NORTH ISLAND RAILWAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 234, 30 September 1908, Page 8

NORTH ISLAND RAILWAY.

(To the Editor.! Sir, —In last Saturday's "Star" I noticed that amongst other business brought up for discussion in the Whaaigarci Chamber of Commerce was a petition purporting to have been presented to Parliament from the Kaipara residents praying the Government to take the railway to the -west of the Tangihua Ranges. Now, Sir, no such petition is in existence. Someone must have been playing a joke on the Whangarei Chamber, or making | use of them for their own particular purposes, as the Chamber has actually sent to Wellington a petition against a bogey that has no existence. 1 have enclosed you a copy of the petition from the Kaipara residents, and you will note that the deviation Asked for is between Topuni i and McCarroll's, where both lines converge. When the line gets to McCarroll's Flats, it will be for the Government and the people farther North to decide which side of the Tangihua Ranges the railway is taken. If the Government adopt th« route we have asked for, and tap the deep water of tbe Kaipara harbour, the line will not only be shorteT, but will open up far more country and serve more people than the route via Pukekaroro. Therefore the Whangarei people, instead of opposing a non-existent bogey, should have warmly supported our petition, for surely the larger the area and population 1 brought into direct communication with Whangarei, the more prosperous it must become as a commercial centre.—l am, 'etc., VV. HEATHCOTE JACKMAN. I Whakapirau, September 22, 1903.