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Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1101, 30 May 1863, Page 4

A rumoub is current that such a sum is likely to be demanded from the Government for the ground required for the chief Railway Station at Christchurch as will throw all former demands for compensation into the shade. We trust that the Government will hesitate before they enter into an arbitration. If an exorbitant sum is demanded for land on the spot where it is proposed to establish the station, it will be better to alter the site of the terminus. The main station can be built anywhere, if the American system of running the railway carriages through the town without a locomotive is adopted. In New York, and other large trans-at]antic towns where economy of time and labor have been studied, there is a main station outside the town, and another small one nearer the centres of business. When the train reaches the main station, the locomotive is taken off, the carriages detached, and two or three horses run each carriage along the open streets to the central station. The rails do not interfere Avith the ordinary traffic of the town.

We are confident that such an arrangement would be found most economical in this country ; not merely on account of the first cost of a station, but because the expensive carriage of goods from the proposed station to the centre of the town would be avoided. The site now proposed for the main station is a very good one, and will do very well; if too much is not paid for it. But if proprietors ask an extravagant payment for the land under the impression that it is indispensable, they may find themselves mistaken.. Any one position near the Town Belt is as good as another for the main station. This belt at any rate is broad enough to carry a line of rails along its .whole course ; and there is no reason why a goods depot should not in time be established at each of the four sides of the city. This might be considered if the central depot is objected to. We hear with much satisfaction that pending the purchase of a site for the Bailway Station the Government have ordered the works to be stopped short of the proposed terminus.