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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
“Sulphurous fumes that spout and blow, Columns and cones of boiling snow.”—Alfred Donnett.
(Rly. Publicity photos.)
Thermal wonders of the famous Waiotapu Valley, about twenty miles from Rotorua. (1) General view of the valley, shewing the interesting Rainbow Mountain in the background; (2) alum cliffs; (3) Lady Knox geyser; (4) Devil's Bridge crater; (5) Dainty Primrose Falls; (6) sulphur spring; (7) terrace formation; (8) sulphur cave; (9) alum cliffs, looking towards Reporoa Valley.
The coming of Christmas marks the turn of the year, and like the great event from which the festival derives its origin, the anniversary should usher in each year a happier time for all.
Never in the lives of the present generation has there been so fervent a desire for better times than now, and each move made on the chessboard of world affairs is watched with intensest eagerness in the hope that some masterly stroke of statecraft or “big business” management may lift the load of depression and lead the people into a new period of prosperity.
Meantime what occupies chief attention for the individual is the affairs of everyday—the personal planning and budgeting to meet present emergencies and in preparation for what may befall. Here again there is found an earnestness that indicates the development of an almost universally provident spirit, an attitude of the general public which might he likened more to that of the hard old days of Scottish history than to the usual inconsequent comparative heedlessness of brighter, more prosperous lands and times.
There is a risk that the taking of thought for the morrow may be overdone if it extends to the elimination of necessary holidays. It has long been understood that the stress of modern conditions requires periods of complete relaxation, and that no better tonic to ensure health can be found than that provided by a change of scene and relief from the pressure of the daily strain of work.
Therefore any economy planning should consider some kind of holiday as a necessity rather than a luxury—an expenditure to save cost in other and less satisfactory directions.
For the economic holiday the railways, when everything is taken into account, provide the most satisfactory and least costly of all means of travel, and although railwaymen in general have to work harder than ever at this “turn of the year” holiday season, they are always pleased to see their trains filled up with the joyous throngs of care-free excursionists whose mere numbers help to lend that air of jollity and abandon which is a major ingredient of the holiday spirit.
If this Christmastide should prove to be that “tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune” and not what the times most resemble—the kind of floodtide of which Jean Ingelow sings, there would be great occasion for general rejoicing because of the happy turn in worldly affairs.
But railwaymen can at least say that whatever turn the times may take, they have put up a fine record of service to the community during the last twelve months. They have completed their seventh year of safe conveyance of passengers, making a total of 170 million passenger journeys during that time without one fatality; they have joined wholeheartedly in the economy campaign which has resulted in reducing operating costs; they have taken such care of goods and parcels entrusted to them that the claims arising from damage to goods conveyed by rail in this country constitute an extremely low proportion of the value carried, and compare most favourably with results obtained elsewhere; and they have stood up manfully to the demands upon the service arising from the difficult times through which the Dominion is passing. If good times are coming the railwaymen deserve them; if bad times, they will be faced with traditional courage and loyalty. Let us hope that the turn of the year on this occasion will prove a good turn for all, and that peace and increasing plenty may mark the advance of 1933.
Tributes to the memory of the late Mr. Roussell were paid by members of the Railway staff at Auckland prior to the despatch of the Main Trunk Express, which conveyed the funeral casket to Wellington. When the last of the officers had filed past the casket, Mrs. Roussell expressed to Mr. F. E. Temm, Chairman of the Railway Officers Institute (Auckland), her deep appreciation of the touching tributes paid to her late husband, and said that the grief of the family would be softened by the many condolences and evidences of such sympathy as was witnessed by the family at Auckland. The sympathy of railwaymen generally throughout New Zealand was deeply appreciated by Mrs. Roussell and the members of her family.
Maybe this is the answer to the reliable old problem of how to recover lost passenger traffic. It was published recently in the Baltimore Evening Sun:—
“The railroads of the country are complaining of the falling off in passenger traffic caused by the increasing popularity of the automobile. This constitutes a serious problem, yet the solution is selfevident. Obviously the railroads should do everything in their power to make travel on them resemble that in automobiles. Here are a few suggestions:
“For the benefit of the men, speedometers should be placed conspicuously in every car, so that passengers may see the speed at which the train is going. For the benefit of the women, communication should be provided between them and the engineer so that they can offer suggestions as to how he should drive.
“Trains should not be run on definite schedules. Passengers then could notify friends at their destination that they may be expected some time between five and seven o-clock, provided nothing happens to delay them; but not to worry if they do not turn up by eight o'clock.
“Occasional freight trains should be permitted to bar the tracks for miles at a time and only unwillingly permit passenger trains to pass. They should pull over when another train is approaching in the opposite direction, so that the passenger train can escape a serious collision by the skin of its teeth.
“Passengers should be surrounded by baggage of all kinds, thus forcing them to sit in cramped and uncomfortable positions.
“In wet weather some arrangement should be made whereby a train would have the opportunity to skid and come up against a telegraph pole …
And who can say but that it might succeed?”
Below is a specimen copy of the “Health” stamp which has been issued this year in continuation of the anti-tuberculosis campaign inaugurated in 1929.
The stamp is of the 2d. denomination, 1d. being for postage and 1d. for health. As in previous years, the stamps will be on sale until the 28th February, 1933.
The purpose of the campaign is to raise funds to assist in the establishment and maintenance of children's health camps in New Zealand. The Health Camp movement, although described as a first line attack on incipient tuberculosis, does not handle the actual tuberculosis patient. Rather does it aim to remedy the physical defects or restore the lowered bodily resistance which results from under-nourishment—a condition increasingly prevalent in these days of unemployment. It is hoped that all members of the community will assist in supporting this worthy object to the best of their ability.
Since the last issue of the Magazine, the Department has suffered a sad loss in the untimely death of its late General Manager, Mr. P. G. Roussell. Respected and loved by all who knew him, appreciated as a railwayman for his sound knowledge and capacity, and as an individual for his sterling character, the late Mr. Roussell's passing was a cause of grief throughout the Service and of the deepest sympathy for the relatives and friends bereft of his kindly and warm-hearted association. The spontaneous expressions of sympathy from the staff in all parts of the Dominion were a genuine tribute to the high esteem in which he had been held by all ranks.
The persistence of unsettled times makes estimating in connection with Christmas and New Year traffic difficult, but with operating costs considerably lower than they were last year, the net returns should shew an improvement, given a reasonable proportion of public patronage. Those who use the rail in preference to other modes of transport will, besides obtaining low fares and satisfactory service, be doing something of direct benefit to the country in its time of need, for as has been previously indicated, almost the whole of their payments to the Railways become a direct contribution to the Treasury, thus helping to reduce the Dominion's annual liability. Through the steady policy of continuous replacement of obsolescent stock, locomotives, cars, and other rolling stock have never been in better order for the busy period of the year, and a generous time-table has been arranged for both Islands to meet the full transport needs of the community.
The Board desires me to express, on its behalf and through the medium of the Magazine, the Season's Greetings to all clients and employees of the Department, and to convey their warmest wishes to all for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
In these seasonable greetings the Executive Officers heartily join.
Acting General Manager.
Twin Terrors—Air War and Chronic Debts—Europe Rings up America—Delays of Democracy—America's Way, and Germany's.
The threat of bankruptcy, and the armaments threat, were both at a peak in mid-November. Concerning the former, America's silence had to be broken. It was inevitable that when the hush-hush of the U.S. election party tactics was over, Europe would at last dare to mention debts in the hearing of the President and the President-elect; and the prompt arrival at Washington of British and French Notes requesting postponement of debt-payments was the necessary calling back of public attention to the world's paralysing indebtedness. Messrs. Hoover and Roosevelt, the two men who, for party purposes, had averted their gaze to other issues during weeks of home campaigning, were at last free, after the great election, to listen to Europe. Unfortunately the President and the President-elect are not, as sometimes happens, the same man.
Had Mr. Hoover been elected for a second term, with an obedient Congress, only Republicanism would have had to be reckoned with. But the depression avalanche buried Republicanism beyond even the best hopes of the Democrats, and left in office till March the most enormously defeated President in the world's history, with another man of another colour on the doorstep. Thus there are two men to deal with—until March. It is said that Mr. Hoover created a precedent when he asked Mr. Roosevelt to confer with him on the urgent debts question raised by the Notes. If so, it is a precedent worthy of an honest man. Where the executive authority is with one person and the moral authority with another, co-operation seems to be the best short-cut to decision. Whether it will succeed in this case is still not clear. Democratic party managers may wish to leave Republicanism alone in its embarrassments. Mr. Roosevelt may be man enough to rise above that
Is it to be taken for granted that every leap year a world-question like debts (with the spectre of bankruptcy behind it) is to be shunned for many moons while the American parties are manceuvring for the four-yearly Presidential dicethrow, and is to be postponed for additional months until the successful dicer
A few months ago, when the United States Presidential election delays began, it was feared that Germany was in a state that could not wait. Both financially and politically, Germany appeared to be on the slide. It was said that Germany would not mark time till Christmas, still less until U.S. Democrats should rule in March. But Germany has marked time. She has marked time by holding two Reichstag elections—and still the Papen-Schleicher despotism, with President Hindenburg, governs without the Reichstag. In other words, Von Papen as “stop-gap Chancellor,” has already stopped a big gap. He has played chess with Von Hitler and also with foreign Governments, particularly on disarmament. Should it become desirable for Germany to take up a new position on the chess board to meet an altered economic diplomatic situation, then Papen could go, as Bruening went. A President can change a Chancellor easier than a Reichstag. Would a new Chancellor mean a new spell in which to mark time?
Flexible democracy presents the anomaly that while the Americans hold a national election to discover a popular ruler, Germany holds two elections in order to keep popular rulers out. At time of writing, the Reichstag leaders are still out; and even if they get rid of a Presidentially appointed Von Papen they may find in his place another non-elective, perhaps Von Schleicher. Democracy as practised in the United States, and as practised in Germany, may well make Signor Mussolini smile. Democracy seems to be capable of almost any application. Consider the gap between a Hoover and a Hindenburg, yet both are called Presidents. The Punch and Judy show in Berlin, and the recent deaf and dumb show in the United States, might well inspire Italian Fascism to write a book. Like every book, of course, it would have an answer. Meanwhile the Northern Hemisphere marches into a winter of discontent. Europe fears, and America is sure, that it will be worse than last winter. Stock Exchange flutters sound like the fiddling of financial Neros.
If the time is coming when domestic factors require another Chancellor in Germany, it may be convenient that he should fall (ostensibly, at any rate) through the diplomatic recoil of his attitude on armaments. Britain, otherwise not averse to Papenism, is against its secession policy on that issue. Britain is earnestly seeking success at the disarmament conference—success without sacrifice of either French or German friendship. Mr. Baldwin's speech has done as much as anything to bring disarmament sentiment to a peak, and his statement that air warfare can wipe out European civilisation is perhaps the most conspicuous danger signal hoisted during the post-war period. The man who said that is a man who wants Germany to come to Geneva as a place to build in. Geneva does not admit futility. (Dares not!)
While golden time is being lost by the reconstructionists on the debts and disarmament issues, the anti-Governmental work of society-wreckers goes on, and Communism is blamed for disorders in both Britain and on the Continent. In all
In all the news about flight—from Mrs. Mollison downwards—there is nothing that will appeal to the Nature lover more than the Auckland advice (6th November) than an eminent world-traveller, the godwit, began to arrive at Kaipara at the end of October, after her globe-spanning
The Railways And Community Service.
The above Railway publicity hoardings, erected in the principal towns of New Zealand, suggest to city workers the advantages of a house in the suburbs, and the train facilities available.
Christmas is a seasonal complaint which affects the mind and elevates it to a state bordering on humanity. It is mental rather than ornamental, although it is not unusual for the victim to suffer from “spots” and swellings. However, the symbols are ethereal rather than material, although it is permissible to produce such evidence of gilt as a goose quiescent on a plate of gravy, or a duff ambient between crossed spoons. Still, Christmas reposes mainly in the upper reaches of the life stream, and it is more appropriate to celebrate the significance of the season on an ice floe with a cold sausage and a warm heart, than to impersonate the season's salubrity in a mansion of aching hearts with a magnum of champagne and an embalmed peacock.
Consequently, Christmas may rightly be described as an altitudinisation of the mental plane, irrespective of the meateorological outlook or the victory of mind over matter-of-factness. Coming closer to “terra ferment;” when Christmas approaches and the “duffers” mould their glucose globules, and the poulterers join forces with the taxidermists, something besides the anticipation of gustatory interment and liquidatory con-ferment stimulates the sub-conscious tiddlewinks. This is the real spirit of Christmas, working while you sleep.
Christmas is a species of psychological weight-lifting or heart's ease, when the microbes of mundanity and the caterwauls of care are ejected from the system by an inrush of insurrection to the brain. It is a state of mind in which the constitution revolts against the dismal diatribes of pusillanimous pessimism and dolorific despair. A time arrives when even a worm will turn and bite the mud that binds it, and a tadpole will spring off its tail and become a leap-frog rather than a mere muddler in mud.
Man is obsessed by a sense of responsibility, but a sense of irresponsibility is often a valuable adjunct to a “jink,” and is the leavening in the staff of life. A citizen who is incapable of reacting riotiously at Yuletide, is heel-tied and hopelessly handicapped in the catch-as-catch-can of Christmas. With these few words we introduce the spirit of the season, with the cork out; the overproof, unadulterated, nineteen-hundred-and-thirty-two star benedictine of benediction, with a “kick” like a mastodon's mit in a gelatine glove; a potion that invests the investigator with the mental vestments of variegated vision.
An existence without the crystallisation of Christmas once a year, to warm the hobs of hospitality, vitalise the virility and rout the slump-ticks, would be like a permanent pain in the neck. Imagine, horrified reader, the horror of facing a life spread out like a damp sheet of printer's errors, and unpunctuated by a dash or an exclamation mark. Such a life would be a permanent waive. Civilisation would reach that point of excellence and efficiency which destroys all life. But, fortunately, once every year the hobo Happiness heaves a spanner into the works of Advanced Existence, and there is a glad time for all for the duration of the cessation. The sun shines, man discovers again that he is separated from the slug only by his ability to laugh, that he still possesses the remnants of an ego, and that the odour of crushed grass, the thrust of the wind, and the warm earth caressing his bare brisket, are the real gifts of the gods.
He finds that he possesses a digestive apparatus, both physical and metaphysical, and can look like a man and act like a “maneater.”
Let us sing to the season of sun and salubrity:—
Oh, ho, for the germs of Christmas cheer
That fructify in “skittles” and beer,
And circulate in the human blood,
And lift the spirit out of the mud.
What-ho, for the fever of fancy and fun
Enveloping every son-of-a-gun
Who's bitten by bugs of the Yuletide breed—
A most intriguing complaint indeed—
Which causes its victims to moult with mirth,
And brings the loftiest down to earth.
Oh, it's good to laugh like anything,
When you feel the nip of the Yule-bug's sting.
Its good to forget you're civilised,
That your souls are cramped and undersized,
And to rise to the top of the golden slime
Of Commerce and Caution, at Christmas time
To slip the shackles of Progress trite
And bare the back to the microbe's bite,
And welcome the blisters of bliss and sun,
Each super-civilised son-of-a-gun.
For once a year you have the chance
To learn the nature of real romance,
Forgetting to be, like other men,
A highly respectable citizen.
How terribly terrible, reader dear,
To be respectable all the year.
And never to slip the noose of Pelf
Sufficiently long to be yourself.
Without this vagabond vacation,
You'd die of over-snivelisation.
So, ho for the bites that the Yule bugs give,
That cause each son-of-a-gun to live,
And heats his blood to a hundred and three
When he sees himself as he ought to be.
And what of the train in this scheme of springs. The train is the variegated
Christmas is Summer's white pants—a sign of seasonal salubrity and a salute to insobriety; for who is really sober in the summer? The sun is Nature's intoxicant, the ideal inebriant, and the only ale with a “kick” that breaks no bones.
There are other signs of summer. Only yesterday I noted the loud shriek of a backless bathing suit calling to the female beach-comber or brine-soaked lady-bird, from the depths of the plate-glass glades of Gladrags. Also, there are signs that the straw cady, so long absent from our shores, has reappeared in our midst. The straw cady, or rolling road-reveller, was once a common sight perching on the branches of our hat-racks and hall stands, slightly dishevelled after a day of flying to and fro about the roads and hedgerows of Wellington. But its natural foe, the Flying Squash-wabbler, or Tyred Tiddler, drove it from our shores.
Father Xmas Travels By Rail
The Sun-burnt Boko or Skinned Beak also has made an early appearance this year. Several have been seen displaying their tomato-like peal. The Sun-baked Boko must not be confused with the Sozzled Conk, for although they are of similar hue, they are birds of a different feather. The one derives its name from sizzling in sun, and the other from sozzling in rum. Other unnatural phenomena peculiar to summer are the Eskimo Pie-per or Arctic Tonsil-teaser, the Blazer or Striped-coated Swank, and the Picnic-party or Sand Swallow. Seeing that we are agreed that summer is to be or not to be, according to the weather, we will cease to simmer, and wish a good Christmas dinner to all.
The railways of New Zealand recently celebrated their sixty-ninth birthday. In Britain, railways go back further than this. Following the celebration some years ago of the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the centenary of the Liverpool and Manchester line, there has recently been appropriately observed the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the first railway in the Midlands—the Leicester and Swannington system, now forming part of the L.M. and S. Railway.
The Leicester and Swannington Railway possessed only one locomotive when it began operations. Named the “Comet,” this engine was built by Robert Stephenson and Company. The line included two steep gradients, operated by stationary winding engines and cables. On the inaugural trip over the system in 1832, George Stephenson himself drove the first passenger train.
A Novelty Of A Hundred Years Ago.
The steam omnibus “Enterprise,” built by Walter Hancock in 1833 for the London and Paddington Steam-Carriage Company.
It was on the Leicester and Swannington Railway that the locomotive whistle first saw the light of day. Discarding the horns and trumpets of the other early railways, the directors of the line equipped the “Comet” locomotive with a unique steam trumpet worked off the engine boiler. On this pioneer line, too, it is interesting to recall, passenger tickets were for long made of solid brass. Among the first employees—and certainly amongst the most diligent—was a track labourer's wife, who, for nearly forty years, served jointly as stationmaster, booking clerk, platform porter, and signalman.—(From our London Correspondent.)
In the whole of the world there are 10,440 miles of electric railway, distributed among ninety administrations. Proportionately, Switzerland shews the greatest progress in railway electrification, 65 per cent, of the Swiss lines being operated electrically.
The late Mr. P. G. Roussell.
The death of Mr. P. G. Roussell, General Manager of Railways, which occurred under such tragic circumstances at Auckland on 1st November, will be deeply deplored by members of the railway service throughout New Zealand. Mr. Roussell was proceeding to Auckland by the “Limited” express, where he was to have joined the Niagara en route to Sydney on official business on behalf of the Government Railways Board.
He left Wellington in excellent health and spirits, occupying a sleeper on the “Limited.” During the night he had a heart seizure and suffered great pain for several hours. He was kept under constant observation by the car attendants, and a message was dispatched to Auckland asking that medical assistance be obtained on the train's arrival.
Dr. C. E. A. Coldicutt met the train at 9.30 a.m. Mr. Roussell had then greatly improved, and was able to walk without assistance. He proceeded straight to his sister's home, and went to bed. He became worse later in the day, and though everything possible was done for him by the doctors in attendance, Mr. Roussell died at 2.40 p.m.
The late Mr. Roussell, who was in his fifty-fifth year, was born at Waimauku, in the Auckland district, and was educated at Auckland. He joined the Railway Department as a cadet in 1893 and received steady promotion until, in 1924, he was appointed Chief Clerk at the Head Office, Wellington. He subsequently acted as Secretary to the Railway Board, and was later appointed Superintendent of Transportation, which office he held until his appointment as General Manager in succession to Mr. H. H. Sterling, now Chairman of the Government Railways Board.
The late Mr. Roussell is survived by his widow, three sons,—Philip, Raymond, and Eric —and a daughter, Miss May Roussell.
The following tribute to the memory of the late Mr. Roussell was paid by Mr. H. H. Sterling, Chairman of the Government Railways Board:—
“The news of the sudden death of Mr. Roussell came as a very great shock to me, and, I am sure, to all those who had been associated with him.
“Mr. Roussell, by the kindliness of his disposition, had endeared himself alike to colleagues and subordinates, and had earned their warmest regard. He was ever ready to give advice and assistance to every member of the service in whatever rank he might be placed. His appointment to the highest executive office in the Department was fully justified by the faithfulness of his service, the great ability which he brought to bear on his work, his sound judgment, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything connected with the railway business. Since Mr. Roussell's appointment to the General Managership, there has passed through his hands a tremendous volume of work. There have been many questions of the highest import which have required to be dealt with by him, and his reports to the Board were always characterised by a broad outlook, a mature judgment, and a well-balanced mind, which earned the entire respect and confidence of every member of the Government Railways Board. I feel that I am voicing the feelings of every member of the Railways Department in deploring Mr. Roussell's untimely decease, and I know that my colleagues on the Board are of one mind with me in an expression of profound regret and a deep sense of loss of a capable, faithful, and loyal officer and a gentleman.”
The Report of the Chief Inspecting Officer of the Minister of Transport, on railway accidents in Great Britain during 1931, reveal that only eight passengers lost their lives in railway accidents that year.
Of the eight fatalities, three occurred in the Leighton Buzzard, three in the Carlisle, and one each in two other accidents, as compared with only one in 1930 and three in the previous year.
The figure is, however, less than half the average for the five-year period 1925–29, and the casualty incidence in the case of passengers during 1931 was not more than one killed in some 200,000,000 carried.
Compared with fatal accidents in connection with road traffic the list is striking, as during the first week-end of August, 1932, no fewer than eighteen people were killed in road accidents in Britain.
In a recent reference to the appalling loss of life every year on the roads, the British Minister of Transport, Mr. P. J. Pybus, stated that “battlefields are at present safer than British roads, on which 6,691 persons were killed and 202,119 injured in 1931.”
Commenting on the above figures, the Daily Mail observed that “if the fatalities increase in a proportionate ratio, most of the population will soon be living by accident.”
Reverting to the safety of rail travel, it is interesting to note that, as in the case of the British Railways, the New Zealand Railways have a really remarkable safety record. During the past seven years 170 million passengers have been carried without one fatality.
The following interesting reference to the New Zealand Railways Magazine appeared in the October issue of the New Zealand Traveller:—
“The decision to continue the publication of The New Zealand Railways Magazine will be acclaimed with gratification by all readers of that brightly and interestingly-written periodical. It is not overstating things to say that its readers are appreciators of it and look forward to its appearance, month by month, with keen anticipatory pleasure….
“The railways are New Zealand's biggest industry under one control, and one in which every New Zealander is—or ought to be —intensely interested, and whatever loss may be involved in the production of the magazine is trifling compared with the interests involved and with the capital sunk in it. It is remarkable how wide is the appeal that the magazine makes. It is of the highest value as a means of making known to every member of the staff the ideas underlying the policy of the management, a matter that is almost of equal interest to the general reader. The technical side is not neglected, and, in addition, each issue contains articles of interest to those who are not railwaymen. From the informative and topical editorials to the news articles telling of transport developments in other lands, and from the regular features to the artistically produced illustrations, every page of the magazine is bright and interesting, and to none more so than to commercial travellers.”
[Extract from the General Statement of the Board's Policy.]
The policy to be followed by the Board is expressed in general terms in Section 14 of the Government Railways Amendment Act, 1931, which reads as follows:—
“14. (1) It is hereby expressly declared that the general functions of the Board shall be to carry on, control, manage, and maintain the Government railways to the end that the railways, while being maintained as a public service in the interests of the people of New Zealand and as an essential factor in the development of trade and industry, shall be so carried on, controlled, managed, and maintained on the most economical basis, having regard to the economic and financial conditions from time to time affecting the public revenues and trade and industry in New Zealand, with a view to obtaining a maximum of efficiency and maintaining a proper standard of safety and a reasonable standard of comfort and convenience for persons using the railways and any other services carried on in connection therewith.
“(2) The Board shall, having regard to all such matters as aforesaid, provide reasonable remuneration and grant reasonable conditions of employment to all persons permanently or temporarily employed in the service of the Department.
“(3) It shall be the duty of the Board from time to time to consult with and obtain from the Minister of Finance all such information respecting the state of the public revenues as will enable it to carry out its functions as aforesaid in the best interests of New Zealand, and the Board shall have due regard to any such information as aforesaid that may from time to time be furnished to it by the Minister of Finance.”
Obviously, the first obligation implied in this section is the obligation to give service. When the Board took over the control of this Department it found that a review of the train services had just been made. Where the services that had been in operation were found to have been beyond reasonable requirements they had been eliminated. The Board undertook a further review, not only of the train services, but of all other branches of service that were, or might be, afforded by the Department. As far as the train services were concerned, it was found that there were still some services the continuance of which was not economically justified, and where the circumstances showed that a rearrangement of the time-table was desirable this was done….
As regards other aspects of service, where an improvement in the standard of service was called for, steps have been taken to effect the necessary improvement. On the passenger side this latter aspect has principally taken the form of continuing the policy of providing a higher standard of comfort in the cars. Since the Board assumed control a number of new cars of modern design and embodying many features making for a higher standard of service, have been completed in the Department's workshops and put into traffic. Many of the existing carriages have been improved, particularly in the direction of improving the second-class accommodation. In connection with the goods traffic imper
The Luxury Of Modern Travel.
Marconiphone wireless equipment in use on the “Royal Scot” Express.
The “Royal Scot,” it may be noted, has just celebrated its seventieth anniversary. At 10 a.m. daily this giant among passenger trains pulls out of Euston Station, London, arriving in Glasgow at 5.40 p.m. —400 miles in 7 hours 40 minutes. Described as “four hundred tons of wheeled comfort,” the “Royal Scot” expresses during the past seventy years have covered 17,000,000 miles.
Intensive selling campaigns launched by the Home railways promise to increase considerably the volume of business handled. This problem of popularising railway transport is one that faces the leading systems of every land, and nowadays it is generally recognised that railway transport is just as much an article of commerce as, say, dairy produce, woollen goods, or hardware. The article the railways have for sale is of the highest quality and most reasonably priced; what is essential is that it should be marketed attractively and convincingly.
To this end, one railway—the London, Midland and Scottish—has just appointed a new official to act as Sales Manager, in the person of Mr. Ashton Davies, one of the best known of railway officers, who started his career as a telegraph messenger earning five shillings a week. The position has been created purely because of the need for the development of the selling side of railway activities. The responsibilities of the job are simply and solely to sell rail transport: to fill 19,059 carriages with a capacity of 7,108,561 passengers 365 days of the year; and to discover freight for 283,310 goods wagons with a carrying capacity of 3,101,443 tons. In Mr. Davies' own words, his task is “to find out what the public want, and to see that they get it.”
Statistics are apt to be regarded by many railway folk as something of a bore, but the intelligent employment of statistics is essential to the proper understanding of the railway situation. Recently there have been published the annual railway returns covering the operations of the British lines during 1931, and these reveal much of interest for railwaymen everywhere.
During 1931 the gross receipts from railway working amounted to £170,158,-536, compared with £184,836,382 in 1930 —a decrease of £14,677,846. The bulk of this reduction was in low-class traffic not susceptible to road competition. Expenditure on railway working dropped from £147,595,684 in 1930, to £136,858,-604 in 1931—a saving of £10,737,080. Big economies were made in salaries and wages, and in the locomotive coal bill. The operating ratio increased from 79.85 per cent. in 1930 to 80.43 per cent. in 1931. As regards total net receipts, these were £33,632,047 in 1931, as against £38,044,598 in 1930—a decrease of £4,412,551. Among the statistics of operation, we have the following interesting figures:—Passenger train miles per train hour: 14.72 in 1931, as compared
Mechanical Equipment Aids Relaying Operations.
The Morris track-layer at work on the L. and N.E. Railway.
Like the British lines, the German railways have been hard hit by the prevailing trade depression. The recently published annual report of the German National Railways for 1931 shows that the total railway revenue for that year was 16 per cent. less than for 1930, and 28 per cent. less than in 1929. Freight receipts were actually down 19 per cent., and passenger receipts 15 per cent. Expenditure was cut by 11 per cent. as compared with 1930, but the ratio of working expenditure to working revenue grew in 1931 to 94.12 per cent., compared with 89.50 per cent. in 1930.
During 1931 the German Railways took out of service 3,300 locomotives and 221,000 goods wagons, owing to shortage of business. Throughout the year there was recorded a marked discarding of first and second-class passenger travel in favour of the cheaper third-class, as well as a big diminution of workers' transport in industrial areas. Because of the lack of fresh capital, big electrification schemes have had to be postponed. An interesting feature is the growing participation of the German Railways in road transport. Ninety-eight regular passenger motor car routes, totalling about 1,500 miles, are now operated by the railways in association with the postal authorities. In addition, the railways are operating special excursion trips by road motor, and have acquired twelve company-owned passenger omnibus lines, and thirteen omnibus lines jointly with other concerns.
Mechanical appliances for track repair and maintenance are being increasingly employed by railways in every land. These enable operations to be more expeditiously and economically performed,
Among the more important appliances favoured, there may be mentioned the Morris track-layer; petrol-electric welding appliances and grinders for the building up of worn parts of crossing work; petrol-operated drilling and rail cutting machines; petrol-driven screwing and boring machines for holing sleepers and screwing in chair screws; mechanical tampers; and specially designed tip wagons for rail conveyance.
On the L. and N.E. Railway a petrol-driven ballast riddle is in experimental use. This consists of a 1 ¾ h.p. Villiers two-stroke petrol engine of light motorcycle type, driving, by means of a chain, a vertical shaft, at the top of which is a cam connected to the underside of an inclined riddle. The riddle movement is semi-rotary, directly backwards and forwards at the low end, with a circular movement at the elevated end, due to the action of the cam. Under the screen there is fitted a loose steel reversible container to collect the waste material. The clean stone is shaken off the end of the screen into a second container. The apparatus is mounted on a wooden frame, and the whole outfit is readily moved from place to place.
On The Route Of The “Irish Mail.”
London-Holyhead Express (L.M. and S.) at the Menai Bridge.
While difficulties associated with finance are holding up many electrification schemes, in Britain the Southern Railway is pushing ahead with its important main-line electrification between London and the South Coast resort of Brighton. Traffic is exceedingly heavy on this section, and in addition to the enormous suburban business handled, there are operated many through twelve-car Pullman expresses weighing 550 tons and travelling at high speeds for distances of over sixty miles from London. Fifty-two route miles are covered by the London-Brighton electrification, or about 163 miles of single track. Electric trains are now running as far south as Three Bridges, and very shortly the throughout electrification to Brighton will be completed.
The suburban electrification of the Southern covers 276 miles—to be increased to 328 route miles on completion of the London-Brighton section.
Altogether, Britain has about 500 route miles of electric railway. There is the Metropolitan (31 miles); the Metropolitan District (25 miles); the L.M. and S. (110 miles); and the L. and N.E. (32 miles) to name the principal systems at present operating.
“Choose such holiday pleasures that recreate much.”—Fuller.
Scenes at Tongariro National Park, North Island, one of New Zealand's most popular pleasure resorts. (1) The Chateau at sunset; (2), (3) the lounge at the Chateau; (4) Corner of the billiard room; (5) Silica Springs Falls; (6) Mt. Ngauruhoe (7,515 ft.) from the lounge window; (7) Taranaki Falls; (8) Party on the way to Scoria Flat; (9) Transport service; (10) National Park Railway Station; (11) Flashlight photograph of excursionists arriving at National Park Station.
Historic Russell, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
The essence of a holiday is complete change of scene, air and occupation.
The last word is accurate enough, when you come to think of it, for holiday-making to be a success is quite an occupation in itself. It can be spoiled by over-exertion, on the one hand, and by an ennui-producing “loaf” on the other. The happy medium can be obtained by a judicious choice of place and circumstance, by taking sufficient trouble to select a suitable locality where the interest of the scenery and life more than compensates for the cost and pains of travel.
A change as complete as possible is above all necessary for the people of the city and the town, and in New Zealand's thousand miles of length and vast variety of landscape there is infinite choice of places which give the breakaway, the different atmosphere and life, that bring true refreshment to the body and spirit, give a toning and tuning-up to work-jangled nerves.
Fortunately in such a country as New Zealand it is quite amazingly easy to find that change of scene, and cheap withal. This is no vast continental land, where you have to travel day after day through an unvarying country that soon becomes monotonous. The quick succession of different landscapes, of new phases of natural beauty, is the feature of our islands which has most impressed many of our visitors from abroad. The islandstrewn gulfs, the rocky coasts, the shining breadths of harbour and estuary, the quiet scenes of pastoral and agricultural industry, the cities and towns, quickly give place to the mountains, the bush, the tranquil blue lakes, the volcanic and hydro-thermal wonderlands, the countless forms which water-play takes in this land of streams and waterfalls; the icy Alps and the glaciers, the gorges and fiords; the wonders, too, of engineering ingenuity in railroading a once intractable interior, with its canyons and lofty ridges. Every kind of soft and pastoral scenery has its contrast and counterpoise in the indomitable high places, the dramatic surprises of the geyser and smoking-mountain country, the immensely deep lakes, the jungly forests, dripping and fragrant and twilight-dim; the great rivers, rolling, rapid-whitened, through forestland.
Railway travel is the easiest and most comfortable and economical way of entering into one's chosen holiday-land, whether far or near. Here may be indicated the principal pleasure routes which either give direct access to scenes strange or beautiful, or both, or from which the traveller can branch off by road to places of interest.
First comes the North Auckland railway, the great commercial artery of that sub-province which stretches northward for considerably more than two hundred miles from Auckland isthmus. The railway taps the Kaipara, Whangarei, Bay of Islands, and Hokianga districts, and serves a huge area of productive country, and a country full of interest for the pleasurer. You may travel in comfort through the heart of the North, which was practically cut off from Auckland City for several months in the year in its early days because of the poor roads. The coming of the rail changed all that. The route is through a land which once was mostly clothed with forest, and which has been transformed by the bushman's toil and the farmer's enterprise. Even the desolate kauri gumfields, where the digger plied spear and spade, the hills and flats that a New Zealand novelist once described as “the land of the lost,” have been transformed into farms and orchards.
The rail gives direct access to the Bay of Islands, with its famous fishing grounds, its inlets of beauty, its valleys of peace and fruitfulness, its sanctuaries of history and romance. Land of colour and legend and antique charm; our birthplace as a British colony in the great South Sea. His Excellency Lord Bledisloe's great gift to New Zealand people of the old Busby home and esate at Waitangi has brought that storied spot into the public eye, and the scene of the Treaty-signing in 1840 is likely to be visited this summer by a great many who have hitherto not troubled to search out any of the places where our nation's story began. Waitangi is quite easily reached—half-an-hour's run in a motor-launch from the rail-head at Opua wharf. It is exactly opposite old Kororareka, the Russell of to-day, where, for one thing, there is the oldest church in New Zealand, very little short of a century in years.
Still older is placid Kerikeri, as quiet as a forest pool, at the head of its saltwater river, fourteen miles from Russell. More than a century of pakeha civilisation is enshrined in this pretty backwater of the North, where the burden of life seems to rest lightly on the little village.
Then, inland, there is Kaikohe, the heart of the good lands of this volcanic country; and from there it is but a step to Hokianga, region of delicious climate, the land of valleys of the sun, where pakeha and Maori farm side by side. Life in the open should be a perpetual pleasure in such a lovely land as this. There are not many things you cannot raise there, and you can do without many clothes. One hears of people going to Norfolk Island to settle. They cannot ever have seen Hokianga.
Some scenes pall by familiarity, but the sight of Rotorua, spread out below, as the train emerges from the bush on the Mamaku hills, always comes as a dramatic picture with a quality of surprise, no matter how often one has visited the lakes and the hot springs. Many years of close acquaintance with the Geyser Country have not dulled to me, at any rate, the keen enjoyment of the descent into the charmed region of the Wai-ariki. There are great changes in the environs of Rotorua lake since first one saw it, in the year the railway was completed, very nearly forty years ago. The manuka that clothed with grey the flats and slopes has been swept away; farms and orchards and gardens and groves of trees have taken the place of the uniform blanket of scrub. Rotorua town has grown into the proportions of a small city, this metropolis of Hot Springland. There is a wonderful growth of trees; the handsome plantation bordering the railway station is an example. The
The town and the Government gardens, the tree-shaded wide streets, the Pukeroa hill park—Maori fortress of old-time—overlooking the blue lake, the hot springpitted foreshore of Ohinemutu, the Maori
“A garden of luxuriant blossoms filling the air with fragrance.”—Longfellow.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Government Spa buildings and grounds, Rotorua.
For the more energetic there is a vast territory of strange sights spread out for exploration, and there are some of the most beautiful lakes in New Zealand in the great chain of watersheets, lakes of all contours and colours, most of them in a sylvan setting; lakes of story and legend and song; lakes hot and cold, lakes overpeered by wooded heights of every shade of green, lakes dominated ominously by scarred old volcanoes. Close at hand is the famous geyser valley of Whakarewarewa, where Pohutu and Waikite and Waikorohihi throw into the air their rainbow-lit fountains of boiling water and sparkling spray.
Further afield there is the marvellous day's round of Tarawera, Rotomahana and Waimangu, a land-and-water cruise taking one through the hotly-throbbing heart of Geyserland.
Southward again lies the great lake of Taupo; south-eastward the Kaingaroa Plains with its quickly-growing new forest of exotic pines, and beyond again the blue sierras of the Urewera Country.
The Bay of Plenty line, branching off from the Thames railway, is well worth a trial as a holiday run, and one can combine this tour with a look-in at Te Aroha, that pretty riverside Spa at the foot of its noble mountain. Tauranga, with its plenitude of trees and flowers, its pleasant sea-tempered climate, its atmosphere of history and adventure, is a convenient
Taking the Main Trunk line for it again, there is the King Country for a holiday land, and specifically the limestone cave area, with Waitomo's glowworm cave of mystic loveliness as the culminating point of this subterranean fairyland. Further south there is a new route of travel this summer, the just-finished railway from Okahukura to Stratford, giving at last the long-needed connection between Auckland and Taranaki. A route of great possibilities, and of present special interest because it penetrates a bush country and a newly-broken area where all the pioneer stages of settlement are still to be witnessed at close quarters by the rail traveller. A vast amount could be written about this land of natural beauty and human endeavour; present space only allows of a suggestion that a run through the heart of North Taranaki by this route might very pleasurably vary the usual Auckland-Wellington trip by the Main Trunk.
In The Sunny Bay Of Plenty.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Tauranga, a flourishing town on the East Coast Railway, North Island.
The volcano region of the Tongariro National Park will attract many besides the confirmed mountain-scaler. There is much that is wonderful to see without undertaking any high climbs; and there is the December-January glory of wild flowers carpeting the sub-alpine slopes for miles.
Crossing to the South Island, one finds something quite different again in such a railway tour as the run across the Canterbury Plains and along the curving coast of North Otago, the greatest area of agricultural land in the Dominion, as distinguished from the dairying pastures of the North. Here is the perfection of serene country scenery, with many a sightly village and town.
Most holiday-makers will make for the three main pleasurelands—the West Coast with its lakes and glaciers, the Mt. Cook alpine region, and Wakatipu and other lakes of the Otago-Southland country.
First in the interest that bold and unusual scenery makes is the trans-alpine train journey by Arthur's Pass and the Otira tunnel, a line of great engineering works and of a sometimes startling quality of beauty. Forest, lake and torrent
rata and ferntrees which frame the glittering down-plunging tongues of ice thrust from the open jaws of the mountains.
The lakes, too, are a glory of that farstretching Coast. For two hundred miles from the Grey River southward the rich Westland forests are blue-spangled with lakes, calm mirrors of the Alpine snows and the trees. Kanieri, close to Hokitika, is typical of these lakes of the woods. Its shores are forested to the water's edge. The air is full of the bush fragrance and the voices of the bush birds. From the waterline the hill spurs, in overlapping folds of tender foliage, sweep back to the snowy mountains, all on a clear quiet day reversed with unbroken imagery on the glassy lake floor. Every here and there the rocky coast is broken by little white sandy beaches, at any of which one may land by the simple process of running the motor-launch nose on to the shore. For days the water lies spread out like a polished silver plate, the only motion an almost imperceptible heave of its calm bosom.
“Yea, everywhere there stirred a matchless beauty.”—Robert Buchanan.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Lake Kanieri, West Coast, South Island. (Rail to Hokitika, thence motor.)
Different again are the great lakes of Otago and Southland interior. Wakatipu, set in mountains of grim wild contour, is the most accessible; you reach it by rail from either Dunedin or Invercargill. It is a place of sharp contrasts, a place to stir the imagination. The south arm, along which one steams from the train terminus at Kingston to Queenstown, is very narrow, immensely deep, and profoundly blue-black; on each side it is walled in by craggy precipices, weathered into shapes strange and awful, and deeply-riven by race-tracks of the avalanches. Then on the right shoots up the amazingly broken range of the Remarkables. By contrast there is the prettiest and whitest of little towns, lying among its parks and orchards, old-settled Queenstown, founded in the great gold-rush days of the Sixties. The magic call of gold is giving interest anew to this ancient haunt of the world's digger brotherhood, for the Kawarau and its neighbourhood are the scene of an eager and—for some—profitable search for the treasure in the alluvial drifts.
“By covering the 152.7 miles from Crewe to Willesden in 142 minutes start to stop,” states the Railway Gazette, “one of the up-Liverpool expresses of the L.M.S.R. will, during the coming summer, gain for that line the world's record for high speed (64.5 m.p.h.) over so great a distance.”
“And so the alleged fast-decaying railways demonstrate their virility. There is a sporting element in this competition, for railway speed records, which is very cheering in these times of sadness and depression. It is not to be taken as mere spectacular advertisement, either, for the acceleration movement is spreading in every direction.
“In this very issue we describe something of what is being done by the L.M.S.R. to improve the rapid transit of goods, and our article may be taken as indicative of what is going on, not only on that system but also on all the others. If express and freight trains are receiving such consideration, so also are the humbler local, cross-country, and semifasts.
“We have good reason to believe that the winter time-tables will show an all-round speeding up of such trains, which will do much, not merely to retain and gain patronage, but to effect important further working economies by means of quicker turn-round of motive power and rolling-stock.
“And, perhaps most important of all, this tendency has its inevitable reaction upon the morale of everyone concerned in maintaining it.”
Bearing on this question of service capacity, the Taranaki Herald comments thus upon a New Zealand incident:—
“A discussion took place recently between a prominent New Plymouth business man and the railway stationmaster as to the freight tariff when the new Stratford-Main Trunk railway line was opened. The merchant mentioned that a short time since a consignment of about 6cwt. of plants for Australia had gone to Wellington by road transport at a cost of 5/6 per cwt., and it was suggested that the freight was cheaper than that by rail, and also quicker.
“The proposition was said to have been put to a Wellington transport company at New Plymouth on a Wednesday. They were asked if they could land the packages in Wellington by the Thursday night for shipment on the Friday morning. This company was said to be unwilling to give the required guarantee as to the time of arrival. However, another firm undertook the contract, and the goods were accepted by this road firm at 5/6 per cwt.
“The stationmaster made a few astute enquiries, and was struck by the coincidence that the second firm named had negotiated with him on the same Wednesday, and the were informed that if the packages were at rail by 4 p.m. that day they would be in Wellington by Thursday night, at a cost of 20/4 (about 3/4 per cwt.). The packages actually did go by rail.
“The stationmaster is still smiling, but the incident shows that the Railway Department is in a position to give guarantees and a quick service, and it also shows the value of co-ordination between the carrying company in question and the Railway Department, a co-ordination which could be carried into greater effect if consignors would always consult the Department first.”
A fine display of Chrysanthemums at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
Promoted with the idea of bringing together Railway Workshop employees who were interested in horticulture, the Otahuhu Railway Horticultural Club, was formed during the month of August, 1931. The founders of the club were Messrs. F. A. H. Blackford, R. Pointon and K. C. Brown—all at that time on the staff of the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
Commencing with forty members, the club in a little over twelve months has grown to a membership exceeding 200.
At the annual meeting of the club, held at the end of the financial year, the rules were amended to include all railway employees, and also superannuated members. All branches of the Service are now represented, and at every meeting night more nominations are received. Any active or superannuated member of the Railway Service, also a member's wife and family (family meaning children under fourteen years of age) are eligible to join the club, the subscription for the year being 2/6 per member, including his wife and family.
The meetings of the club, which take the form of a show and a lecture upon some gardening topic, are held on the third Tuesday of every month, in the Otahuhu Railway Workshop's Social Hall.
The monthly show consists of three classes, namely, flower class, vegetable class, and a decorated vase competition for the lady members of the club. In the flower competition the exhibit may be three flowers of the same species, such as three dahlias, etc., but not necessarily of the same variety. The first prize for this class is a handsome cup called the Pointon Flower Cup, which is named in honour of Mr. R. Pointon, ex-Timber Inspector for the Railways. This trophy is held by the member winning this section until the next monthly meeting, at which it is surrendered and presented for further competition. At the end of the club's year the member winning the Cup the most number of times during the year has his or her name engraved on it, and the competition commences again until an exhibitor has won the cup two years in succession or three years alternately. The rules and conditions governing the Vegetable Cup are the same as the Pointon Flower Cup rules, with the exception that it is not necessary for a member to exhibit three cabbages or cauliflowers, one exhibit being sufficient. In the decorated vase competition for ladies, the member decorating one of the club's standard vases most tastefully wins a vase presented by Mr. R. Moore, Car and Wagon Inspector, Auckland. The vase is held until the next meeting night, when it is again competed for. At
The class of exhibits are of a very high standard, and are always improving, thanks to the efforts and advice of Mr. R. Pointon, one of the mainstays of the club, and the member to whom everyone turns for advice on all gardening topics.
After the business of the club is completed on monthly meeting nights, a lecturer delivers a talk on various gardening subjects. His talk extends over a period of an hour, and at the end of his lecture a time is set apart for questions. The most expert lecturers are obtained, and it says much for their enthusiasm that their services are given free of charge, their one desire being to assist the club in every way possible. The success of the club depends a great deal upon these lecturers, and the members are very grateful for their assistance and advice, which is very carefully followed.
The judge for the monthly shows is Mr. Pointon, who is a very enthusiastic gardener.
“A snow of blossoms and a wild of flowers.”—Tickell.
(Photo, courtesy “Auckland Star.”)
Display of blooms at the 2nd Annual Show of the Otahuhu Railway Horticultural Club.
The Executive of the Club consists of the following members:—President: Mr. A. E. P. Walworth, Works Manager, Otahuhu; Vice-Presidents: Messrs. H. R. Johnson, Foreman, Otahuhu; R. A. Lendrum, Foreman, Hutt (late Otahuhu); R. Moore, Car and Wagon Inspector, Auckland; Chairman: Mr. F. Martin; Secretarytreasurer: Mr. K. C. Brown; Assistant Secretary: Mr. R. Holmes. Committee, representing Workshop members: Messrs. F. A. H. Blackford, R. Pointon, E. Ledbrook, R. N. St. George, W. Grubb, N. Lipscombe and R. Lawrence; representing superannuated members, Mr. B. Andrew; representing outside members, Mr. K. O'Hara.
Support and encouragement of the club and its work has, from its inception, been received from the Auckland Horticultural Society. It is a great pleasure to work in with the parent Society, the Executive of which co-operates most readily with the Railway Horticultural Club.
What has been done at Otahuhu to promote interest in horticulture among railwaymen is possible in other railway centres throughout the Dominion, and it is hoped that the keen gardeners concerned will follow in the Otahuhu staff's footsteps and form clubs of their own.
A winter scene at Springfield Station, on the Midland Line, South Island, N.Z.
Had Long Charlie, driver of No. 738, which hauled the Western Mail that night, and his mate Ben Jones, been astronomers, they would not have lived to tell the tale of the strange happenings in Haunted Gorge. For on that dark stretch of track, with the towering cliffs shutting out even the moonlight and starlight, Long Charlie always let the monster engine all out, and if he had not heeded the mysterious warning, he would have met the fast special head on.
Haunted Gorge was an unusual formation, where the Red River passed through the mountain range which divided the plains into two vast level areas. The line was level for the ten miles in the gorge, with three tunnels and some deep cuttings. Midway through was Rocky Ledge, an isolated station where there was a loop in the single track, for trains to pass.
In the barracks that afternoon, at Emerald, the enginemen had been talking of mysterious happenings on the roads, Paddy Mills, an Irish fireman, having started the talk with a vivid account of a woman who had saved a train from disaster, and had afterwards been declared to have been a ghost.
“For no woman resembling her had been seen in that locality before or since,” added Paddy.
“What about the night when Fireworks Fraser threw on all his ‘air’ because he caught a glimpse of the rising moon coming out of the Gorge and mistook it for a headlight?” Steve commented, “or the ghost of Aitchison's. Most spooky things are simple enough afterwards.”
“Well, I wouldn't care to be night officer at Rocky Ledge,” a youngster said. “Barring the trains going through, there's nobody to see or speak to except on the telephone. It's all right for us fellows, we soon run through it.”
“It would take a hefty ghost to stop my old girl,” Long Charlie drawled, “though I admit I'm glad to get through the gorge; but that's just because I hate a single track. Keep's you too much on the jump, watching ahead.”
The Company was busy about that time, moving large numbers of holiday people back to the city, and they were piling the trains pretty close on one another's heels. The stretch of single track through Haunted Gorge was a trial to the despatchers.
Long Charlie and Ben Jones left the barracks about dusk, and went down to the steam shed where 738 was getting the finishing touches at the hands of the shed men. The two enginemen got their stores and tools for the trip, and after looking their engine over, they took her
While they stood there, the loco, ‘super.’ himself walked across to tell them to keep a special lookout going through the Gorge of the Red River.
“You're timed to meet the Gulgong Mail at the Ledge,” he told them, “and after that give her all she'll take and get out of the Gorge as if old Nick was after you. The trains will be hunting one another along to-night, with six specials crowded in among the expresses and ordinaries.”
They promised to do all he told them, and, the Western Mail rolling in about that time, the “super.” went away to attend to his other worries connected with the moving of fast trains.
As they backed down to the train, old Jonah, who had brought her from Dubbo, called out to them from his engine as they passed, some pleasantry of the road. The old man had the reputation of never having been late with his train, and it was one which Steve Hill and Long Charlie envied, for they knew that it had been won through an uncanny intimacy between the old driver and his engine; she appeared almost to be a living thing in his hands.
“I've just remembered,” Long Charlie said to Ben, “that this is Jonah's old engine. Since he took one of the new C's he is wrapped up in it, but he must remember old 738. That was what he was chyacking us about, I expect.”
Ben Jones paused in his trimming and slicing.
“Yes, this engine used to be looked on as a witch in the Bathurst yard, because the boys swore they used to hear another voice besides Jonah's when he was going over her before taking her out for a trip. She never let him down, anyway. Maybe she is lucky, like Jonah.”
With the Western Mail securely coupled to their drawbar, they pulled out presently from Emerald, and were headed for Haunted Gorge, twenty miles away. The five sleepers on the train were soon wrapped in darkness and silence, for it was nearly midnight, and when the Gorge was reached and the train stopped at the Portal to get her running orders through, all the window screens were down and no lights showed from the darkened carriages.
“You meet No. 81 at Rocky Ledge,” the Stationmaster said, as he handed the driver his orders, “and then let her all out for Red River. The fast special will be waiting for you there, and there are some big men on board who won't want to be late getting to the city in the morning.”
The sob of the steam as they drew away into the gloomy narrow gorge made weird echoes along the cliffs, which could be sensed rather than seen in the darkness. No. 738 was sizzling with power, and at every pull of Long Charlie's hand at the throttle lever, she moved faster. Soon she was humming along the tracks like a meteor come to earth, and the enginemen were settling down for a fast trip, once they had got the gorge behind them.
The Gulgong Mail was half-a-minute late at The Ledge, and Long Charlie shouted some “barrack” to Gentleman John, who was driving, as the engines passed. Then they were away again, burning the metals with their eager drivers, the long sleepers rolling with the speed. They were almost out of the last tunnel, where a straight stretch leads out of the gorge, when Ben Jones shouted to Charlie:
“Hold her! There's the ‘red’ at the River distance Light.”
Instinctively the driver swung on the air, then he laughed and released again.
“You can't see Red River signal from here. Heavens, there it is, though!”
In the flash of an eye he had seen a dull, smoky red light glowing away down the track, which led through high wall-like cliffs to the open plain. But this time he did not use the air. Instead, he pulled his throttle wide open, and shouted:
“Every pound you can, Ben; there's something wrong, but I'm not going to stop in this gorge. We'll reach the
“Why should she leave before we get there?” Ben asked, in amazement. All the same he shot the coal into the roaring furnace that the high, rapid exhaust was making, and the train flew over the metals.
“It's that red light,” Charlie went on; “it's a warning, but it's not the Red River light. There's something queer about it, and I'm going to leg it to Red River as if Old Nick was after us, as the ‘super.’ said.”
The Railways And Sport.
(Photo, courtesy J. Muir.)
Teams representing the Railways Head Office (left) and the District Traffic Manager's Office, Wellington, at their first annual Rugby football match, played at Wellington at the end of the recent football season.
The train was rocking along behind the speeding engine, with the car-wheels making one long roar as they rapped over the rail-joints. The end of the Gorge was in sight, and still the red light glowed ahead. It seemed to move away as they approached, a phenomenon which increased the mystification of the enginemen.
Red River was only a mile away when Ben, whose eyes were keen for lights, yelled:
“Look, it's changed. A White Light!”
“It's a headlight, travelling when it should be slowing,” Long Charlie said, in a tense voice.
No. 738's whistle began to sound then, in long wailing calls, such as are used as warnings of some unusual happening.
“We've got to pull into the siding,” Long Charlie said, with set face, staring ahead. “I hope they're awake at Red River and have the points set. That headlight's coming too fast for my liking.”
They were awake at Red River. The signals had been dropped to green, and a waving hand-lamp showed that the points were set for the Western Mail. The way in which she swung into them at thirty miles an hour made the porter gasp, while his eyes followed her glowing tail-lights away to the end of the loop before Long Charlie managed to stop her.
But the enginemen had no time to spare for the porter. They were intent on the brilliant headlight which was now roaring down on Red River at fifty miles an hour, and never a whistle call for the signals from the engine behind the light.
With her wheels clipping the points as she rolled, a mighty express engine careered past, her carriages flipping past like the pages of a book in an impatient hand. Then she was gone, howling away through the Gorge. It was the Special! And both her enginemen were asleep.
The porter ran to them along the ballast, incoherent with surprise. He took their tablet, then turned back.
“What were your orders?” he gasped.
“To wait here for her, weren't they?”
Long Charlie nodded.
“But you're here two minutes early.”
“Never mind about that,” Charlie said. “Run for your life and tell the S.M. to warn the Ledge that the special is running wild, with both her men asleep. Maybe she'll stop before she gets there, maybe she won't. It's up to you.”
A tired-looking stationmaster came up to the engine a couple of minutes later.
“They've stopped her,” he said. “Her guard got suspicious after she tore through here like that, and at the Ledge, when she was easing up for want of steam, he stopped her with his emergency. Sammy Bull and Jimmy are her crew. Overtime work, and the warm night made them sleepy, I suppose. By Jove, I got a shock when she ripped like that, just after you got in. If you'd met her in the Gorge —” Note.—On the New Zealand Railways, strict limitation of the hours of continuous duty, and provision for rest periods, prevent the possibility of any such happening as that so vividly described by Mr. Lawson.—Ed.
He let their imagination fill in the picture.
“What got you here so quickly?” the stationmaster asked.
“We got a warning,” Long Charlie answered in a serious tone of voice.
Ensuring Safety On The New Zealand Railways.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The signal cabin at Colombo Street, Christchurch, where the signalman controls the movements of both trains and trams.
“There was a red light in the Gorge, Ben sang out to stop, but I hate a single track. I'd rather stop here. So we came all out.”
“A red light?” the S.M. said wonderingly, and looking along the track to see if it was still there. Low down in the sky, and right ahead was a reddish-coloured star.
“That's Mars,” he said. “It's very near and bright just now, but I can't say it looks as red as a signal light.”
“In the Gorge it looked very red and near,” Charlie told him. “Maybe it was the darkness in there. Anyhow, whatever's queer about the place it is not evil. Why, if we'd known that was a star we'd both be dead men now.”
“I bet it was Jonah's old engine, too, that played a hand,” Ben, the fireman said, with a funny kind of laugh. “She always was lucky and a bit uncanny, too.”
From the Manager of the Australian Mutual Provident Society, Wellington, to the General Manager of Railways, Wellington:—
It affords me very great pleasure to convey to you personally, to the Assistant General Manager, and to all officers of the staff of the N.Z Railways concerned, our warmest thanks for the extreme consideration and the kindly and efficient assistance afforded to Mr. Somervell, of the Society's staff, upon his journey from Dunedin to Auckland.
At all points, and in every conceivable manner the journey was made as comfortable as possible for the invalid passenger, showing in a very real way the practical application of the Department's policy of “Service.”
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From Clutha N. McKenzie, Director, Jubilee Institute for the Blind, Auckland, to the Publicity Manager, Railways, Wellington:—
May I take advantage of this column in your paper to express the warm thanks of our blind people to the staff of the Department for the great kindness shown to them whenever they have occasion to travel. Men, women and children are constantly travelling between the Blind Institute, in Auckland, and their homes in various parts of the Dominion. Sometimes they have to go alone—not altogether a happy prospect for a newly-blind person—but the friendly, sympathetic help of guards and station staffs soon gives them confidence. Just this touch makes the world of difference with our people. May I say, too, how grateful I am for the courtesy and consideration shown me personally on my journeys in connection with our work.
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From the Rev. George S. King, St. James' Manse, 4 Helmore Street, Wanganui, to the District Traffic Manager, Wanganui:—
Three weeks ago I had occasion to travel by rail from Masterton, returning to my home in Wanganui accompanied by my daughter. We had the misfortune to be held up, first by a slip on the Wairarapa line at Mangamahoe, and second by the derailment of a wagon between Fordell and Okoia.
We wish to express our appreciation of and our deep gratitude for the kindness and helpfulness of the railway staff on both occasions. The members of the train crews were most painstaking in their endeavours to make every passenger comfortable. We were specially impressed by the devotion of the guards on each train, and by the untiring efforts of a gentleman, an official of the railways, who was unknown to us personally. Someone told us later he was the Stationmaster at Masterton.
Orchards massed with pink and white bloom, golden kowhai beside the creeks, pastures green as powdered emeralds, woolly lambs skipping all over the hillsides—what a picture of peace and plenty, as one gazes from the window of the express, speeding through the farm lands of the Waikato! It is always a delightful trip, but loveliest of all when the mantle of Spring lies over the land, and the trees are gowning themselves in their new robes of green, and every farm-house garden and orchard is massed with springtide bloom.
And then the tawny, russet beauty of the Pokeno marsh lands and swamps—here is one of the most picturesque and fascinating train-pictures to be seen in all New Zealand. Spring time is the best time to see it, before the willows and osiers beside the line are in thick leaf. In spring, when the tiny leaves are just unfurling, it is like gazing through a thin green curtain out to a landscape all brown and orange and gold, with silver strips of water, and sometimes the whirr of a duck rising from the little reedy islands, or a glimpse of a red-billed pukeko (swamphen) stalking delicately on stilt-legs through the shallow pools.
Over the mossy wastes of the great Piako and Eureka swamp lands, and down again into the farm country of Motumaoho and Morrinsville Junction—how beautiful it all is under the golden sunshine! The long, straight run down from Morrinsville to Te Aroha is full of beauty, for the acacias are in full bloom, and the gold-green willows make a perfect frame for the smooth waters of the Waihou River. Then, before you know it, Te Aroha mountain is frowning down on you, and you come with a rush into the pretty little township snugly set at its feet.
There is a quaint, unusual charm about Te Aroha that sets it apart from all other towns of the Waikato. It seems to have been pushed to the very edge of the plains and into the shadow of the hills. There is something very Swiss and fascinating about the way the houses perch themselves high on the slopes of the mountain, and the rugged spurs sweep down into people's back yards. Groves of immense pines march gravely up to Bald Spur (1,000 feet), and another couple of thousand feet higher is the trig.
Te Aroha owes its origin to the gold discoveries of the “eighties,” and the curative properties of its mineral waters have long since given it prominence among the health resorts of Auckland Province. Over twenty acres have been
But to those who do not need to take such matters seriously, it is Mount Te Aroha itself that will make strongest appeal. The slopes form part of the Tourist Domain, and are covered with native bush, which serves as a sanctuary for the tui, bell-bird, native pigeon, and other feathered forest folk. The climb to the summit is moderately stiff, but is not, strictly speaking, anything of a mountain climb. The track for the first 1,000 feet up to the Bald Spur is easy and well graded. It winds up from the gardens through the splendid pine grove to the native bush higher up. From open spaces beside the track, one gets magnificent glimpses of the Waikato Plains, and of the homes and farm-lands at the foot of the mountain. Beyond Bald Spur lies the thick native bush—and here you begin to do a little climbing. The track grows steeper and steeper, and you occasionally help yourself up with the aid of handy roots and branches. Drooping crepe ferns and kidney ferns make a fringe of green lace on trunk and bough; gold and green mosses brighten bare rock faces, and from out the dense thicket of the bush comes the long trill of a tui's song.
Reached Daily From Auckland.
(Rly, Publicity photo.)
Te Aroha station, within easy walking distance of the chief attractions of the town.
A few more steep pinches, and at last the summit, and the trig, with triumphant fluttering of red and white drapings left by some previous climbers. The view is wonderful. Down in the mists of the east we catch a glimpse of Tauranga, the Mount, and Mayor Island. Nearer at hand is Waihi Beach, with the white lines of ocean breakers edging the deep blue of the ocean. Over on the horizon rise the tumbled masses of the Coromandel Ranges, crowned with Castle Rock, a noble landmark visible from Auckland itself. The silver glint of the Firth of Thames, the level expanse of the Hauraki Plains, catch the eye as the circling panorama is completed. And at the foot, stretching out to the western horizon are the splendid stretches of Waikato farmlands, cut with long, level roads, brightened with the steel-grey glint of the Waihou, winding its way out to sea. Pasture-lands, homes, groves of trees, distant mountains, and blue, blue sea—a wonderful and fascinating picture, from three thousand feet up in the sky!
The Royal Commission on Railways (1930) recommended that consideration be given to the question of enacting the necessary legislation for the purpose of co-ordinating road and rail services. Subsequently the Transport Licensing Act, 1931, was passed, constituting machinery designed to enable this objective to be attained. The principal of the Act is the control of commercial road transport services by a system of licensing. The view of the Board is that some such machinery was absolutely essential to enable progress to be made towards the rationalisation of the transport industry. It felt strongly that the conflict of interests and the unnecessary duplication of transport services that were arising could be effectively dealt with only by a body of a judicial type functioning along judicial lines. To the extent that the Act constitutes machinery of this type, the Board believes that it is a step in the right direction.
The Licensing Authorities under the Act have commenced to function as regards the passenger services. The Act has not yet be