LOCOMOTIVE NAMING

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 55, 3 September 1934, Page 8

LOCOMOTIVE NAMING

(To the Editor,)

Sir,' —The naming of individual locomotives is carried out in many countries, the foremost being Great Britain, whore this practice is almost. universal. This gives each locomotive more of a distinction than any number would ever do. For instance, nobody would evor think of sending v ship through its |ifo with only a prosaic number to jilontify it by. Take the. name away from a ship, and it losos half its glamour and becomes merely a piece of floating machinery and ironwork, which, of course, any ship actually is. Would it not make Now Zealand railway locomotives more . interesting if they could bo called 'by individual names'? This systom could easily be adapted to tlio now "X" class locomotives recently introduced by tho Department, by, giving them eacha Maori namo commencing with tlio letter K y such as Kiwi, Kararaca, Kaimai, etc. Tho crow of an ongine with a definite namo would be moro likely to take a greater pride in it than if tho locomotive was meroly a number, —I am, etc., . ; ■ ...;. :a . ■ ■ ■ "k,"'