POPULARISING THE RAILWAYS.

Evening Star, Issue 9775, 3 August 1895, Page 2

POPULARISING THE RAILWAYS.

[From Our Parliamentary Kkporter.] .. „,.,. August 3. propose to inaugurate a new system of railway excursions at Christmas, Easter, and other principal holidays at a uniform rate of Id per mile for the return journey seeond class and proportionately low rates for first class, the minimum fare to be 2s. The Government are also to abolish the present system of lighting the railway carriages, and are obtaining from England an apparatus for manufacturing compressed gas on the Pintsch system, which has proved so successful on the leading English lines. The new system is to be triSi first on the ■fiurunul-Bluff. section. The cost will be about |d per light per hour, as against i'd for the present very inferior system. The department is also anxious to get the new heavy engines now being built at the Addington shops on to the Dunedhi express service, but these engines cannot yet get further south than Ashburton. To , permit tbem to go further the 531b steel rails will have to be laid and the bridges strengthened, and .this will take two ycar3 at the present irate. Some lively conespohdenee was iaid on the table last night with the railway report. Mr J. L. Scott, on vacating office as Railway Commissioner, wrote, to the Premier on the 31st December last pointing Out that tho way in which the maintenance workshops are equipped and conducted is positively astounding, and only a country blacksmith without work or means would think of continuing such a state of things. The men were doing not more than a fourth of. the work they could do with better appliances. The blacksmiths were emulating the village blacksmith in working at hand-blown forges with heavy railway metals. No private employer would dream of doing such work with similar appliances. The fancy of the department for using up old rails was a mistaken and costly one, as there was a ready sale for them, and they could be used also for telegraph poles without waste of labor. The work, meantime, cost the department from T>o to 75 per cent, more than it ought to do, and a great deal of it ought not to be done at all or done differently. The maintenance shops should be closed, and the men transferred to the lopomotive department, which had thenecessary appliances. As for the locomotive department, the Addington shop 3 were really well equipped and splendidly manned; but the Hillside shops wanted some very essential tools. Those at Pctone and Newmarket were large enough to do a quantity of new work. New engines of better design could be made for the cost of converting the present engines, twelve of which were now being converted, while the unconverted engines could still be available. The artisans would compare favorably with those in any engineering establishment in the world, but he condemned the management of the department. Commenting Scott's, letter Mr D. H. Lowe (chief engineer) says that Mr Scott has overstated the caße. While Commissioner he never made any representation to the engineer or suggested the need for any alteration. There were serious objections to making the maintenance depait roent entirely dependent on the locomotive workshops. Mr Rotherham (the locomotive superintendent) also pointed out that while Mr Scott was Commissioner lie had special control of locomotive matters, but though he could have stopped the work of conversion he never did so ; nor did he raise the slightest objection. The converted engines had been successful and bad saved considerable mileage. Mr Scott also requested that certain experiments to which he now took exception should be continued.