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I hereby certify that, after investigation of the publisher's lists and other records, the average circulation of the New Zealand Railways Magazine for the 12 months ended May, 1928, is in excess of 20,000 copies per month during the whole of that period and that, during the months of February and March, 1929, the circulation has increased to over 22,500 copies.
Controller and Auditor-General
“How wondrous calm and fair it must be Here when the glorious moonbeams lie In silver floods on thy shining face And the soft winds wander in whispers by—” —Agnes Neale.
(Govt. Publicity photo)
Beautiful Whangarei Harbour, a popular tourist resort, reached from Russell, Bay of Islands, North Auckland, New Zealand.
The breaking down of barriers between nations through the ever-increasing ease with which travel on and over the earth's surface is accomplished, has had a beneficial effect upon the individuals composing them. It has widened their understanding and increased their toleration. Similarly, the diffusion of education within each nation has made social life and intercourse easier. It now has its field of action rather on a gradual inclined plane than on a series of steep steps.
In the industrial world the application of scientific research to the principles of employment has shewn the need for changes in methods of management conformable with the ameliorating process going on in social life. Psychological studies have shewn how helpful a cheerful frame of mind is to successful operation, and much thought has been devoted to devising means where-by those engaged in industry may be kept happy in their employment.
Warmth, light, and orderliness, rest periods and pleasant surroundings all aid towards removing the irksomeness of the ancient curse of Adam.
Although the Railways of this country have not a special “Sociological Department,” such as is found in some ambitious industrial companies, there is no feature of modern sociological welfare work which has not received attention here. Our new workshops have devices for removing dust and gases; they have shower-baths and fire-brigades, luncheon rooms and catering, apprentice classes and first-aid outfits, libraries, and homes for employees. The present railway sick benefit fund carries a most generous subsidy to assist those suffering from sickness or injury. All this is practical sociological work, and is in line with what current social ideas hold to be good for society in general. It supplies the framework within which opportunity is provided for healthful expansion.
But the introduction of the social element supplies probably the greatest help in making the day's work go with a swing. In a widespread organisation such as the Railways this is particularly the case. There are many places in New Zealand where small communities are composed almost entirely of railway folk. They have to make their own amusements—and some of them do it very well. The Department has done a great deal in the way of supplying social halls in many parts of the system to encourage the social side of life amongst its employees. In the larger centres, as at the principal workshops, well laid out grounds have been provided, with ample facilities for sports, and lawns and gardens help to make the
Speaking at the Railway Officers’ Institute reunion in Auckland, Mr. H. H. Sterling, General Manager of Railways, complimented the Institute on their breadth of outlook. He said that the words on the toast list concerning the Institute made one of the finest texts he knew of: “The Institute still maintains that dignity of outlook and responsibility which has characterised it from its inception; it recognises that the success of its membership is coincident with the progress of the railway service of New Zealand.
“I feel that if members of the Institute live up to that text, I, as General Manager, have a comparatively easy task before me,” Mr. Sterling said. “The Department then would give a measure of transport service satisfactory to the people owning the Railways and to do the management. I am glad to know that I have your confidence, and as far as I am able to come in contact with members of the staff they have all of mine.”
Mr. John Cameron, District Traffic Manager of Railways for the Wellington district retired last week on superannuation after completing 40 years in the service of the Department.
Mr Cameron joined the Railway service in 1889, and, after filling, with distinction, many important positions (including those of Assistant Traffic Manager at Auckland, and District Traffic Manager for the Ohakune Section), he was appointed to the high position which he recently vacated.
This country has been fortunate in the calibre of its chief departmental officers and Mr. Cameron may be added to the list of those men who, by their outstanding ability and unselfish devotion to duty, have written their names indelibly in the records of the various State Departments.
The position of District Traffic Manager in a centre such as Wellington is one of great responsibility which is ever increasing because of the revolution taking place in the transport world and the organising difficulties associated therewith.
Mr. Cameron gave much time and thought to the changing transport conditions of the times, and he was most successful in retaining and fostering new business for the Railways.
He was recognised throughout the Railway service as being right in the front as a transport officer, his technical knowledge and capacity in attention to detail being of quite an exceptional nature, whilst his relations with his large staff as well as with the public were always most cordial.
In the retirement of Mr. Cameron the Railway Department loses the services of one of its most efficient officers and his severance from the service will be keenly felt alike by the staff and by those members of the public with whom he came in contact.
A recent visitor to New Zealand was Mr. F. L. Castle, General Manager of an English railway signal company, who spent a month touring the North and South Islands. Mr. Castle has an intimate knowledge of the railway systems in the principal countries throughout the world and his opinion of our system is therefore of more than usual interest.
“New Zealand is exceedingly well advanced in electric signalling, and has little to learn from the signalling devices of other countries,” said Mr. Castle. Generally, he considered the railways were well run and the comfort and facilities offered compared more than favourably with those of other countries where railways of similar gauge were in operation. Considering the curves which were necessary to negotiate and the gradients in New Zealand, he was impressed with the degree of comfort offered.
“People have a habit of criticising their railways instead of setting out to help them,” said Mr. Castle. “The man in the street should not ‘grouse’ that the Department does not pay, but set himself out to do something for the good of the railways and the country. If he sends his goods by road the railways cannot pay. They belong to the country, and the profits are not distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends as they are in England and in many other countries, but are for the benefit of the country as a whole.”
The “Best Friend” was built by the West Point Foundry at New York, in 1830, and put into operation on the Charleston & Hamburg R.R., where it hauled the first train of cars in America. It had a vertical boiler and the cylinders, set obliquely, were six inch diameter by six inch stroke. The wheels, all of which were drivers, were made of wood, with iron hubs and tires. In terms of present day computations, the tractive force, with 50 pounds boiler pressure, was about 400 pounds. It weighed four-and-a-half tons. When its boiler exploded, due to the negro fireman placing his weight on the safety valve to prevent the steam escaping, the first locomotive boiler explosion in America was recorded.
(From “The Development of the Locomotive” published by The Central Steel Company, Massillon, Ohio, U.S.A.).
I recently had an opportunity of addressing members of the Railway Officers’ Institute at their annual social function at Auckland and I expressed a few thoughts on the matter of organisation. I regard this as a subject of such importance that I think I might well embody in this message, for general information, a few of the thoughts to which I then gave expression.
In the course of my discussions with both staff and public whenever the matter of organisation of the Department has come up, it has seemed to be regarded as some special prerogative or exclusive concern of the general management. Such an idea involves a misconception that, I think, goes to the very root of our efficiency. True, the general management lays down the general lines of the organisation of the Department, and an inadequate scheme so laid down might well be fatal to the working of the railway system; but the best scheme that might be laid down by the head of the Department will be ineffective if the organising activities of the Department's staff stop at that point. The railways are essentially a system, and their best results can be obtained only by systematic working. Organisation is nothing else but the bringing into harmony of the functions of the various parts of the system. To bring about this harmony involves the organising efforts, not of any one man, even though he be the head of the Department, but of every man on the railway staff.
Organisation runs through groups right down to individuals. Controlling officers organise the work of individuals in the groups, and higher officers are charged also with the harmonising of the work of the groups. The point I wish to emphasise is the necessity for everyone of the staff to realise that he must be an organiser. Even a man who is alone on a station has a duty to so organise his work that he will fit in with the general scheme. Lack of organisation on his part will cause disorganisation in the system. The man whose work is not ready for a train at the time the train is due to depart disorganises the work of the guard and enginedriver and of the staff at the other stations who have organised their work in anticipation of the train arriving on time. Organisation is interactionary throughout the parts of the system from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top. Disorganisation or lack of proper organisation at any point in the system has its inevitable reflection on the work of the system as a whole.
Another aspect of the responsibility of the staff in regard to organisation is that no system of organisation should be regarded as permanent. It is not safe to conclude that the organisation that might meet requirements to-day will do so for all time. The arrangement of duties is of such importance that it should be kept under constant review so that it may be speedily adapted to meet changing conditions.
A thorough-going degree of organisation operating throughout the system means order in our efforts, the absence of organisation means chaos, and between the two lie the varying degrees of muddlement. The work of organisation is everybody's job.
General Manager
Do/sc you ever pause, dear reader, in your pursuit of fame and fireworks, to contemplate those opti-mystic words: “Make me a child again, just for to-night.” How often have you heard this sophomorical supplication raised like the cry of a radio-uncle sore smitten with infantile paralysis in the child-welfare department, or a son of Haggis, who would, perchance, qualify for a half-price ticket as an applauder of Lauder.
From Greenland's ice-cream fountains to India's rubber bands, opti-maniacs pay good money for a bad imitation of Youth. They hie them to Vienna to get a brace of chimp's lymphs welded onto their conjunctional isthmuses, in the belief that, by monkeying with glands they may become impregnated with the germs of juvenility. True, some prefer to accept the art of plastic surgery at its face value, inclining to the belief that by wearing their ears back to front, bending the nose, putting a crimp in the cranium, and generally upholstering the facial furnishings with pseudo-moles and embroidered eyebrows, they can put back the hands of time on their clocks, and regain those careless days of soapless childhood.
Nay, dear reader, mother knows best—youth is not a matter of physique or physic; it cannot be recalled at will like the lingering flavour of garlic; neither can it be regained by wearing cast-off twiddly-bits from the zoo, nor by being insulated with Dunlop arteries.
Youth is of the arts rather than of the arteries. In speaking of rejuvenation, we do not refer to the art of make-believe or make-up, once practised by the female “juvenile lead,” in those dear old bellow-dramas we used to revel in, with titles like Yeast Lynn, Greased Sin, ‘Ell in a Glim, and The Face Round the Bathroom Door. Even the “juvenile lead” realised that rejuvenation was a matter not to be taken lightly, especially in view of her tonnage and the fact that her vocal vibrations were normally of the variety that caused movable objects to rock on their bases, bitumen to bulge, and strong men to quiver from end to end. But she, dear soul, refused to grow old, although foully treated by wicked uncles and beaten by ferocious step-mothers in a manner calculated to strain the rivets in the hull of an armour-plated armadillo.
Neither do we refer to the methods of rejuvenation urged by certain prophylactic propagandists in the monthly magazines, who shoot off salvos of subtle suggestion concerning our inner histories, which even the modern biographer might (and might not), hesitate to divulge—interrogational insinuendos, such as:—
At a curse-ory glance, such instances of human frailty as the aforementioned, have no apparent bearing on the question of youth; but the altruistic advertiser knows his homeopaths, and hastens to point out how, by such errors as wearing a hissute hiatus under the hat, and allowing our luncheons to rest heavily on our conscience, we are beating the basinette, cheating childhood, and throwing away a golden opportunity of living according to Plunket.
Believe me, dear reader, Youth depends on none of these artful aids. Youth is not in the cells, but in the cerebrum. It is only kept in the mind by keeping it in mind. It can be regained, once lost, solely by glueing the optic of optimism earnestly to the wrong end of Time's telescope and thus keeping the soda-fountain of the soul permanently refreshed with youthful effervescence.
Indulgence in retrospect is not a futility or senility—it is the secret of eternal youth. In those rare moments of sanity, snatched from an existence satiated with dough-getters, synthetic sinners, strong strident men, and the wool of the bull, an existence in which Youth and Beauty is sacrificed on the cash-register of Loot and Booty, let us slip back into mental
Eat—not merely eat, but Eat!!!
Let us tear each other's collars off, tender the provocative “skatty blow”; stalk by night, the forbidden apple to its native lair; dodge the daily task; scorn the weaker sex ruthlessly; yelp for no apparent reason; and generally get back to fundamentals, which is the real secret of youth, both eternal and internal—let's!
No one really knows who started the advertising bawl arolling, and no one can predict when—if ever—it will stop. Some assert that it was the work of a certain Mr. Barnum, the King of Beasts—the man who put the hippo in hippodrome, spotted the leopard, circuited the circus, lassooed the Ilama, put the gumbo on Jumbo, made allegations about alligators, gave talks on auks, knew all about guns, and introduced five hundred specimens of fearsome but jaded fauna to a pop-eyed populace.
Everybody who knows a circus from a surplice has heard about Mr. Barnum, but although it must be admitted that he possessed the faculty of forcing continuous draughts of air through his vocal chords in such a manner as to produce a plethora of personal plaudit, and although, by perpetrating publicity perpetually, he left his imprint on the pages of natural and
You will recollect, intelligent reader, that man was adjured not so long ago, to “hide not his light under a bushel,” an injunction which has since proved to be a superfluity of advice; for history does not disclose that man has ever been in danger of snuffing his illumination with a bushel, or even a ton. In fact hundreds of tons of reinforced concrete, arranged in tiers and provided with sound-proof doors, have proved insufficient to keep within bounds his egoistic emanations. You may inter him in an ornamental sarcophagus of stone and steel, and still he booms—in truth, the larger the tomb the louder the boom. Booming, however, is one of the necessities of emancipated existence.
The man who is not a boomer is a “bloomer.” On this cosmic battlefield of boomers, no individual who has anything to sell, say, or even give away, can afford to emulate the dumbwaiter, for he who is dumb awaits in vain the falling of the fruits of silence—silence is no longer golden.
Booming, commonly known as advertising, is the art of titillating the subconscious unconsciousness of the many-headed with torrents of terminalogical tintinnabulations, or (to use the vernacular of the Excited States), “slinging the blobs an earful.”
The art of spreading the gospel of gold-getting is applied to innumerable commodities, from the ferro-concrete tooth-pick to the panoramic pretensions of whole slabs of Mother Earth; but advertisers themselves can, broadly and loudly, be divided into two classes, i.e., the Advertootler and the Advertiddler.
The Advertootler puts the printed word across in no uncertain type; he advances in double column, sends up “flares,” and slings over ink bombs continually. His slogan is “spare the cash and crash the splash.”
On the other hand, the Advertiddler tiddles timidly with his munitions. He is no advertising astronomer; he possesses no appreciation of the wonders of “space.” His motto is “An inch at a time saves nine,” forgetting the truism that “An advert, a day keeps the bailiff away.”
Perhaps an ad-verse or two from the pen of Allfired Noise, the Bard of Rave-on, might throw some lightning on the subject of “space.” Let her go—allegretto!
“Guys with the goods,” who are after the “dust,”
Boom like a boomerang—“Babble or Bust!”
You will no doubt gather from these stunning stanzas, dizzy reader, that, to keep pace with the whirring wheels of commerce it is necessary to step on the pedal of the press, race on with rhetoric, and hit up the headlines. Fail to accelerate, and you miss the bus to Easy Street.
Railway travellers are of two varieties—train-catchers and time-stretchers. Train-catchers call for no comment except that they catch trains, but time-stretchers are ambulating anachronisms who misconstrue the term tempus fugit as meaning “time-for-another.” They likewise believe, probably, that sotto voce is Alcoholese for “the voice of the drunkard,” that a bigamist is a big-game hunter, and that a basinette is a musical instrument. When you pause to consider the matter they are seen to be not altogether in error.
Speaking of missing the bus, reminds us that there are people who find it impossible to catch a train. They may catch colds with impunity, catch fish with bated breath, catch rats without cats, and “catch it” from their nearest and dearest. But these people, when it comes to connecting with the rolling stock, are as futile as a cow-catcher without an engine. Professor Clutch, a well known exponent of the art of tying ring adversaries in lover's knots, was like that. In his professional capacity he could catch anything on legs and tie it up so adroitly that for days the victim would have to look in the glass to manipulate his handkerchief successfully, and yet Clutch could not catch trains. Train after train he missed. For years he has been trying to move to another town, but he is always late for the last train and misses the next. The authorities refused him permission to camp on the platform, so it is easy to predict that he will continue to reside at the old address, Sine Die, which is the name of his residence. People forget that a locomotive is a lady of her word, and that when she advertises that she intends to become unstationary at 2.2 she is not toot-tooting for fun, or merely letting off steam.
In an address at Hastings to the touring Southland farmers who, 300 strong, have just made a comprehensive tour of the Dominion, under the care of the Railway Department, the General Manager of Railways (Mr. H. H. Sterling) gave some interesting particulars regarding the genesis and purposes of the movement and the methods by which it had been developed to its present stage of popularity.
Mr. Sterling said that a number of years ago a request was made for the granting of a general issue of excursion fares during the winter months. This was in order that the farming community might have the benefit of winter travel at low rates equivalent to the privilege granted those other sections of the public that were able to take their holidays when cheap travel facilities were available, as at Easter and during the period of the Christmas and New Year excursion-ticket issue.
The Department had not been able to agree to the above proposal because it was not practicable to confine a general reduction in rate solely to the class for whose benefit the concession was asked, and there would not be sufficient numbers travelling together to justify the granting of concession fares. Thus the effect would have been to lower the general rate of travel for everyone, and thereby impose an undue financial strain upon the Department. Various plans were put forward, by Farmers’ Unions and others, in an endeavour to reach such an arrangement as would enable the farming community to gain the benefit of cheap travel at the season of the year when they could most conveniently leave their farms, and, at the same time, provide adequate protection for the ordinary passenger revenue of the Department.
At last, about three years ago, a plan was evolved and put into operation for excursions of farmers by special trains. “This,” said Mr. Sterling, “was arranged whilst I was with the Railway Department, and the first experiment was made when a party of farmers was sent from Hamilton, in the Waikato district, to Hawera, in South Taranaki.
“The trip was a success in every respect. It ensured for the Department a sufficient volume of traffic to justify the running of an excursion train at remunerative low-fare rates and satisfied the desires of the farming community in one district for group travel at concession rates to a particular, place and for a specific purpose. The result of the experiment was to indicate that an equitable method of meeting the situation had been discovered.
“By a strange coincidence, by the time the first excursion was arranged, I was myself out of the Department and, as General Manager of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company with head-quarters at Hamilton, was in a position to see matters from the other side of the fence—that of the farmers. I was thus able to assist in forwarding the movement from outside the Department, and was very pleased to do so, as I realised the great benefits which facilities of this kind would confer upon the farming community.
“From that time the movement has never looked back. It has developed stage by stage until this year a most ambitious programme of group travel by farmers at reduced rates between one province and another and between one Island and another has been carried through. In arranging for and carrying out these excursions the Railway Department is truly functioning in its proper capacity as a service department of state; but it is also able to run these excursions on an economically sound basis. This is, of course, the ideal combination of purposes to be served by a public utility such as ours.
“We have welcomed the interest taken, and assistance given, in the matter by the Farmers’ Unions throughout the Dominion, and the opportunity for personal interest and personal association as between the farmers and ourselves, which such excursions have provided. We have set out to supply a service that will be of practical benefit to those who take advantage of the opportunities afforded.
“I am a firm believer in the principle of personal contact in the conducting of business, and always welcome any opportunity of dealing directly with the Department's customers. I have, therefore,
“I have been delighted to meet you and find from the universal expressions of appreciation given by everyone with whom I have personally conversed that you have enjoyed every minute of your tour. It is particularly pleasing to know that the personal interest taken in you by our Passenger Agents who have accompanied you on the tour has served the purpose of making the tour enjoyable by removing from your shoulders all responsibility for the minor incidentals of travel which often serve to detract from the full enjoyment of a tour of the kind. It is good to know that the direct association between yourselves, as representative men and women of the rural community, and ourselves as the national transport service, have been of a mutually helpful and informative character.”
Mr. Sterling said that the Department had two great responsibilities—to provide efficient transport and to secure the best possible financial returns so that the burdens of the taxpayer may be lightened. It was impossible to develop without having, to some extent, to draw upon the taxpayer. He considered that the Department had fulfilled both the responsibilities referred to. It was now giving a service which was meeting with an increased public approbation, and it was augmenting its revenue.
Southern Farmers Tour The North Island.
Members of the Southland Farmers’ party who recently toured the North Island, on the Whangarei station platform, North Auckland.
The officers of the Department tried to think of the railways in terms of national service, and the public should do likewise. Excursions such as that of the Southlanders afforded the means of industrial and of social advancement. A great many national and parochial disagreements arose from a lack of understanding of the other man's point of view, and the more people were brought together, as by excursions, and the more they came into contact and exchanged ideas with one another, the more would mutual regard and understanding arise among them.
Mr. Sterling was heartily applauded at the end of his speech, and was thanked by Mr. D. Dickie on behalf of the farmers, for the kindness that he and his staff had shown.
“I am confident that the railways are once more coming into their own,” said the General Manager, Mr. H. H. Sterling, in a recent address at the Commercial Travellers’ Club in Auckland.
“I do not say that in antagonism to other forms of transport, but I do feel that the position of the railways in this, as in many other countries, has been largely subject to misunder-standing.”
Mr Sterling said that while the railways accounts had shown an improvement this year, he did not think they should be judged entirely by that standard. He was inclined rather to judge the effectiveness of the system by the measure of satisfaction it gave to the people. In that respect he considered an advance had been made during the year. Service to the public could not be shown in terms of money. There were certain forms of service carried out by the railways which gave no return in money, but which were indispensable for the smooth working of industry and the needs of the people.
The Department was now operating under a new administrative policy and Mr. Sterling appealed for a chance for the new system to prove itself. The railways were a national institution, and as such had to operate for the benefit of the country. This was a policy he always followed.
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We have pleasure in reproducing, from the July issue of the New Zealand Railway Review, the following appreciative reference to the coloured contour maps of New Zealand (featuring particularly the railway system of the Dominion) recently published by the Department's Publicity Branch:—
“The Publicity Branch of the Railways Department, which shows great enterprise and originality in many directions, has produced nothing more attractive than the two large maps of New Zealand now being published. The railway system stands out prominently, as it should, but the unique feature of these maps, which makes them of far greater value than the usual productions, is that a considerable amount of knowledge of the country's configuration has been utilised in clearly showing the mountain ranges and the plains. By adapting a method of coloured shading, the mountains stand out apparently in bold relief, and show at a glance the characteristics of New Zealand. These maps should be placed in every school, for they constitute a great advance on anything formerly issued, and will serve as a very effective reminder that the Dominion, though a difficult country for internal communications, is splendidly served by its railway system.”
[It is pleasing to record a heavy and continuous demand for these maps throughout New Zealand. They are available on application to any stationmaster at 2/- each.—Ed. N.Z.R.M.]
The ninth annual “Careful Crossing Campaign,” which is sponsored by the American Railway Association, is now in full swing. During the months of June, July, August and September each year all of the important railways in the United States co-operate in this campaign, which has for its object the reduction of accidents at level crossings.
This year the Pennsylvania Railroad is distributing throughout the territory served by its lines, 120,000 “Cross Crossings Cautiously” pamphlets, as well as 100,000 posters.
The posters invite attention to the fact that 2,568 persons were killed and 6,667 injured in accidents at railroad crossings in the United States last year.
In 1,200 cases, or 21 per cent. of the total crossing accidents, automobiles were driven against the side of trains moving over, or standing at, crossings. It is pointed out that this type of accident was responsible for the deaths of 259 persons and the injury of 1,701 others.
Any reader who cares to ask for information upon points of railway work in regard to which he desired enlightenment, is invited to forward his queries to the Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Head Office, Wellington. Replies will be inserted in these columns.
One way and another politicians worry much, but perhaps they do not worry so much about the people as the people worry about the politicians. Now and then you see a Party worrying to get a magnetic plank into its platform, and soon worrying a great deal more to get it out, when it turns into a very uncomfortable springboard threatening to bounce its makers into dangerous waters.
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A man has to be very wary lest his political platform should turn into his own political gallows. As soon as he begins nailing down the planks somebody secretly becomes busy underneath with a silent fret-saw, and a confederate is ready to slip a noose around the neck of the platformer when an opportune time comes for sliding the bolt of the trap-door. It is easy to stand on a political platform, but much easier to fall from one.
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Mother Hubbard, the cupboard, the dog, and the bone, or no bone! Somebody will write a big book about the matter—perhaps it is already written—showing that it is an allegory of life, with Mother Hubbard as any kind of public benefactor, from a politician to an up-lifter, and the public as the dog, for circumstances sometimes oblige the world's politicians to make nothing seem to be a bone, and a bone to look like a hunk of undercut.
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“Committees are the invention of the devil,” is a saying credited to the creator of a great religious and social organisation which is working to-day on a world-wide front. The leader's galvanic drive made him impatient of the vexatious hitches and delays usually inseparable from committee procedure. He was ever eager to take the shortest way between two points, and he knew that committees would involve him in a tortuous course. Therefore he rendered to the devil the thing that was allegedly the devil's—and did without committees, and did very well.
All over the world committees have been the cemeteries of enthusiasm. Many a good idea has died very young in the desert stretches of committees. That extreme of caution, which is often the first cousin of cowardice, may be wedded to inertia in committees, which are not usually the collective wisdom of their components but the consolidated and confounded reluctance to take definite action.
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One sees wild crazes for changes in educational methods in the apparent belief that any kind of change is good, even if it is a change for the worse; but on that point the lines of Lowell hold good:
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Altogether, the world's educationists are much too apt to regard the school pupil as raw material for experiments—and the pedagogues “get away with it,” as our American cousins have taught us to say. The parents are toddling along in the background hoping for the best.
However, they are too apathetic to do either, even if they were invited to do so—which, of course, they are not.
The Age of Analysis set in long ago, but it is only a few years since its inquisitiveness and assertiveness became blatantly obtrusive. Reading as deeply as his wits will permit into the scientific mazes of words, the average man is left with an impression that whatever is is not, that matter does not matter; in fact that matter is not matter at all, but a mere swirl of ions and electrons, and that he himself is just a case of fussy electricity; and that the whole world is just a jumble of emanations, vibrations, and wave-lengths of ether and other things which do not really exist.
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What is to be done with all the knowledge when the last and least of the ions has yielded the last of its secrets? When all movements of the heavenly bodies have been calculated and charted? When every comet's tail has been accurately measured? Some of that knowledge may help to reduce the cost of living, but much of it will not; some of it may increase human happiness, but much of it will not. There will be a big surplus of knowledge which will be merely an intellectual toy for new generations.
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While some folk are yearning for the reaction from this restless noisy epoch—with the world and his wife shouting at each other from the ends of the earth, mostly about tragedies and miscellaneous messes, domestic, social, political, international—and watching for announcements of ships or buildings guaranteed to be free from wireless and gramophones, one may read of reactions against the opposite kind of living,
New Zealand Railway Locomotives.
Class A.B. 4-6-2 type locomotive built in the Department's workshops. Principal particulars: Boiler pressure 180 lbs. per sq. in.; cylinders 17in. × 26in.; diameter of drivers 4ft. 6in.; tractive effort 20,000 lbs.; total heating surface 1,700 sq. ft. The locomotive is fitted with Walschaert valve gear and its total weight in working trim is 84 tons 15 cwt.
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The encouragement given by “Punch” (London) to jokes about the bagpipes indicates an opinion of the editor that Scotland's national instrument or weapon is one of the worst inventions. But is it an invention? It may be rather a discovery. Somebody may have trodden on something squidgy in the sea or in the swamp and got a notion from it. “Or trodden on a cat,” you interject. Well, there are lots of things I like less than the bagpipes—and the saxophone is one of them, and the bass-viol (played solo by an unsoulful philosopher) is another. One way or another the bagpipes will stir you—perhaps goad you or erode you—but the bass-viol will numb you and dumb you and make you feel like a vanished pomp or pump of yesterday.
The Pride Of The Southern Railway Of England.
“Atlantic Coast Express” leaving Waterloo Station, London.
“‘Gallant little Belgium’ leads the world in the employment of light railways for aiding the farmer, and everyone interested in the development of agricultural transport should become acquainted with the wonderful work of the sixty centimetre railway network serving the Belgium farm lands”—says our special London Correspondent, in his current review of British and Continental railway developments.
Statistical data concerning railways is not usually of especial appeal to the rank and file worker. A few enthusiastic statisticians there are on every line who know no greater joy than to spend long hours playfully juggling with average train and wagon loads, ton-miles, and all the other ingenious tools of their craft, but most railwaymen are wisely content to leave the close study of statistics to the expert. In such hands statistics can be of the utmost value in furthering railway progress: in the hands of the inexperienced, conjuring with elaborate statistical data is frequently productive of distorted views, quite foreign to the true state of affairs. Simple figures relating to railway operation, however, are worthy of the attention of one and all engaged in the transportation industry, and in this connection there have recently been put out interesting statistics on general lines concerning the four big railway systems that serve the Homeland.
Railways have now been serving the British public for more than one hundred years. Railway working at Home involves over £1,200,000,000 of capital, and the steel tracks seam the whole of Britain from end to end. The track, stations and rolling-stock of the British railways cost more than £1,000,000,000, and some £40,000,000 is spent annually on maintenance and renewals. The railway tracks of the British Isles would stretch twice round the world, and the number of passengers conveyed by the four big group lines each year is equivalent to twenty-seven journeys for every man, woman and child in the country. Each year passenger and freight trains run more than 400,000,000 miles, or approximately equivalent to two journeys from the earth to the sun and back. Three-quarters of the coal produced in Britain passes from pit to consumer by rail, while every year there are handled 65,000,000 tons of stone, iron and other minerals, and 60,000,000 tons of general merchandise. Immense quantities of fish, meat and fruit, are dealt with in train loads, and, annually, some 300,000,000 gallons of milk are conveyed over the Home railways.
Time was when a railway was regarded solely as a carrier of mankind and mankind's belongings. By degrees, the activities of the railways have expanded in a hundred-and-one directions, and to-day a progressive railway engages in many important activities far removed from the simple act of transportation. Many of these subsidiary activities rank among the most profitable branches of modern railway operation. Thus we find the big railways of to-day performing valuable public service and reaping considerable profit out of the ownership of
Until a few years ago most of the railway hotels in Britain were located in London and
In The Heart Of Industrial England.
Discharging New Zealand Produce at Manchester Docks.
Typical of the energy with which the Home railways develop any subsidiary service of promise is the whole-hearted manner in which the big lines are entering the road transport field. All the systems are making fullest use of the Government powers secured last August, and are operating large numbers of road services for the conveyance of passengers and merchandise. In many instances road services are actually being run between points already served by rail. The main idea in cases of this character is to reduce transit times and effect cuts in handling. Merchandise to and from specified areas is centralised upon conveniently situated
A Typical British Goods Station.
Somer's Town Freight Terminal, London.
Hand-in-hand with the development of road services, the Home railways are placing a new facility at the disposal of the trading community. This is what is styled the railhead distribution service. Traffic is despatched in bulk by rail to storage depots on the railway premises, for distribution therefrom in small lots by road motor service to meet retail requirements. The road motors are operated by the railways themselves. Another facility associated with this movement is the reception by the railways of traffic for bulk storage and subsequent delivery as and when required by retailers. In other words, the Home railways now act at these railhead depots as manufacturers’ agents, and perform all the usual services of such agents, at a reasonable fee. Here, without doubt, is an especially worth-while activity in this present era of road transport competition.
No railwayman needs reminding of the important part played in railway operation by the goods department. Passenger movement is much more in the public eye than the transport of freight, but goods department working represents equally as vital a part of railway operations. A most interesting development in freight working now taking place in Europe is the consideration given by the railways to the employment of two-storey goods stations to serve the larger centres. Germany is to the fore in this experiment, and already several of the older city goods stations on the German railways have been converted to the double-deck principle. In the new two-storey depots one floor is usually employed for the receipt of incoming freight and its unloading and transfer to road motor for delivery to consignees; the other floor is utilised for the receipt of outward freight from road motor, and its loading and despatch by rail. Close connection is maintained between the two storeys through the agency of mechanically operated belts and conveyers.
By the installation of ramps on a gentle gradient provision is made for road motors to reach the upper floor. The lay-out of the depot usually provides for one central bench for accommodating the freight traffic, with a railway track on one side and a road motor track on the other. By the adoption of the two-deck principle, difficulties now experienced in extending goods depots in many large cities promise, in the near future, largely to be overcome.
Modern transportation devices include no more useful piece of equipment than the ocean-going train ferry. We have several interesting examples of the train ferry in Europe, notable among these being that connecting Harwich with Zeebrugge, and the very efficient Baltic train ferries linking Sweden with Germany. Now, new train ferry routes are contemplated, the most important being a train ferry to connect the port of Immingham, in Lincolnshire, with Gothenburg, in Sweden. It is proposed that two ferries be employed for the purpose of making three return journeys across the North Sea every week between the points named. The ferries would be about 445ft. long, and be equipped with turbine machinery of 7,200 h.p., giving a normal speed of 16 1/2 knots. Each would be capable of accommodating about sixty fully loaded goods wagons, or 300 passengers. Through running of freight between England and Sweden would be of the greatest service, and in view of the marked success that has been achieved by the Harwich-Zeebrugge ocean-going train ferry, there would seem to be a distinct future for new links of this type connecting Britain with the Continent.
In “Gallant Little Belgium.”
Grand Place, Brussels.
The Harwich-Zeebrugge train ferry is operated jointly by the L. and N.E. Railway, of England, and the Belgian State Railways. It has performed much useful service in through movement of perishable traffic between Britain and the rest of Europe, and, incidentally, has done much to aid in the post-war restoration of the Belgian State Railways. The Belgian Railways suffered greatly during the war, but a wonderful improvement has been effected by the Brussels transportation authorities during the past few years. The State Railways, operated as a commercial concern on similar lines to the New Zealand Government Railways, are now on a paying basis, and great extensions everywhere are being undertaken. At Antwerp new docks and shipping facilities are being provided, main lines are being widened, and many additional miles of light railway are being built to serve the rural areas. These light lines, usually of sixty centimetre (about 2ft.) gauge, are a feature of transport in Belgium. They are controlled by the Sociètè Nationale des Chemins de Fer Vicinaux, and there are in all 2,820 miles of light railway serving farms and rural communities. Both steam and electricity are employed as haulage agents, and almost every farm of any size has its own “back-yard siding” giving connection with the standard gauge railway system. “Gallant little Belgium” leads the world in the employment of light railways for aiding the farmer, and everyone interested in the development of agricultural transport should become acquainted with the wonderful work of the sixty centimetre railway network serving the Belgium farm lands.
The official welcome given to the officers and crew of the German cruiser Emden on the 8th July at the Government luncheon in Parliament House, Wellington, was one of those honourable gestures towards world peace that are becoming increasingly significant of settled conditions and revised convictions. All this augurs well for the future.
The first toasts honoured were “The King” and “The President of the Republic of Germany.”
The Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Ward) said it was a great pleasure for him to propose the toast of the guests, coupled with the name of the Commander of the Emden. “The Emden,” said Sir Joseph, “is the first warship of the German State to visit these waters since the war. I trust, however, that the welcome our guests have experienced both at Auckland and here in Wellington will have proved to them that the people of New Zealand, no less than the people of the Old Country, and of the other civilised communities throughout the world, are anxious to recognise the bonds of common humanity, and to endeavour, in co-operation with their fellow-men, to build a better and a safer world for the generations to come.
Where All Is Peace And Beauty.
A delightful view of Mable Island, Picton Harbour, South Island
“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who spoke last night at the Rhodes Scholarship Trust dinner at Oxford, welcomed the announcement previously made by Mr. Baldwin that the trust was going to renew to Germany scholarships which were abolished during the war. ‘We have with us to-night some old German Rhodes Scholars,’ said the Prince. ‘We welcome them back to Oxford most heartily. I myself have had the pleasure this evening of shaking hands with an old Magdalen man who was a German Rhodes Scholar, whom I had not seen since 1914. In this building and in the colleges there will be found on the rolls of honour the names of German Rhodes Scholars who fell in the war, which shows that this foundation is not based on any narrow racial feeling, and that its ideals are those which all may follow, forgetful of past enmities and reviving old friendships.'”
Sir Joseph said that those words conveyed the feeling of New Zealanders and he felt sure they were re-echoed by the people throughout the country.
(Photo, Elsie K. Morton.)
The Kairaki Poplar Grove (2 1/2 miles long) near Kaiapoi, South Island.
In the following article, Miss Elsie K. Morton presents our readers with a word-picture of the beautiful sea-and-mountain road that now supplies the only connecting link between Canterbury and the Northern Provinces of Marlborough and Nelson.
You can, of course, make the trip from Christchurch to Wellington in the ordinary way, by rail through the electrified tunnel of the Port Hills, a night on the ferry from Lyttelton, breakfast in Wellington next morning. Very convenient and prosaic, no exertion whatsoever, no loss of time. Thousands of passengers go that way every week; the confirmed traveller does it again and again as a matter of course.
But a few others, tourists from overseas, New Zealanders who want to see all that is worth seeing in their own country, add a couple of days to their itinerary, and set out on one of the most interesting motor tours in New Zealand, the 245 mile run from Christchurch to Picton, via Kaikoura and Blenheim.
The morning is one of sparkling brightness, crisp with the tang of late autumn. Down through the pretty suburban district of Papanui, past miles of gardens and cheerful bungalows, out on the smooth highway, and northward through Kaiapoi to the vast level stretch of the Canterbury Plains. Kaiapoi is the home of one of New Zealand's most famous woollen mills, but its outstanding feature, from the tourist's point of view, is a magnificent avenue of poplars stretching in straight line for over two miles to Kairaki Beach.
Out into the open country we pass swiftly, and for mile upon mile, we speed through some of the richest land in all New Zealand, the fertile reaches of the Canterbury Plains, with their immeasurable wealth of golden grain, luxuriant pastures, and flocks of sheep. Down on the western horizon gleams the mighty wall of the Southern Alps, a shining barrier of glittering sword-peaks upthrust into the cloud-curtains of the sky. Just ahead is one of the lesser giants of the Plains, Mount Grey, bold in outline, red-brown in the glow of sunshine, with deep blue shadows in the sharp-etched valleys and ravines.
By mid-day, we are at Half-way House, Domett, where a brief stop is made for lunch. Then on again, through the hills of Cheviot. The glory of the Alps is left behind; they are just a jagged edge of silver now, a shining shield close-bent over the far horizon. We are in a world of little hills, the wonderful hills of Cheviot, all dimpling in the sunshine, looking for all the world as though some Olympian jester had moulded them in brown dough when our earth was in the melting pot, kneaded and pressed the little soft lumps, and then scattered them with a mighty “plop!” all over the edge of the North Canterbury Plains. These, surely, are the “little hills” of the Psalmist; they look as though at any moment they might skip off their bases, clap their hands and sing! Very rich is this pastoral district of Cheviot, once the estate of one of Canterbury's pioneer sheep kings, now cut up into smaller farms.
Our route takes us across the Waiau River, where we have the unique experience of travelling on the railway track. A few miles farther on we come to Parnassus, the southern rail-head of the uncompleted South Island Main Trunk line, divided from the northern terminus, Wharanui, by a gap of eighty miles. There are great sheep stations in these Parnassus hills, beautiful homes and lovely gardens, but from the road you see only heavy plantations of fir trees and acacia, flax-filled gullies and broken country.
The only sign of life on the long, empty road is a travelling grocer's pantechnicon pulled up beside a wayside home; a motor van with shuttered sides rolled back to show shelves laden with bottles of jam and pickles, tins of meat
Soon the last vestige of civilisation and man's habitation is left behind. The lone road winds ahead, through the Conway valley across the surging river, down through fertile Oaro to the sea. Always ahead are the towering heights of the Seaward Kaikouras, black against the clear sky, with thin silver dazzle where the snow rests on the highest peaks.
In from the sea again, and into the Hundalee Hills, sharp-peaked, thickly wooded, out by a narrow road that twists and turns most gaily along the bare edge of precipitous cliffs.
The Centre Of A Rich Farming District.
The township of Domett, half way between Christchurch and Kaikoura. The railway line is on the left of the picture.
Now the world is lit with the dusky flare of sunset. Broad shafts of light strike down the slopes of the distant hills, flooding the valleys with waves of amber light. The high snow peaks burn with sudden fire; the glow dies away; the rugged heights become deeply, darkly blue, remote, like the indigo depths that lie beneath storm-shadowed seas… Now we are out on the coast again, running through a magnificent seaside park, with the blue Pacific stretching away into a pearl-pink haze on the horizon. Twelve miles of one of the most beautiful seaside roads in all New Zealand, a road that runs through groves of ngaio, glossy-leafed karaka, golden kowhai, and bronze-green totara! What grace, what rare beauty is in these woodland temples, rising from close green sward, deep-shadowed, breathing the leafy odours of dim forest places, touched with the salt tang of the sea! Rocky cliffs suddenly close down on the road; a fern-grown tunnel looms darkly ahead. Then out to the sea again, with the little waves making a soft splashing on the shores of tiny curving bays. More tunnels, more groves, and so at nightfall, after a run of 120 miles, into the seaside township of Kaikoura, one of New Zealand's historic whaling stations, happy hunting ground of bloody old Te Rauparaha who came down from Kapiti with his cut-throat gang nearly a century ago, and soaked the coast in blood. Kaikoura's history goes back into the dim days of ancient tradition, for here it was, according to Maori mythology, that Tama, one of the great Polynesian Vikings, landed from his canoe, the Tairea, and cooked his first New Zealand meal of cray-fish on the beach.
But not an echo of those roystering days of battle and carousal sounds in Kaikoura to-day. At nightfall, Kaikoura is one of the quietest, most solitary little townships in all New Zealand. The clear Southern stars flash and burn
in the indigo deeps of the sky, the wide curving bay lies silent, mysterious, and the wall of the mountains is a vast rampart of black and silver, upthrust twixt sea and sky… Down by the seashore is Kaikoura's Garden of Memories; a simple obelisk rises beside the blue waters, and bright flower-beds, tended by loving hands, carry the names of distant battlefields where the lads of Kaikoura fought and died… Hushed and still is the little seaside garden this gentle autumn night; the slow beat of waves on the pebbled shore, the sighing of wind in the trees, sound a requiem for those who will never return.
“Where the silver river turns and twists.”
The Clarence River Bridge on the Kaikoura Sea Road.
Kaikoura offers to holiday-makers the rare beauty of forest-glades backed by majestic, snow-clad heights, the bird-paradise of seaside groves, sport of fighting-fish, surf-bathing, all the usual tourist attractions, and over all, the exhilaration of ocean breezes tempered by the warmth of clear sunshine, and a mild, genial climate. At the far end of the curving bay is the little port and wharf, where steamers come to take away the bounteous harvesting of the fertile hills and valleys that stretch far back to the foot of the mountains.
A night at Kaikoura, and an early start next morning on the second stage of our journey. Here are more seaside groves and thickets, and the morning sun striking through the glossy foliage with long, slender golden spears. For over fifty miles, our road runs beside the sea-shore, grey-shingled, curving to deep bays where the tempestous rivers of the South come surging out to the sea. We cross the Hapuka and Clarence, over strong bridges with massive concrete supports, built to withstand the wild onslaught of the torrents that come roaring down when the snows melt on the mountains, and turn riverbed and valley into raging seas. The approaches to the bridges are built up with heavy groynes, vast piles of stones enclosed in criss-cross wire casing, built into the banks and bridge supports, to protect them from the swirling scour of the flood. Yet, despite these formidable ramparts of rock and wire, bridges and embankments are often swept away, and the flood goes tearing down the valley. But the river is low as we pass, just a thin silver trickle winding through acre upon acre of grey shingle-bed.
Still on our right is the seashore, bathed in sunshine, sea-birds riding softly on the crests of the little waves, still on our left the frowning cliffs, and farther back, high-piled masses of rugged peaks and precipices of the Kaikouras,
gashed with great ravines and crevasses, rivulets of glistening snow trickling down the harsh rock faces.
Soon we pass Wakatu Point, and the chauffeur relates a diverting story of a little coastal trader, wrecked one wild night of storm and pitchy darkness on her way down the Kaikoura coast. The boat stuck hard and fast on her rock. The lifeboat was lowered in utmost haste on to the flat shingled beach of Wakatu, within a stone's throw of the main road! The old boat still
The Glorious Dead.”
The War Memorial at Picton on the shores of Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island.
Halfway between Kaikoura and Blenheim is Kekerangu, a tiny post-office-and-store village, lying hot beneath giant eucalyptus trees. Now we are in tussock country, with sheep grazing on hillsides and in bush-filled valleys. A lonely, lonely road now, with the empty sea on one side, wide leagues of tussock-brown hills and snow-capped peaks on the other. The only soul we meet in miles is a drover jogging slowly along in a buggy, his dogs trotting behind, a little sack slung beneath the vehicle to give the animals a spell when they grow foot-sore and weary. Many leagues has he driven in his ramshackle old shay, all the way down from Marlborough, for he is one of the best-known drovers in three provinces, and now he is jogging his long slow way home again.
Now and again we pass the desolate little huts of roadmen and rabbiters, for this is champion rabbit country.
As we speed along, a man in dungarees comes from a roadside hut and waves the car to stop. A silent thin man who shambles up and mutters something, as he hands a scrap of paper to the chauffeur. The latter nods, the man goes back to his hut without a backward glance.
“Cheque for £50,” observes the chauffeur, tucking it carefully away. “Wants me to cash it for him in Blenheim.” Trustful folk, these Kaikourans!
Much of the country through which we are now passing is under cultivation, and beneath sheltering groves of trees we catch glimpses of the comfortable homesteads of station-owners. Close beside the road is one beautiful home with well-tended gardens and sweeping driveway, a home lit with electric light, so our chauffeur assures us, and replete with every modern convenience.
A few miles farther on, at Wharanui, we come in at last from the sea, and pass into typical South Island sheep country, grass and tussock hills, treeless and bare as the back of your hand,
but yielding magnificent pastures to the great Marlborough flocks. Wharanui is at present the northern terminus of the South Island Main Trunk Line.
On and on through the gold-brown hills, across the dried-up bed of Lake Grasmere, a shallow lake that mysteriously disappeared in 1911, and has never re-filled. Far away on the northern horizon, we get a clear glimpse of Wellington Head, in the North Island, a great blue bluff standing out boldly against the sunny sky. Over the Awatere Bridge, a splendid double structure with traffic and railway tracks side by side, and into Seddon, named after the Dominion's great Prime Minister. Lunch at Seddon, then through beautiful Awatere Valley, where the river runs to the sea through fertile country broken by sheer chalk cliffs, dazzling white in the strong mid-day sunshine. On the horizon rise the Inland Kaikouras, as distinct from the Seaward Kaikouras, austere, snow-clad giants rising grandly above the dimpled brown hills. Soon the hills grow steeper; the road is a narrow ledge cut in precipitous cliffs that slope straight and steep to the river beneath.
“Redwood Pass,” announces the chauffeur confidentially. “Supposed to have been more fatal accidents on this here bit of road than any in New Zealand. Motor car went over a year ago
In The Sunny Nelson Province.
The Traffic and Locomotive staffs on the Nelson section of our system, 1929.
I thanked him in trembling tones, trying to shut my eyes, but they remained glued upon the scene in a kind of dreadful fascination until I had looked at the remains of the hawker's cart, seen the exact spot where the other tragedies took place. Yet, had he not told me, my heart would never have missed a beat, for Redwood Pass seemed no whit more dangerous than a dozen other narrow hillside roads of the South.
Early in the afternoon we came down from the hills into Blenheim, capital of “Golden Marlborough,” a prosperous, well-built city, centre of a thriving pastoral and agricultural district. Twenty miles by rail, and we are in Picton, slumberous, picturesque little Picton, dreaming peacefully on the beautiful wooded shores of Queen Charlotte Sound. Out beyond lies Cook Strait, and the North Island… The tour is ended… The long, winding road has come home at last to the sea.
The supply and circulation of fresh, pure air, is recognised by authorities the world over as being of paramount importance to workers, whether engaged in manual or professional duties. In the following article is described the modern “Plenum” system of heating and ventilation recently installed in our workshops.
Visitors to the new Railway Workshops in the Hutt Valley invariably comment upon the efforts of the Department to make the lot of its workshops employees brighter and more comfortable. Improved lighting facilities, clean and attractive dining - rooms, and, most striking of all, the system of heating and ventilating the various sections of the shops, are among the many improvements introduced under the workshops reorganisation scheme.
The Plant In The Making
Illustration No. 1.
Some of the intricate bends or “lobster backs” which form part of the air ducts.
In the very early days (in the old workshops), fires, other than in the regulation blacksmiths’ forges, were, for heating purposes, absolutely forbidden. The first attempt to heat the old workshops was made by the installation of a system of steam pipes laid around the machines. This scheme, however, did not prove a success, and was abandoned in favour of circular stoves, a number of which were placed at selected points in each shop. These stoves certainly increased the temperature within the various shops, but had one drawback in that, while those farthest removed from the source of heat desired an increase in the temperature, those nearest the stoves were inclined in the other direction.
In summer's heat, ventilation was effected principally by open windows and roof ventilators.
The building of the new workshops, therefore, provided an excellent opportunity for the introduction of a thoroughly up-to-date heating and ventilating system. The installation of the modern system was entrusted to the wellknown general and sanitary engineering firm, A. and T. Burt, Ltd., to whom a contract was recently let to install throughout the main workshops of New Zealand a heating and ventilating plant known as the “Plenum” system. The whole of this important work
Strenuous efforts were to ensure that the new heating system would be in operation before the coming of the cold days of winter. The accompanying photos will enable the reader more readily to understand the details of the scheme, the operation of which is confidently expected to give general satisfaction.
Mounted upon a high girder platform at one end of each bay in the shops, is a motor-driven, centrifugal circulating fan, and an ingenious arrangement of piping. This latter is set up in the form of a large inverted “U,” with square corners.
A Model Of Compactness.
A heater unit fully assembled shewing the electric motor for operating the fan.
The fans, being motor-driven, operate with a minimum of attention. No time is wasted stoking up, as with the old stoves, and a more even air temperature is maintained.
The “Plenum” system, moreover, provides for the circulation of cool air throughout the shops during the heat of summer. In the summer months fresh, cool air is drawn from the atmosphere, through a separate inlet, and circulated by the fans, through the ducts, in the same manner as the warm air is distributed in winter. By this means the air in the buildings will be completely changed once every hour, enabling the men to work in a cool and comfortable atmosphere inside the shop, whatever the conditions may be outside.
Some idea of the work such an installation involves may be gathered from the fact that 60,552 pieces of pipe had to be cut and screwed for the 150 heaters required. These separate units, if arranged in one line, would reach an approximate distance of 15 miles. Then, in the manufacture of the ducts and bends, no less than eighty tons of galvanised iron plates were used. The sections comprising the bends, known to the trade as “lobster backs” (see illustration No. 1), are a first-class example of plate work. In passing, it is interesting to mention that the work of screwing and cutting the heater pipes was performed by the Department's own men and machines in a thoroughly efficient manner in the Hutt Valley Workshops.
This is the first installation of the “Plenum” system of heating and ventilating carried out in New Zealand, and is on a scale not hitherto attempted in either Australia or here, and gives ample evidence of the desire of the Railway Department to make the working conditions of its employees as near the ideal as possible.
Next to the invention of printing, the most powerful instrument of civilisation that the ingenuity of man has devised, is the railway.
“… sable lazy-bubbling pools Of spluttering mud that never cools.”—Alfred Domett.
(Government Publicity Photo.)
Boiling mud at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, New Zealand's most famous thermal region.
“… Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoin'd; nor other cement ask'd Than water interfused to make them one.” ——Cowper.
(Government Publicity Photo.)
An ice cave on the famous Tasman Glacier (the largest glacier outside the polar regions), Southern Alps, New Zealand.
(Concluded.)
Leaving the Grey River again at the beginning of March, 1848—during the whole of 1847 not a white man was seen—Thomas Brunner and his companions, Piki and Kehu and their wives, tramped through the bush to the Buller again, and struck the great river somewhere below where Murchison is to-day. Sometimes the party had a square meal; sometimes all hands were on starvation rations.
Thomas Brunner.
They cooked the roots of the ti (cabbage-tree) and enjoyed the sweetness thereof; ti is New Zealand's sugar-tree. They made nets of ti leaves and caught the upokororo and grayling in the streams; they got eels, too; they shot and snared birds—the weka, paradise duck, dabchicks, even sparrow-hawks—all went into the pot. Then in the mountain-beech country they had to tighten their belts. On the South bank of the Buller Brunner tried “a new species of fruit”—the berries of the mako tree. They were palatable enough, he wrote, if you were careful about it, “so that your teeth will only slightly crush the berry without breaking the seed, which has a most nauseous bitter taste.”
“The beastly drip of the bush” got on the explorer's nerves sometimes—no wonder, after a solid year of the West Coast. Rivers were a nightmare; they used to ford some of the rapid streams by “sparring” them, an art which the gold-diggers found necessary along the coast twenty years later—all hands holding a pole horizontally and pressing against it up-stream as they crossed. Other rivers they had to swim, or cross by making rafts.
“Very bad walking,” wrote Brunner of that return journey up the Buller, where our splendid smooth highway runs today. “The immense, gigantic rocks that belt the river rendered it impossible for us to keep to the bank, and the mountains were too high to ascend, so our day's walking was one continual ascending the spurs and decending the water courses, which only brought us on a short distance by nightfall.” No better picture of the untamed Buller Valley could have been given than this brief but sufficient scrap of topographical description.
“Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord: I've met them at their work, An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.”
So wrote Mr. Kipling in “McAndrews’ Hymn.” Mr. Brunner and his party of ragged-kilted Maoris could have said something like that, but with more emphasis, about their Bad Lands journey in the wet and cold. Brunner, indeed, in his diary entries written painfully in shivering camps has left us vivid vignettes of fearful days and nights. Here are notes covering three days in April of 1848; scene somewhere on the Upper Buller:
“Rain continuing to pour down. About midday a stream came rolling down the cliffs above us, destroying the shelter on which we had been working all the morning to render our situation comfortable. The fresh also increased so fast that the natives declared we must find means
A view of the Buller River, West Coast, South Island.
(Next day)—“Rain and thunder continuing. This was truly a wretched day to spend on a cliff in a black birch (beech) forest. The rain poured down in torrents and loosened the stones of which the hill is formed, and these rolled by us and plunged into the river with a fearful noise. The wind tore up the trees on every side, and the crash which ensued caused a simultaneous shudder by all hands.”
(The next day)—“An increase in the gale; and the fresh in the river exceeding all bounds, having reached forty feet perpendicular. God only knows when we shall be able to proceed; for to ascend is impossible, and we can move nowhere until the fresh subsides.”
However, they pushed along, Brunner limping with a stick, for he felt very ill. One day's diary entry: “It was with great difficulty I could move at all to-day, but want of provisions compelled me. Found two fern trees and made an oven.” The reference is to an item of food, the pith of the fern tree, which is just eatable, but no more. It helped to maintain life. At Matakitaki the party got a little fern-root again.
Diary entry, in a miserable bush shelter at the Matakitaki:
“May 15th, 1848.—Heavy fall of snow. Kehu collecting ti roots. The river much swollen. I was seized with violent vomiting, which lasted all day and night, and my side gave me much pain. I attributed it to the badness of the living and exposure to the cold weather.”
A few days later: “Camped on the banks of the Tiraumea. Rain… . We proceeded to our shelter of last year, an overhanging rock, which protected us from the rain, and there dried our clothes. A small basket of mine, which was hanging to the roof of our rock, fell down on
Some days later Brunner and his Maoris reached the shore of Lake Rotoiti, and found their canoe safe. They came to the river Puhawini, named the Howard, and camped, in fearful weather—snow, rain and a fresh in the river. Civilisation now was near; they went on and saw some sheep on the Rotoiti hills.
A pretty scene in the Buller Gorge.
When the weary little party reached the junction of the Motupiko and Mapou rivers they caught twenty-five wekas. It was a glad camp that night, a square meal for all hands once more.
Sore-footed, scratched and scarred, and shaggy as an Antarctic explorer, Brunner stumbled into a white man's hut at ten o'clock the next night. It was the shepherd Fraser. He wrote in his diary: “It is a period of nearly 560 days since I wished Fraser good-bye on the bank of the Rotoiti River to my seeing him at his house this evening. I have never during this time heard a word of English since, but the broken gibberish of Kehu and the echo of my own voice and I rather feel astonished to find I can both understand and speak English as well as ever, for, during many wet days, I had never spoken a word of my own language, nor conversed even in Maori, of which I was well tired.”
Brunner expressed himself satisfied of one thing; he had shown that it was possible to live in the bush entirely independent of any food, but that which the country provided. (But it was mighty hard living.) He also had proved it possible for a white man to go without boots for a long period. He had travelled long distances barefooted, or with flax or ti leaf sandals for the rougher places.
In a note at the end of his journal and report, Mr. Brunner expressed the opinion that the introduction of goats would be a benefit to the Maoris along the West Coast. His remark was in a way prophetic, for are not goats recommended for Westland to-day? Not indeed for the natives, who are very few in the land—it is difficult to find them—but to deal with that notorious blackberry bush, which, as all truthful
In 1860 a great deal of arduous exploration work was done by James Mackay, of Nelson, afterwards a high officer of the Native Department, for many years in the North Island. We saw much of him in Auckland in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties. His summary of his adventures, written at my request, is a little Iliad of endeavour and endurance to one who can read between the lines and fill in the local colour of weather stress and hard travelling and semi-starvation. After recounting his explorations between 1855 and 1860, he described as follows his work between the Buller sources and the Grey River:—
“In 1860 I travelled from Nelson to the Grey by way of the Upper Buller, Devil's Grip, Tiraumea, Matakitaki, Maruia, and Grey River, to what is now Greymouth. I had Alexander Mackay and Frank Flowers (one of my sheep station hands) and three Maoris. We ran out of food by the time we reached Maruia Plains, and my cousin and Flowers returned to Nelson.
I and the three Maoris kept on; we were forty-eight hours once with only one woodhen to eat between the four of us. We blazed the present line of coach road through the bush from the Upper Buller to the Grey River. On my return to Nelson the Provincial Government gave me £150 for this service. I purchased the seven and a half million acres of Westland for £300, and 14,500 acres of Native reserves.”
Another doughty explorer down the Buller seventy years ago was John Rochfort. In after years he made the pioneer surveys of the present Main Trunk railway route in the North Island. Rochfort, unlike the Mackays and his colleague, Charles Wilson Hursthouse, in the North, was not a big man physically. His feats of endurance and strength, however, were often the source of surprise to his fellow-bushmen. Mr. W. Aitchison, who was one of Rochfort's party on some of his exploring journeys, said of him that his ordinary swag was never less than 75lbs. weight. With this pikau up he had been known to tramp and climb six miles without a spell. A 50lbs. swag, he used to say, only served to “steady a man.”
Away back in the early ‘eighties of last century, when the writer was beginning to make his first collection of books, he found that a great many of the volumes which he read and placed aside “for keeps” were published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus. Despite the passing of years and the multiplicity of publishers that have sprung into being during the last half-century, the old firm of Chatto and Windus still holds its place in the sun. Among the writers of to-day who approach the public through Messrs. Chatto and Windus are Prof. J. B. S. Haldane, Edward Garrett, T. F. Pows, S. T. Warner, R. H. Mottram, Wyndham Lewis, Lytton Strachey, Luigi Pirandello, Norman Douglas, Julian and Aldous Huxley, and others equally well known. I am reminded of these things by a perusal of “A Chatto and Windus Miscellany,” in which I found much far above the ordinary of such publications, not only as to literary merit, which is really outstanding, not to say remarkable, but as being all a book should be in type, illustrations, paper, binding—and all for half-a-crown. From among the many splendid articles let me quote the following in reference to a writer's use of “slang,” from the pen of the late C. E. Montague, which, I feeel sure, will find an echo in the heart of many an Australasian journalist:—
Is it beyond hope that in this matter a quite respectable job may be found for those who ply the homely, slighted trade of the journalist? Not, of course, at the heart of the Empire of letters, but somewhere on the shady borderlands of its demesne, where language may be corrupt and uncouth and yet commendably alive… . Like the nimble groom who holds th