COOK STRAIT

Evening Star, Issue 19025, 21 August 1925, Page 10

COOK STRAIT

THE TRAIN FEW A DOUBTFUL MINISTER [Feom O'xie Parliamentary Reporter. J WELLINGTON, August 20. Ono of the recommendations of the recent Royal Commission, on Railways favored the establishment of a train ferry between the North and South Islands. This was quoted to the Prime Minister by a deputation as an argument in favor of completing the South Island Main Trunk lino. Mr Coates’s comment was critical. He said the Railway Department had detailed men to work out what a train ferry service would mean to the railways from a genera! railway point of view. “ The Commission which came here,” he added, “ comprised gentlemen of world-wide reputation, but I am not prepared to take any Commission’s remarks as correct unless they are prepared to back it up with figures. It is all right just to say it, but 1 want to know how they came to the conclusion. Probably ,it_ was a rough survey of their own in view of what happens in other countries with larger populations—a very different thing. They have some ferries in Norway and in America, but the size of the traffic is enormously different, and while it may be a very fine idea there, we have to satisfy ourselves before we go to huge expenditure that it is the right thing here. It is an interesting problem to be worked out. If it is proved to be satisfactory, then it is a distinct argument for the line to go on, but that has to bo tested as far as we can.