II. Four _Deputy-Assistant-Directors_, undertaking similar duties over particular sections of the railway system.
III. _Railway Staff Officers_, located at leading stations to superintend all important movements, and constituting the only means of communication between the Army and the stationmasters. The latter were to take orders in respect to military requirements from no one else, and were, in turn, to be protected by the railway staff officers from interference with by other officers having no authority to give them direct orders.
The defective step in the scheme, as originally planned, was in respect to the railway staff officers, who, of all those constituting the Military Railway Controlling Staff, were, under Army Regulations, on the staff of officers commanding lines of communication and thus not controlled by the Director of Railways. The officers in question, though charged with the duty of looking after entrainments, detrainments, etc., were in no way to interfere with the railway staff in the shunting or marshalling of trains or in regard to the traffic arrangements generally. For this reason the framers of the Army Regulations had assumed that there was no need for the railway staff officers to have any knowledge of railway operation, or to be under the control of others who did possess such knowledge.
After the annexation of the Orange Free State railways, the Chief of the Staff agreed that the railway staff officers in that State should be under the orders of the Director of Railways through his Deputy-Assistant-Directors; and a like course was adopted shortly afterwards in respect to the railway staff officers in Cape Colony. In this way an undivided chain of responsibility was secured, affording a much greater guarantee of efficiency alike in control and in actual operation.
Concerning the Deputy-Assistant-Directors, Sir Percy Girouard says they were found to be of great benefit to the railway officials, who appreciated their work and laboured in hearty co-operation with them; though they experienced difficulty in establishing their position with the Generals and Staff officers, to whom the arrangement was an entire novelty, and one they did not at first understand.