UPPER HUTT TRAINS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1933, Page 8

UPPER HUTT TRAINS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I should like to ask the Railway Department's reconsideration of the question of returning to the Upper Hutt line the improved type of second-class carriages secured in response to requests made by a former Hutt Council some years ago and since gradually replaced- by the usual longitudinal-seated type of ears. The newer carriages (three or four of them) were equipped with , standard second-class chairs, were very popular with train travellers and were attached to the train leaving Upper Hutt for Wellington at 7.53 a.m. daily for a long timo., ; ;Their return would obviously involve the Railway Department in no expense. >Today some of the oldest passenger vehicles on the State system appear to be attached to the 7.53 a.m. train. : It was saddening to read that the Ka^lway Board refused to grant Hutt Valley suburban workers a reduction in the price of workers' and ordinary tickets. The explanation that increased working expenses occasioned a rise in workers' tickets, and that "it was only part of the general increase in all fares brought into use at the same time as this particular one" is only partly correct. All fares, with one or two exceptions, were reduced to the former level within three months in 1930, and shortly after again reduced a further 10 per cent, by the board down to the present universal holiday excursion basis. Workers' tickets and Hutt line suburban fares—there' are only two twenty-mile suburban areas in New Zealand—were left at the unduly high level while all other fares were reduced m all some 10 per cent, upon their peak figures m three or four months. Workers' tickets would now be about 3s 9d per week from Upper Hutt had uniformity o£ charges applied all round.—l am, etc., CONSTANT TRAVELLER.