UPPER CLUTHA RAILWAY.

Evening Star, Issue 19019, 14 August 1925, Page 2

UPPER CLUTHA RAILWAY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In the ‘ Evening Star ’ of the 4lh inst. a letter on the Upper Clutha .Bailway, written by Mr W. P. Cotter, lias just come under my notice; also a leader in reply. I fully endorse Mr Colter’s statements, and feel assured that, if you were better acquainted with the history of the line and of the facts leading up to the present agitation, yon would have refrained from attempting to belittle our right to railway communication with Dunedin. When the Hawoa Flat lands were sold by public auction nearly fifty years ago one pledge given by the Government auctioneer, Mr Chappie, was that railway communication with Dunedin would be within ten years. Tho trusting pioneers who bought on these terms struggled through and reared the families as best they could, always in tho hope that tho pledges given would be redeemed. Ours is no “ new line,” but ono of the oldest, if not the oldest, authorised lino in the dominion. Even now we have cancelled our right to the surveyed terminus at Hawea , Flat, agreeing to a terminus eight miles or more away at Luggate, to enable the Government to construct the line at less cost. Yon assert that tho North Island lines should bo developed to link up dead ends which lead into productive localities. This is exactly what would happen if tho railway wore constructed to Luggate. "We have the land; its fertility will enable us to increase largely tho yearly output of , grain, dairy produce, fat stock,, fruit, and vegetables of every description; but the distance to a market is too great to produce these things profitably, or to engage in further enterprise. Through the cost of your new road wc have no desire to be placed in the position onoted by you of the customers of tho Southland Electric Power Board. The highest imaginable railway rates would bo trifling compared with tho present rates over a distance of thirty-five to forty miles. The land in this district |s quite capable of paying the cost of a road were the cost of freight over that road reduced to railway haulage rates; but it is certain that tho only result of its formation would ho tho addition of further taxation for its construction and maintenance. Your advocacy of tho construction of a costly road to precede tho railway communication is hardly logical. Settlers here merely ask for a railway. You propose to double the burden placed upon the people -and country generally by scrapping a road costing approximately as much as a railway when development caused by your suggested highway had reached what you consider a paving point, IVby not construct the railway first to meet the largely increased production you admit would result from cheaper transport now, rather than risk costly and useless experiments on a long-enduring people? No doubt your suggested road would meet the needs of private motor car companies, tourists, and motor car owners generally, but not those of tho producers on the land, who have made our dominion what it is to-day.—l am, etc., S. W. E. John. Hawea Flat, August 12. [This subject is referred to in our leading columns.—Ed. E.S.J