Pausing, amidst the present disturbed social and economic conditions for a look round, and confining one's vision to a retrospect of the development that has taken place in the Dominion's transport system since the foundation of New Zealand as a British colony in 1840, then following the evolutionary progress of that transport, decade by decade, we are compelled to appreciate the distinctive benefits and advantages which railway communication has conferred upon this Dominion and its people as a whole.

New Zealand's transport requirements, in the first twenty years after its foundation, were served by bullock wagons, horse-drawn vehicles and coastal vessels, these methods serving—perhaps inadequately—to meet the needs of those hardy pioneers who, with a fortitude truly characteristic of the race and worthy of our highest admiration, faced and surmounted the difficulties and discomforts associated with the new land of their adoption.

With the progress of settlement over a period of twenty years the inadequacy and inefficiency of such transport methods became apparent, and the necessity for improvement became dominant, resulting in the inauguration of the first section of railway in the “sixties.”