While electric operation is doubtless destined to replace steam working in many main and branch railway lines in the years that lie ahead, there still remains a very big future for the steam locomotive. Improvements and refinements are constantly being introduced with the idea of increasing the power and efficiency of the steam engine, and the days of the trusty “Iron Horse” are certainly far from being numbered—as some of the electrification enthusiasts would have us believe.

Among new locomotive equipment to be introduced on the English railways is the A.C.F.I. feed water heater apparatus, for reclaiming heat from the exhaust steam and utilising it for the boiler feed water, thus saving the combustion of an equivalent amount of coal in the firebox. A batch of standard 0—8—0 type heavy mineral locomotives of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway have been equipped with this device, with most satisfactory results.

Exhaust steam from the blast pipe is carried to a drum on the boiler barrel, where it meets cold water from the tender. Falling through a perforated pipe, the water is rapidly heated by the steam and passes to the hot water cylinder of the steam pump, which forces it into the boiler through a clack box, in the usual fashion. The hot and cold water cylinders of the feed pump are so arranged that the cold water cylinder always supplies more water to the mixing chamber than the hot water cylinder can pump into the boiler, the excess water being returned through a special valve to the feed pipe leading from the tender. In addition to the feed water pump and heating equipment, an ordinary live steam injector is fitted to the locomotives. Apart from fuel economy, the new equipment is found to result in valuable savings in maintenance, the special apparatus preventing the introduction of gases into the boiler and lessening scale deposit.

Another interesting locomotive development is the building by the L.M. and S. Railway of a heavy-oil locomotive of unique design, intended principally for shunting duties. An existing 0—6—0 shunting engine has been rebuilt with a heavy fuel-oil unit as prime mover, and with transmission of the hydraulic type. The locomotive has driving compartments at each end, the controls being duplicated on either side of each cab. The total weight is 46 tons, and the engine, of the six-cylinder heavy fuel-oil type, has a brake horse-power of 400. The engine works on the four-stroke cycle, and has a normal running speed of 750 r.p.m. An interesting feature is the design of the transmission gear, which is capable of absorbing 400 h.p. continuously when running at normal speed. The main shaft of the motive unit is coupled directly to a pumping unit, the pump transmitting its power hydraulically to the transmitter.

The new locomotive has a self-starter, in the shape of air reservoirs maintained at a pressure of 3001b. per sq. in. by a 5 h.p. compressor. When running, this is driven from the main shaft, but a small petrol engine is installed to charge the reservoirs when at rest. Some 125 gallons of oil fuel and 134 gallons of water are carried on the engine, and the new locomotive is proving most useful for shunting duties in busy yards.

The total steam locomotive stock of the L.M. and S. Railway is actually 9,060. With the exception of the unified State railway system of Germany, which comprises a number of State lines under one general direction, the L.M. and S. is by far the largest locomotive owner in the whole world.

The various types of steam locomotives in daily use comprise giant machines like the “Royal Scot,” powerful “Garratt” articulated freight engines; and many smaller designs of locomotive for both passenger and freight haulage. The “Royal Scot” class consists of three cylinder engines having a working pressure of 2501b. to the sq. in. Because of the enormous size of the boiler, the chimney and dome have had to be pared down almost to vanishing point.

Thirty-three examples of the “Garratt” articulated locomotive are found on the L.M. and S.—all of them in service on the Midland division of the line. A boiler of large capacity is carried on a girder frame, which, in turn is mounted on two 2—6—0 locomotive chassis, arranged back to back. The result is to give an engine with a tractive capacity equal to that of two ordinary freight locomotives, yet supplied with steam from one boiler and manned by one crew.

Among other L.M. and S. engines may be noted the standard 2—6—4 tank locomotive for short passenger journeys; the 2—6—2 tank engine for suburban haulage; and the standard 0—8—0 freight locomotive, employed so largely for working over the extremely steep gradients of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All these engines represent British locomotive practice at its best, and all are peculiarly adapted for the special services they are called upon to perform.

London's railway facilities grow apace. Recently there has been opened a new extension of the Metropolitan line from Wembley Park to Stanmore, giving easy access to a rapidly developing residential area north-west of the metropolis. On this extension is found the first example of centralised traffic control in the British Empire, all traffic at Stan-more being controlled, and the points and signals operated from Wembley Park, at a distance of no less than four and a half miles. Made and installed by the Westinghouse Brake and Saxby Signal Company, of London, the centralised control equipment opens up an entirely new field in scientific railway operation.

London's immense traffic movements may be realised by a study of the passenger census figures recently compiled by the Underground Railway Group. During a typical week, eight of the largest stations on the system handled no fewer than 4,250,000 passengers. The busiest station was Charing Cross, with 770,000 passengers. Next came Oxford Circus, with 616,000 passengers; and Piccadilly Circus, with 537,000. At Tottenham Court Road, 485,000 passengers were handled during the week; at the Bank Station 482,000 and at Leicester Square 477,000. Out in the suburbs, Morden Station accounted for 160,000 passengers in a single week. Rightly has this Empire capital beside the Thames been termed “the great modern Babylon.”

Fast and frequent rail connections between London and the Continent are an imperative need. For many years efficient rail and steamship services have been maintained by the Southern and London and North Eastern lines, linking London with the Continent, while for some time an ocean-going train-ferry has been operated by the L. and N.E. and Belgian State Railways between Harwich and Zeebrugge. Largely as a result of the success attained by the Harwich - Zeebrugge train-ferry, the Southern Railway is now introducing a train-ferry service between Dover and Dunkirk. At the outset freight traffic mainly is to be catered for, but it is the intention eventually to run sleeping cars from London to Paris by way of the new ferry.

Three ferry vessels are being acquired, each having a length of approximately 365ft., beam 60ft., and a loaded draught 12ft. 3in. They will have a speed of 16 knots, and will accommodate fifty-five 20-ton wagons and a number of motor cars. Train-ferry operation will result in a reduction of handling at the ports, with a consequent lessening of the risk of damage or deterioration of freight. Quicker operations at the ports also, will result in a marked saving in transit time. In a few years, thanks to the working of the new ferry, it may be possible for a passenger to make the through journey from London to the Orient without once changing his railway car.

Train-ferries have been found exceptionally useful in connection with the movement of freight between Britain and Italy. The Italian railways are greatly appreciative of the outlet for their wagons afforded by the Zeebrugge-Harwich ferry, and motor cars from the Fiat factory at Turin have been shipped in large numbers by this route, as well as a heavy tonnage of fruit traffic from Southern Italy.

While in a few countries—like New Zealand, India, Italy, and Britain—railway returns recently have been a little more promising, in general the study of world railway affairs remains disappointing. Typical of the situation of many of the European railways is that of Switzerland, where the recently issued annual report of the State Railways confirms the heavy decreases in traffic common throughout the Continent.

Passengers over the Swiss State Railways dropped from 127,900,000 in 1930 to 122,500,000 in 1931, and passenger receipts from 159,100,000 francs to 150,700,000 francs. Similar losses were recorded on the freight side. The development of road competition was largely responsible for the fall in traffic, although the prevailing business depression also hit the Swiss lines. There is no question of the efficiency of the Swiss railways, for they are far-famed as progressive and well managed. As a leader in the electrification field, Switzerland stands pre-eminent, owning some 403 mainline electric locomotives and 38 electric shunting locomotives. Plans are now under review for placing the whole question of the relative places to be taken by rail and road transport respectively upon a more equitable basis in Switzerland, and as a result of this move the railways should be able to make a better showing.

Commenting upon the improvement in net revenue shewn in the railway returns, the “Otago Daily Times” of recent date, concludes: “There are various explanations, of course, of the recapture by the railways of some of the traffic which they had lost, and one of them consists in the policy that is being adopted by the Railways Board of energetically seeking business rather than of merely accepting what would come to it if no effort were made on its behalf to attract traffic.”

Maungakakaramea, Rainbow Mountain, the well-known landmark of the Rotorua-Waiotapu-Taupo highway, is hot from crown to toe. Its feet are bathed in hot lagoons and creeks, which mark the spot where the Te Whaiti-Urewera road leaves the highway. Steam ascends from these lagoons, and from the Waiotapu hot pools a mile away; steam issues also at points up Rainbow Mountain, which is adorned with two craters, steaming in places. Right alongside the path (and horse track) which the Forest Service has graded to the top of the mountain, you may put your hand to the ground and feel it hot. One sign of hot ground is a recumbent (and unique) form of manuka, which loves the heat so well that it reclines along the ground and refuses to ever be pea-sticks. When the Forest Service was carrying a telephone to the top of the mountain, it found hot mud even at the bottom of the last post-hole, practically at the summit.

Maungakakaramea is therefore incorrigible, but this does not worry Mr. Alexander McAlpine, who spends the summer in a little eagle's nest, which in the distance looks like a glorified trig. Mr. McAlpine is there because this is the chief look-out station of the Kaiangaroa plantations—the eye of the Forest Service, ever alert for fire. To protect the plantation asset, which represents an investment of about a million pounds, means constant vigil during the fire danger months. It is the fire guard's duty to watch, and to give warning by telephone. Mr. McAlpine is concerned not about the heat of the mountain under his feet, but about fire that may occur ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty miles away. His little one-roomed, windowed look-out is perched on top of a furnace, and this does not matter, but a fire fifty miles away on the Rangitaike boundary matters a good deal. Probably if one of the craters below him blew out, he would merely advise Kaiangaroa that the disturbance was not within Kaiangaroa's limits (Maungakakaramea being not a forest reserve, but a scenic reserve, and being placed under Forest Service administration merely because the mountain is the best possible site for a fire guard's lookout. At the same time, the scenic view from the lookout, embracing the whole of thermal lakeland, Tarawera, the Rangitaiki, Urewera, Taupo, with Ruapehu's snowfield gleaming white in the far south, is surely the finest in New Zealand.)

But Mr. McAlpine need not worry about the Maungakakaramea craters. A forester found in one of them a rata estimated to be four hundred years old. The rata has been waiting for trouble much longer than any human being will have to wait.

The eagle's nest, and the old Scottish eagle within it, have been a boon to the drivers of tourist motor vehicles on the highway below. Tourists are told by the drivers that the man on top of the mountain is a white tohunga whose wife was lost in the lagoon, and who keeps vigil on Maungakakaramea's crown till the lost one shall reappear, rising majestically from the blue waters.

But anyone seeking romance need not weave legend. He can sit at Mr. Mc-Alpine's window and see a panorama of far and near—almost at his feet, the steam of Waimangu geyser and the ruins of the Accommodation House which, with several human lives, was victim to Waimangu's wrath. A little further away he sees the huge and sinister rent in Tarawera Mountain, and he sees at its foot Lakes Tarawera and Rotomahana, the latter swollen in size, and between them a narrow isthmus, near which a whole Maori village and all its 146 people were overwhelmed by the Tarawera eruption of 1886. He looks down on the graves of the Pink and White Terraces. For the romance of realism, for beauty and terror, for a bird's eye view of all that is most wonderful in Nature, this Maungakakaramea prospect stands alone.

Expressing “sincere and grateful thanks” for the recovery of an overcoat which was inadvertently left on a North Island train recently, Mr. M. S. Galloway, Khandallah, writes to the Acting General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. H. Mackley, as follows:—

Whilst travelling on the Palmerston North train from Khandallah recently I carelessly left my overcoat on the rack of the carriage at Plimmerton station. I reported the loss to your officers at the latter station, but too late for them to intercept the train at Paekakariki, so the coat went on to Palmerston North. On returning from Plimmerton the following day (Sunday) imagine my surprise when the guard, in the midst of his other worries, with a cheerful smile, sorted me out in a crowded train and said: “Are you the gentleman who left his coat in the train yesterday?” “Yes,” I said, and after describing the lost article satisfactorily, he brought it along and restored it to me. Flattering myself that I should be so apparently well known, I enquired how he came to pick me out in such a crowd. He replied: “Well, when I handed your coat to the Stationmaster at Plimmerton, he said you were on the train, and he described you as having a little black moustache.”

The greatest figure in the pioneer period of New Zealand, in special relation to Maori affairs and the progress of settlement in the North Island, was Sir Donald Maclean, K.C.M.G. (1820–1877). He was eight times Native Minister. The writer of this article has made a special study of the life and times of Maclean, who was dubbed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, in the Fifties, “the great Maori mystery man.”

The little rugged islands on the West of Scotland, Atlantic-washed isles of mist and hard weather, have produced many a man who made abiding impression on the story of Britain, and especially of Britain overseas. The struggle with the gales, the granite soil, the seagirt character of the place, the stern patriarchal upbringing of the sons of the clan, all tended to produce men of courage, resolution, vigour and training for the life of the pioneer in new lands when the old isles and the old glens had become too small.

Leaders, statesmen, great sailors and soldiers and explorers are bred in such places. One of our famous men of light and learning, Sir Robert Stout, came from the remote Shetlands. A no less prominent man in his day, one whose public career began in New Zealand nearly a generation before Stout, was a son of the Western Isles. Kilmaluaig, on the island of Tiree (or Tyree), off the coast of Argyll, was the birthplace of Sir Donald Maclean, who for the greater part of his life was the chief intermediary between the pakeha Government and the Maoris.

Donald Maclean was born on the 27th October, 1820; he was the son of John Maclean, of Kilmaluaig. His grandmother was the eldest daughter of Campbell of Dunstaffnage, and the last Campbell born in the Castle of Dunstaffnage. Donald came from a long line of ancestors, from the founder, Maclean of Duart, to Ardgour, the first branch of which founded the House of Borrerae in Uist, and thence branched to Tiree and other of the Western Isles.

John Maclean, the father, died when Donald was very young, and the boy was brought up and educated by his mother's people, the McColls; the grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. D. McColl. Young Donald's upbringing was a sound foundation for the life into which the hand of destiny presently led him. He was a boy of the out-of-doors, the hills and the sea, that lad of Tiree.

Before he was twenty he was in a new land, the world's width away, where his powers of body and brain were to be tried to the utmost. It was in 1838 that he bade farewell to the Highlands and the isles that he was never to see again. He sailed from Oban on November 15 of that year in the ship “St. George” for Sydney, and reached there on April 10, 1839. It was nearly forty years later that New Zealand mourned his death as one of its greatest statesmen. He never returned to Scotland, never had a rest from duty. “Lochaber no more, we'll maybe return to Lochaber no more,” the pipes wailed over his grave at Napier. A native race that he had come to regard with an affection akin to that for the clansfolk of his birthland, lamented him as their father and protector, their sheltering rata tree laid low.

In New South Wales—he had come out at the suggestion of some relatives who had taken passage in the “St. George”—young Donald gained some practical experience of sheep-farming. He walked to a station near Bathurst, and presently was managing an out-station for some months. By this time, early in 1840, New Zealand was a greatly tempting field for young adventurers, and he decided to try his fortune here. The firm of Abercrombie and Co., of Sydney, who had kauri timber properties in the Auckland district, sent him across on business, and later he saw much pioneer life on the coast and became very friendly with the Maoris about the Hauraki Gulf, at a period when native law and custom still ruled, troubled little by the new dispensation under the pakeha.

It was Dr. Sinclair, the then Colonial Secretary, under Governor Hobson at Auckland, who first discovered that this stalwart young Scotsman had already acquired a considerable knowledge of Maori affairs and could speak the language well. That was in 1843. Maclean was given an appointment as a junior official in the Native Department, which was then styled the Office of the Protector of Aborigines—a title which was abolished by Governor Grey. Under the Chief Protector, Mr. George Clarke, a member of a mission family in the north, he received some preliminary training as interpreter and agent, and then, in 1844, he was appointed a sub-protector, with his quarters at New Plymouth, and his field the country from South Taranaki to Kawhia, and inland to Taupo.

Physically Donald Maclean was well fitted for the heavy work of travel in those days of no roads, no bridges, no vehicles and few horses. Most of the travelling that fell to the officials and the missionaries was on foot; and Maclean must have walked some thousands of miles about the country in his time, carrying his swag as the Maoris carried their pikaus. The natives admired a big well-built man, and Maclean was just the type that filled their ideas of a warrior and leader—tall, burly, wide of shoulder, deep of chest.

For his part, Maclean quickly took a liking to the Maoris as a race. His love for the traditions and ways of his Highland and Isles folk predisposed him in favour of a people whose social life and methods of government so closely resembled those of his own people. The tribal pride, the intertribal jealousies and feuds, the readiness to fight at the slightest affront, the patriarchal rule of the Ariki and the rangatira, the popular passion for songs and chants and oratory, even the favourite working and fighting costume, the rapaki or kilt, all reminded the lad from Tiree of his clan and their neighbours, as they had been from time immemorial.

“Te Makarini,” as the Maoris called him, very soon came to enter into the Maori ways of thought. He became able to place himself in the position of the Maori, when occasion called, and to understand the often peculiar processes of reasoning that few pakehas could fathom. All this explains the often extraordinary hold he came to exercise over the tribes and the success that almost invariably attended his official dealings with a proud and often suspicious race.

In 1845 we find the 25-year-old Scot filling the role of official ambassador to the grand old chief Te Heuheu, of Taupo, the king-like Ariki who regarded Queen Victoria as a fellow-sovereign in no way superior to himself. Maclean reconciled rival clans, he carried the tenets of civilisation to savage places, he smoked the peace-pipe with dour old cannibals who rather despised the mild missionary, but who came to recognise in the Scot a chieftain of a fighting race like themselves.

For many a year he was chiefly engaged in negotiations for land on which to settle the incoming shiploads of pakehas. He mended the mistakes made by the Wakefields in their defective purchases for the New Zealand Company. He bought in one district and another many hundreds of thousands of acres. He was the father of Napier and Hawke's Bay; he found it a vast waste country with a few Maori cultivations; he left it a land of pakeha wealth, of great flocks and herds, of great pastoral properties, the stage that preceded close settlement. He was never in a hurry; he never rushed the Maoris into bargains. His scrupulous fairness, his tolerance of the spirit of “taihoa,” gained confidence and the end desired where the importunities of other officials failed. Edward Gibbon Wake-field, who arrived in New Zealand in 1853, called him “the great Maori mystery man.” That described the popular view of his peculiar success in smoothing over native difficulties.

From the middle Sixties to the time of his death at the beginning of 1877, Maclean was engaged in politics, and also in the active direction of native affairs and in the organisation of the Government's military policy in the most critical era of the Hauhau wars. His right to fame will rest chiefly on his masterly handling of native affairs and defence in the dark hours when it seemed to many that white settlement in the North Island could not survive unless Imperial troops were once more called in to help fight the colonists' battles.

Maclean in three years (1869–1872) brought peace to the land, conciliated powerful Maori tribes, cleared the bush of irreconcilable rebels that haunted it, by using native contingents, with a few white officers; he made friends with the Maori King Tawhiao and his chiefs and people, made roads into the interior; opened new areas for white settlement. He was the man for that troubled day; he succeeded where others had failed. The Maori tribes, whether friend or foe, trusted his word. He neither bluffed them nor deceived them; his methods were characterised by simplicity, firmness, kindness once peace had been made, perfect straightforwardness. Unlike some petty politicians and rabid writers of the day, he did not wish to see the Maori extinguished as a strong and virile race.

Maclean was eight times Native Minister. It was an extraordinary testimony to his capacity as a master of Maori affairs. Short-lived Ministries rose and fell, but Maclean was the one man always needed. No one could take his place. He held office in one Cabinet after another, from the middle of 1869 until he resigned through failing health in the last days of 1876. That period set the crown on his life's achievements. He was only fifty-six when he died, worn out by work and care and the worry of political attacks, and the effects of exposure and hard travel in his early days.

The Maoris mourned for “Te Makarini” as for a parent. His faithful old ally, Major Ropata Wahawaha, leader of the fighting Ngati-Porou, said of him: “The affection of my own parents did not exceed his loving kindness to me. I grieve for my father. Who shall be a parent to me like unto him? He spread the sleeping-mat of peace for all the tribes of the island. Go, Te Makarini! Now that you have pointed out the path for us to follow, we will not be in doubt nor will our thoughts go astray.”

Another chief, at a Taupo meeting of lamentation, likened the departed white leader to the glowing sun vanishing in the west. Developing another poetic image, he compared the spirit of Te Makarini to an albatross, soaring above the storm-lashed capes, steadfastly keeping aerial watch over the coast of the land he loved.