NON-STOP STATION

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 86, 8 October 1920, Page 8

NON-STOP STATION

TRENTHAM AGITATION

AN IMPROVEMENT WANTED.

The refusal of,the Eaihvay Department to admit that such a populous suburb as'Trentham exists, while stopping even express trains at very much smaller places, is beginning to excite general public comment.

"Honestly," said a reliable authorityto a Post representative to-day, "I cannot understand the policy of the Railway Department in this connection. There was no station at Trentham when it was decided to put the racecourse there in 1905. I doubt if there was even a flag station. At any rate, the Railway Department was approached by the Racing Club to put in the necessary sidings for the handling of the traffic, and complied on condition that the club gave the ground and paid the expenditure the Department was put to. This was done, and the sidings, once completed, immediately, passed into the hands' of the Department. ■ The only stipulation made by the club, so I gather on making inquiries, . was that it should have ■ the right to have its goods delivered there. This privilege is still exercised by the club, but. has been conceded to no one Slse." • ■ ' ■ ' ' "

"AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING."

, When will the: Railway Department wake up to the fact that Trentham is now a, large and populous suburb?" asked a Trentham resident. "Judging by its attitude it fails to recognise that Trent-' ham even exists, though it has ten times the population of Heretaunga,. which is given all- privileges. Why is this? Can the Railway Department offer a satisfactory explanation? In the first two or three years of the war the Department even refused to, appreciate that there was a camp with 7500 men there, and the. Wairarapa express still sped past Trentham while it stopped at the stations which did not serve one-fiftieth of the populace. In the later years of the war, however, the express did stop there, | but the war had not long been over before the Department went back to the old order of things. With the Department it truly appears to be a case of 'As it was in the beginning, is now. and ever shall be.' The Department, doubtless, will endorse that view, but I am certain the public will not. We do expect '» 'Hltls progress now and then, even if it be from the Railway Department. A REMARKABLE POSITION. "The fact is that Trentham has become a large and populous suburb, in, spite of the Railway Department, which has done everything possible to kill it. (Fancy Trentham residents having to get their goods booked, to Upper Hutt, and then sent.back to.Trentham, simply 'because the Department persists in regarding Trentham purely as a siding! The> position is* too ludicrous for words, but it loses its humorous side when it is pointed out that Trentham is also thd site of perhaps the biggest military hospital in the Dominion. The men in hospital blue would never be asked by anycivilian to walk to and from Heretaunga and Wallaceville for the Wairarapa express, but the Railway Department appears to have no qualms on that score. It soems that it requires a good deal more of human suffering than that, even if such suffering has been occasioned in the service of the country, to shake the official conscience. Then, the visitors to the. 'men in bine' have also to be considered. It cheers the men up to sea them, but the Department, so far as the . Wairara.pa express is concerned, offers no «acouragement. The stop is at Heretaunga. Again, I ask : Why ? "The Departinenti apparently has a sympathy that 'surpasseth human understanding.' I wonder if it will understand this: It is notorious that many soldiers and Trentham residents hava had to hump their luggage to Heretaunga to catch the Wairarapa express there, when not even one single resident from Heretaunga has boarded the train. This_ has happened time and again, and continues to happen. And the remarkable fact about it is that at Trentham there is a, station staff which actually!' sells tickets, while at Heretaunga there is no staff at all, and tickets are not sold. Wonderful, isn't it? Will the Department please explain ? Residents of Trentham, and the.men in hospital blue would be so grateful for an answer, whatever that answer may be."

On the same subject, "Fed-up" writes :—"I think you are doing a public service in giving publicity to the extraordinary attitude adopted by the Bailway authorities in connection with Trentham. Station: ■ Words fail me to 'express tile disgust of the residents with the treatment meted out to them. Here is a growing suburb going ahead rapidly, and everything that can possibly be put in its way by the Bailway Department is put in its way. What are the railways for ? Whom do they belong to ? Deputation after deputation has waited on Mr. Myers, Mr. Herries, and Mr. Massey, and Mr. Wilford has also had a go at it, to try and get our goods unloaded at Trentham, but Mr. M'Villy says, no, and there is the. end of it. • It is high time the papers took it up. Let any .one go to Trentham and see the people trudging down to Heretaunga to join the mid-day train. Women with kiddies, soldiers with baggage, and not a passenger from Heretaunga once in a blue moon. This is r.ot local jealousy, it is a plain statement of fact." Trentham is the home of a lot of working people whose wives want the mid-day train. The other is the station for the golf links. The last thing, wanted there is a mid-day train. We have been bottling up our wrath quite long enough, and if nothing is done I will undertake to s;et together 100 people from the district to worry the poor old Prime Minister with another deputation once more."