TRAVEL PERMITS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 23, 28 January 1944, Page 4

TRAVEL PERMITS

CROWDS OF APPLICANTS

Long queues have been general at railway booking offices since the announcement of the restrictions on travel to be imposed next Monday. Many parents and children have been seeking permits to return to their home towns, but it is possible that some school children will not arrive home in time for the opening of their schools next week. On the Auckland trains sleeping berths and first class seats are fully booked to about February 5 or 6, but other trains are not quite as full. O C AUCKLAND, This Day. People stood for hours in queues yesterday at the Auckland railway station and at the Government Tourist Bureau in Queen Street in the hope of obtaining permits for rail travel. Long queues had formed at bom offices before the issuing of permits began at 9 a.m., and some people who had been on the scene at the tourist bureau at nine o'clock were still waiting to be interviewed late in the afternoon. Three lines of permit-seekers and one made up of those who had already obtained travel permits wound •around pillars and among the travelling public at the Auckland station all day. Progress along the station concourse was particularly difficult during the afternoon when the expresses for Wellington were loading. The Government Tourist Bureau handled approximately 1000 applications between 9 aan. and 4 p.m. yesterday. Only 300 were granted. When a woman who had been in the queue at the tourist bureau since before it opened failed to return home in the early afternoon her relations notified the police, who located her at. about 2.30 p.m., still waiting. Her turn for an interview came more than an hour later.