RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 7, 3 October 1929, Page 7

RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

REORGANISATION SCHEME WHAT OF THE FUTURE? A non-committal survey of the results of the reorganisation of the railway workshops was given by the Minister of Railways (Hon. W. B. Taverner) in his annual statement to Parliament. The Minister said that as he understood it the reorganisation scheme arose out of two factors —(1) The unsuitability of the old workshops for the purpose for which they were being used, and (2) the direct financial benefit that was to be obtained from the undertaking of the scheme. With regard to (1), there seemed to be no doubt that with the age of the shops—and the fact that they had developed, as was unavoidable, on more or less of a patchwork system as requirements necessitated from time to time—they had arrived at the stage when their operation could not be carried on with a degree of convenience and comfort to the staff that one would wish for. That would* in itself raise a question as to the desirability of undertaking some scheme for improving them, but it still remained to be determined whether the particular scheme that was adopted was the one that should have been undertaken.

That raised the second question—the financial results that were expected to accrue from the expenditure that had been undertaken. Estimates on such a matter as that seemed to him to hinge very largely on the question of the full utilsation of the shops when completed. That in turn would depend on the future requirements of the Department and the ability of the country to provide the finance necessary to enable the various works to be undertaken. Whatever the position in regard to those matters might have been when the scheme was formulated and decided upon, it was undeniable that at present it was obscure. The future expansion of the railways could hardly be as great as it had been in the past, while the pressure of other State activities on public finance would tend to make it more difficult to provide money for the railways on the same scale as had been done in the last decade. What the actual financial result of the reorganisation would be was a matter that lay very much in the future, and depended on factors that could not in present circumstances be determined with any real degree of certainty. Variations in Estimate. In the opinion of the General Manager of Railways (Mr. H. H. Sterling), as expressed in his annual report, the new workshops compared favourably in their lay-out and equipment with any similar establishment in Australia. Officers who had been abroad were convinced that the standard equalled that of the most modern workshops on other railway systems. On completion of the shops the Department would be able to manufacture the bulk of its requirements, and, it was believed, considerable savings would be effected. The final estimate cost of the scheme was £2,279,459, against the original figure of £1.880,000. The greatest variation, £265,425, related to machinery and equipment.. Included in that suin was £40,612 unforeseen expenditure, incorporating £4855, arising out of an increase of IJd. an hour in the average rate of wages of the workshops staff. The report added that as the result of a survey it had been disclosed that during the next five years an annual building programme of twenty engines,' eighty-four cars and vans, and seven hundred wagons would be required to bring the rolling-stock up to the standard necessary for efficient traffic operation.