His work was to indicate the broad outlines of the scheme, and the railway officials then filled in the details. Yet I was told that he seemed to know to a truck the demands which his projects would entail upon the railways; and he never put forward anything which led to a breakdown. I think he had that type of mind which sees straight through the details to the core of an undertaking and which yet retains in due perspective the minutiæ of the machinery.
And it was not only the railways which he had in his charge. All the motor services were brought under his control as well. It was a bewilderingly complex affair; and he had to act as a kind of liaison centre between the two departments, clearing up any troubles which arose and coordinating the twin methods of transport. I think he had the power of mental visualisation developed to an abnormal extent; and his memory must have been quite out of the common. To assist him, he had the largest railway map I have ever seen—it covered a whole floor—and on it were placed blocks of metal showing the exact situation of every truck, carriage and locomotive in the kingdom. These were moved from time to time by his assistants in accordance with telegraphic information; and if he doubted his recollections at any moment he could go and study the groupings upon it.
I remember seeing him once when things had got slightly out of gear, his hands full of telegraph forms, his feet encased in felt slippers to avoid marking the surface of the map, studying a point in the Welsh system where a number of trucks had been stranded in sidings. With the briefest consideration he seemed to come to a decision, for he gave his orders to an assistant:
“Locomotive, Newport to Crumlin, via Tredegar Junction. (It can’t go through Abercarne, because the 3:46 is on the line now and I don’t want to waste time shunting.) Then on to Cwm—C-w-m—to pick up twenty-seven trucks in the siding. All right. After that, back to Aberbeeg—b-double-e-g—since the line is blocked at Victoria by No. 702. Then Blaina—B-l-a-i-n-a—and Abergavenny. All right. … Stop a moment. Map-measure, please. Motor Fleet 37 will be at Abergavenny about then with some stores for the North. Hold train at Abergavenny and wire them to stop No. 37 as it passes. That will fill up ten trucks, I think. All right. Train Hereford, Birmingham, via Leominster. Load twelve trucks Birmingham. Tamworth, pick up five truck-loads—food, that red block there—then North behind No. 605. All right. Then wire Abergavenny to send No. 37 to Monmouth. They’ll get their orders there. All right.”
So it went on, I am told, hour after hour, throughout the day. Even the details of the diurnal traffic were not sufficient; for as he went along, he planned the night-operations as well. When he retired for the short sleep-time which he took, every point had been regulated for the ensuing five hours.
At first, everything culminated in the word “North”; but almost immediately the whirling traffic on the south going rails had to be considered also, as it grew in volume. How he managed it, I do not know; but he seemed to have some subconscious faculty of drawing a balance-sheet of the traffic at any moment; so that he knew if he was sending too much North or too little South. Personally, I imagine that he owed his success to a power akin to that of the professional chess-player who can play a dozen blindfold games at one time. Everybody has the faculty of mental visualisation developed in a greater or less degree; but in Grogan, as far as traffic was concerned, it seems to have attained supernormal proportions. I believe that he actually “saw” in his mind the whole of England covered with his trains and motor fleets and that he had by some means established time-scales which enabled him to calculate the moments at which any train or fleet would pass a series of given points. It was, of course, an immensely more difficult affair than blindfold chess-playing; but I think it clearly depended upon cognate processes.
Congleton, the Shipping Director, had a much easier task. For him there was no trouble of blocked rails or interleaving traffic. His main difficulty arose from berthing accommodation, which was a comparatively simple affair. Most of the food-supplies were transferred North on board ship; and a certain amount of the shifting of population was also done in this way, especially the removal of the Glasgow inhabitants.
I can only give the merest outline of these great operations; for the details are too intricate to be described here. Nordenholt’s first step was to commandeer most of the public halls in the country, which were then fitted up with partitions, etc., in order to convert them into temporary dwelling-places for families. Thereafter, he began to move his Nitrogen Volunteers into the Clyde Valley step by step; and simultaneously, under the Billeting Act, he evicted the local population to make room for his men. There was a considerable outcry; and at times the military had to be employed to persuade the reluctant to move out of their homes; but after the first few cases of obstruction had been dealt with firmly, the people recognised that it was useless to protest. Edinburgh was also treated in the same way;
