Supt. was the most important in your opinion?

MDO
"Management By Wandering Around", straight out of "In Search of Excellence". Required reading for all Supts. by RDK. This was the only way to survive as Supt. on the SP. It was not uncommon for the GM or one of his assistants to go out on the Division and interrogate the employees in the switch shanties or the offices about the Supt. to see if there was any interface with the rank and file employees. Some of the consequential interviews with the GM would turn deadly.
MDO's relation to the most critical survival technique was the dress rehearsal trip to the one prior to the Car "Sunset". Supt. and D.E would line up all the troops and instruct them where to be and what to say to questions asked. Never let Officers or Supervisors adlib as it was generally bad.
I had threatened to write a pamphlet for D.E.'s entitled the "Care and Feeding of Superintendents". I felt I was uniquely qualified having grown up in a household owned by a Supt. and learning early on to argue with a Supt. was a lose lose situation at best. Supts totally controlled the future of D.E.'s.
SP Supts. that I contributed to their "care and feeding", CEN (VPGM NWP),RRR, LGS, KAM, MDO, MLW. Ass't. Supts. promoted to Supt. LHN, LGS, HDF, MLB, MLW, MLI.
An interesting group to say the least
JWL

JLY Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>Supts. promoted to Supt. MLI.
> An interesting group to say the least
> JWL

Anyone know what ever became of MLI ??? That was (is ) one fine gentleman.

V

SLOCONDR

Mike Irvine has retired and is living near Roseville

Got any good El Centro stories from the glory days?.

JWL Wrote:
SP Supts that I contributed to their "care and feeding" CEN (VPGM NWP), RRR, LGS, KAM, MDO, MLW. Ass't. Supt.'s promoted to Supt. LHN, LGS, HDF, MLB, MLW, MLI.
Should read:
SP Supt.'s that I contributed to their "care and feeding". CEN(VPGM NWP), RRR, LGS, KAM, RDB, MDO, MLW. Ass't. Supt.'s promoted to Supt. LHN, LGS, HDF, RDB, MLB, MLW, MLI.
An interesting group to say the least.
Sorry for the oversight, Rollin.
JWL

skeeter4810 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Got any good El Centro stories from the glory
> days?.

No. I never was assigned there. However, Steamjocky might have a few.

JLY Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JWL Wrote:
> SP Supts that I contributed to their "care and
> feeding" CEN (VPGM NWP), RRR, LGS, KAM, MDO, MLW.
> Ass't. Supt.'s promoted to Supt. LHN, LGS, HDF,
> MLB, MLW, MLI.
> Should read:
> SP Supt.'s that I contributed to their "care and
> feeding". CEN(VPGM NWP), RRR, LGS, KAM, RDB, MDO,
> MLW. Ass't. Supt.'s promoted to Supt. LHN, LGS,
> HDF, RDB, MLB, MLW, MLI.
> An interesting group to say the least.
> Sorry for the oversight, Rollin.
> JWL

There is one more Superintendent who should be added to JWL's list of those for whom he cared and fed. That would of course be JWL himself, since he too, became a Superintendent on the SP's Sacramento Division.

MDO, I hope you reply to this one. It would be interesting to hear how you used your budget officer, and how much was or was not accomplished. Seems to me back in those days you were on the cutting edge of trying to push some financial control down to the level where the work actually got done...not necessarily an easy thing. Seems to me you started on this earlier in your stories about your time as an ATM.

JBW

It's ashame our management folks on the commutes, won't name them or their title, but they are high up. They have forgotten what it's like where they came from, when they mingle with the troops it's usually to bust them for something petty.

jbwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MDO, I hope you reply to this one. It would be
> interesting to hear how you used your budget
> officer, and how much was or was not accomplished.
> Seems to me back in those days you were on the
> cutting edge of trying to push some financial
> control down to the level where the work actually
> got done...not necessarily an easy thing. Seems
> to me you started on this earlier in your stories
> about your time as an ATM.
>
> JBW


I intend to write a MDC covering the HQ staff of a typical SP Division in the 1980's This will include, of course, the Division Budget Officer. I guess that we will use RWW as an example.

jbwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Seems to me back in those days you were on the
> cutting edge of trying to push some financial
> control down to the level where the work actually
> got done...not necessarily an easy thing. Seems
> to me you started on this earlier in your stories
> about your time as an ATM.
>
> JBW

John,

Wish that I could live up to your recollection as being on the cutting edge of cost control, but I do not think so.

I had been Krebs's "budget officer" on the Cotton Belt, where we had, in fact, established the first Division level cost control system on the SP System. The position of Division Budget Officer or PACE officer had been patterned after what Krebs had set up on the SSW in 1972. I suppose that I can claim to have been the first Division Budget Officer on the SP. I do recall that RDK wanted me to do much more with cost control on the Western Division during my tenure as Division Superintendent. Bill Warne was a tremendous asset in this endeavor. He was a real bull dog when it came to cost control and to reports. He literally buried me in paper. Most of our innovation on the Western Division in the early 1980's involved controls on the commissary and the business cars.

We will cover that in the next few MDC's

I do not recall that the Western Division was doing anything else that was different or more innovative than any of the other Divisions during my tenure as Superintendent.

mdo

Westbound Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
. Makes me wonder what
> position under the Supt. was the most important in
> your opinion?

Hands down, the Assistant Division Superintendents.

mdo