The Midland Railway.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18101, 17 June 1924, Page 6

The Midland Railway.

The local Kailway Traffic Manager stated yesterday that there 'are indications of an increasing volume of traffic on the Midland Kailway. The increase, he said, is noticeable even from so far as Timaru. This is very satisfactory news, even though we in Canterbury have known that the establishment of through railway connexion lyith a province almost isolated from the rest of the Dominion (except for a bar harbour in which ships are periodically wrecked) would necessarily stimulate trade. Auckland people profess to believe that the line merely hauls a little coal to Christchurch, and a little kerosene and flour to Greymouth, but they know, as Wellington people know, that the line affects trade throughout the whole of the southern part of this island. It is a pity that the Department should not be able to furnish particulars of the trade east and west through the tunnel. The Traffic Manager did not make clear whether the Department's inability to make these figures public is due to considerations of policy or to the methods of book-keeping which are followed in the Department. One would have imagined that in tho case of a new railway -connexion concerning which there has been so much debate for so many years the Department would take some trouble to keep a full and exact record of the business done and of the coat of doing it. Unless the Department does keep new lines, and even old ones, under observation in this way, it cannot hope to feel sure that it is running the lines in the most efficient manner possible. The Department may, of course, know exactly the amount of traffic through the tunnel} if it does, it ought to make the figures known. The Traffic Manager suggests that the amount of traffic might be gauged by comparing the traffic through the Greymouth harbour before the tunnel was opened with the traffic at the present time. This will not greatly assist towards an understanding of the position;, it would show how much traffic has been diverted to the -railway from the sea, but it would not show how much now business has been created by the provision of the natural outlet for Westland's trade. The Canterbury and Westland public aro so deeply interested in the line that it is to be hoped the Department will give the public the facts.