432 History of Inland Transport 



in 1901, "for the purpose of bringing together those who 

 in past years have held executive positions in the railway 

 service of Great Britain, the Colonies or India, and for the 

 renewal and keeping up of former friendships on the part of 

 gentlemen once associated, in official relations, either on 

 the same or on different railways." The objects of the 

 society are exclusively social and friendly. 



Sobriety being a virtue especially desirable on the part 

 of those to whom so vast a number of the British public 

 daily entrust their lives or limbs, temperance is encouraged 

 in the railway service by the formation of Railway Temper- 

 ance Unions for all the leading lines. Each union has numerous 

 branches, and the various unions constitute, in turn, a federa- 

 tion known as the United Kingdom Railway Temperance 

 Union. This movement receives much practical encourage- 

 ment from railway directors and chief officers, and an active 

 propaganda is carried on. In some places the local Temper- 

 ance Union provides a Temperance Institute where the men 

 employed at a station or in a goods yard can take their meals 

 in comfort or spend their leisure time. 



The present membership (1911) of the Temperance Union 

 in connection with the London and North- Western Railway 

 Company is 22,172, spread over 19 districts. The members 

 of the same union in 1905 numbered only 4777. 



Thrift in the railway service is facilitated by means of 

 savings banks. One of these, the Great Western Railway 

 Savings Bank, states in its nineteenth annual report that in 

 1910 it had 6385 depositors, who paid in a total of 109,166, 

 drew out 69,828 and had 495,504 to their credit at the 

 end of the year. The bank pays 3^ per cent on deposits up 

 to 1000. 



Nor are still higher things overlooked. For over forty 

 years it has been customary for workers in the Midland 

 Railway locomotive department at Derby to meet in one of 

 their mess-rooms at breakfast-time, and, while having their 

 meal, take part in a short religious service conducted by one 

 of their number, a harmonium being provided as an accom- 

 paniment to the singing. On the day preceding the Christmas 

 holidays the service is devoted entirely to Christmas carols 

 or appropriate anthems. 



A distinct advantage offered by the railway service is that, 



