RAILWAY DISCOMFORTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 131, 4 June 1924, Page 3

RAILWAY DISCOMFORTS

10 IH6 EDITOR.

Sir,—The train journey from Wellington to Auckland. must always be long and tedious, but-the.ingenuity of man has contrived to make it an almost unbearable trial of endurance and a source of much illness. There are many things I could suggest that Would help to reduce the sum of "discomfort and positive danger to be' endured,•• but in this letter I will confine myself to one. A watchful Health Department would long ago have demanded an improvement in the ventilation of the carriages. If there is any system of ventilation st all, I have.not yet been able to discover it; certain ifc is'that by the middle of the night the air in a well-filled carriage is positively poisonous. It-is well known that each individual requires a certain amount of fresh air, if he is not to die from his own exhalations. I leave the authorities to determine how far my a Main Trunk carriage this supply falls short of the minimum. I can remember the time when a journey to Auckland included an exhilarating canter along the Otaki beach in one of Cobb's coaches and a sea voyage—pleasant enough if the Manakau Bar Was in a. friendly mood. Honestly, I preferred that way to the present poisonous train.' "0 fortunatos nimium, sua si • bona norint!" . . .

. One remedy, so simple that it is a constant wonder to me why the longsuffering traveller has not long ago insisted on it, is that the carriage windows should be so fitted that it would be possible for the average man to open them. I know well how averse most men are to fresh air, because by contact with the stuffy heat it appears to them to be unpleasantly cold. I say men advisedly, for I have often seen a woman try to open her window and, giving up the useless struggle, sink back with a sigh." A man, never; and yet in a carriage with 40 or 50 people, in it I think there would generally be found one who would prefer a breath of fresh air to a threatened death from carbonic acid and other worse gases, and who by opening a window from time to time, if they could be opened, j would at any rate do something to make the air less poisonous for all.

As at present made the windows are the very worst that tho ingenuity of man ever perpetrated. To begin with, they open, I should say they are supposed to open, from'below upwards, to that if a very strong man; by pinching the clips between powerful fingers with his. arms widely extended, can manage to raise the sash at all, he lets in a cutting draught on his shoulder; if it opened downwards an inch or two at the top would let out much of tho hot air without any very appreciable draught, and when the train is stationary it could be let right down and tho carriage well aired. Let anyone who has travelled in an. English carriage think for a moment of the ease with which he could drop the window to any required level, and the contrast to ours will be at once apparent. In England, after the carriage doors are shut, you can talk with -a friend'on the platform through the wide opened window. Let anyone try to do so here (I am supposing'the strong man before mentioned has succeeded in getting the window, open). You will have to bend your neck to a right-angle and force your head through a narrow slit, for all the world as if you were a candidate for the guillotine. ,

I think I have said enough to convince anyone that here at least is something, which requires altering. Perhaps, if 1 am allowed, I will in a subsequent letter allude to some other points. Reverting once moro to the ventilation, I Would like to mention that a modern ship's cabin is perfectly ventilated by means of. a pump, which exhausts the'foul ,nir and replaces it with fresh, warm air. Could not our locomotive engines dp the same for the carriages?—l am, etc., WALTER FELL. Day's Bay, 3rd June.