MAIN LINE & TERMINAL BLOCKAGES

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 37, 12 August 1920, Page 6

MAIN LINE & TERMINAL BLOCKAGES

Though deputations on small matters are not to be encouraged, the relative importance of the Rimutaka deviation justifies the contemplated special mission of Wairarapa to Wellington on the 19th mat., when country and city delegates wiE join in impressing on the Government the need of removing the wasteful kink in the railway where it climbs, with the aid of a third rail, over the Wairarapa divide. The superficial argument that improvement of existing lines should wait until railways are built to districts that possess none at all has no real value as applied to the Rimutaka incline, because the latter is a tax on every settler and. ■. every inhabitant who uses or produces goods hauled over the Rimutaka, whether such settler or inhabitant lives himself in a railwayed district or not. More than once in the last ten years Tho Post has emphasised striking facts (too detailed foi repetition here) showing what an economic loss the incline is to tho Railway Department and the public, and trie national as well as local importance of stopping this leakage. As the branch lines multiply, the strain on the trunk railways must increase, and the whole transport system must suffer if trunk obstructions like the Rimutaka, and Paekakariki hill sections are allowed to continue, and if the terminals are left in the unbusinesslike condition that prevails at Lambton and Thorndon. If Waira-rapa-Wellington eloquence can induce Ministers to remove even one of the three blockages, it will be a good day's work. From the mechanical point of view, the Rimutaka incline is the worst of the three, and its removal ■will not only facilitate Wellington-Wairarapa transport but will relieve the strain on the Mana-watu section of the Main Trunk. A Government statement about the Rimutaka deviation, the authorised (but not prosecuted) Paekakariki deviation, and the Wellington station reconstaiction—concerning which the public grows tired—is not only due but overdue.