ENGINE REPAIRS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 65, 18 March 1925, Page 4

ENGINE REPAIRS.

£200,000 SAVING IN SIGHT. GENERAL REORGANISATION. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Some remarkable figures showing the possibility of immediately savin" £200,000 annually on heavy engine" repairs were given to a Wangamii deputation which urged the Minister of Railways to relieve the anxiety o f the district regarding the futura of the Eastown workshops. Hon. J. G. Coates, in reply, said the Commission had pointed to one of the greatest weaknesses of the whole railway system, the mothod of shop repairs. They rightly said that in New Zealand we had a number of very inadequate machine shops, and immediate attention should be given to this point. Their recommendation was that equipment be modernised. The Department, in addition to the Commission's advice, had had its own men, Messrs. Spidey and Sim. whoso whole attention had been directed to the shops- Mr. Spidey was for nine years production engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railways, where they had reduced the cost of repairs to the apparently irreducible minimum. The cost on the average for heavy repairs of locomotives in New Zealand was £1000 to £1200, and the average running of the locomotive before necessitating heavy repairs was 30,000 miles, but in South Africa (though he could quote many other systems) their cost for heavy repairs was down to £303 per engine, and they ran 50,000 miles. "Obviously, if we can reduce expenditure like that," continued the Minister. "we have at once achieved something. By moving quietly, not rushing into centralisation, but modernising the chief shops, say two in the North Island, two in the South Island—one a car and wagon shop, the other a locomotive repair shop, we can reduce repair cost by half, which would show a saving of about £200,000 annually, and in addition pay quite a lot of interest and sinking fund on money necessary to bring shops up to date. So far our plans are directed to the four principal shops, and it is not a question of centralisation, but to at once put ourselves into a position to' bring down our annual costs, and do it quickly. The most feasible way we can think of is to concentrate on four shops. By concentration methods for heavy repairs we can reduce the number of idle days for locomotives by 25 per cent, which means a big profit to the railways. It would even ba worth bringing an engine all the way from Auckland if necessary. The smaller shops will be used for Tight repairs. Our objective is not to scrap everything, but to concentrate on questions which are bearing heaviest upon us. The Department could not afford at the moment to modernise all the railway shops in New Zealand. The cost to modernise the four shops and running repair shops apart from heavy repair Bhops is going to be £1,300,000."