RAILWAY MATTERS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 92, 21 April 1925, Page 8

RAILWAY MATTERS

NEW OFFICIAL ARRIVES

TARIFF AND TRAFFIC

ARRANGEMENTS

INCREASE IN DRIVERS' PAT.

Mr. S. E. Fay arrived in Wellington by the Maheno to-day to'take up his appointment as Operating and Equipment Assistant of the New Zealand Railways Departmnet. Mr. Fay, who is a son of Sir Sam lay, one of the Commissioners who recently inquired into the New Zealand Railways system, was educated at Malvery College, England, and M'Gill University, Montreal. He served six months with a German professor at Dusseldorf, and was for a similar period in a railway office at Paris. As a. Commission ot the British Board of Trade, he accompanied Mr. C. H. Pearson on an investigation of German and Austrian railway methods, and he has twice visited America and Canada with technical railway officers. Trained under the Great Central Railway Company's higher-grade scheme, Mr. Fay is efficient in operating, traffic working, running shed, driving and firing, district engineering, dock and marine -work, and passenger and goods accountancy. During' the Great War he served with the Royal Engineers in J ranee for two years from ,1914 and was subsequently with the Railway Operating Division. He left the Army with the rank of major after having acted as Deputy-Assistant Director-General of Movements and Railways, Paris. Later he was appointed assistant-dis-trict supentendent London Division, Great Central Railway, and was afterwards for three years Si traffic department, Sao faulo Railway, Brazil, subseqeuntly being appointed chief operating officer. He left this latter post to accept a position with the Canadian National Railways, and then, as a secretary, joined the Royal Commission which investigated the New South Wales and New Zealand Government Railways) It is expected that details of the new railway tariff will be published shortly and an announcement .regarding the speeding up of services in both the JNorth and South.lslands is imminent. In all probability the.Minister of Railways (the, Hon. J. G. Coates) -will "indicate his views on the question of running daylight expresses between Wellingtan and Auckland, and vice versa; ThVnMit limited 1 expresses between the two terminals have become very popular with business men, who, no doubt, would not appreciate the "limited" being taken off in order to run merely a scenic daylight service. The Minister stated at Auckland recently that an experiment would be made with a daylight express service after faster. Possibly such a'service will be given a trial, although it is known that there are difficulties in the "ay of its successful prosecution. To meet the convenience of travellers arriving from the South, a train would not be able U> leave Wellington much before a a.m. daily, and, even cutting out a number of ordinary stops, it could not reach Auckland earlier than 10 or 11.30 p.m. To allow Northern travellers to catch the Southern boat at Wellington would entail leaving Auckland at a very early hour, even if such a connection could possibly be made at all. The Minister will doubtless deal with these points in his statement, and he will probably indicate his opinion as to whether such a service is likely to be a commercial success or not.

First-grade enginedrivers in the Railway Service have been granted an increase m wages amounting to 8d per day iooe/i mS, r.f ase is retrospective . to April, l\u<\. me period in which locomotive men may reach the maximum rate of pay has, it is understood, been reduced from 12 to 8 years.