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Auckland Star, Volume V, Issue 1486, 14 November 1874, Page 2

The Kaipara Railway is destined to continue to the end of the chapter a standing monument of Government folly. The jobbery which underlay the contract for the rails, and which, covered with Protean excuses, caused such unprecedented delay will not be the only ill-favoured feature in its dreary history, for it appears that the cheap and nasty system has been applied to the ballasting. About one - half of it has been ballasted with clay, which, dissolving in the rain, will, apparently in a short time, leave the ironway resting on the original foundation of peat, over which a great portion of the line extends. We are informed that for about two thousand pounds additional, a sandy, gritty ballasting that would have lesisted this process of dissolution, and easily obtainable, could have been laid. But it would seem as if fate willed it, that every thing should be untoward in the construction of this unfortunate line, and now, if during the coming summer, the peat moss around and underlying the line would " spontaneously combust" and burn up the railway, it-could "hardly be looked upon as otherwise than the natural climax in its dreary history.