Works Organisation and Management

In the days of George Stephenson the railway workshops were no different from most if not all other engineering workshops. Apart from the designers no specialist engineers were employed. Machines and equipment were mostly of a very simple character and a high proportion of hand work was involved. The key man was the foreman, or workshop supervisor, on the shop floor, essentially a practical man whose main function was to hand out work in the order he thought fit, to say how it should be done and to see that his staff produced what was required.