WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1928, Page 31 (Supplement)

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Nelson-Cobden Railway

The WEST COAST rush started in 1865 and almost the whole of merchant business was then and for years after, done at or through Nelson ; other centres of course, did business with the Coast, but their goods were either transhipped at, or forwarded via Nelson, from which port W. Edwards & Co. ran a line of steamers. As merchants, travellers and. others had no other means of transit, Nelson went ahead with leaps and ■ bounds and was practically the metropolis of the Coast. No- wonder “Sleepy Hollow” quickly conceived the idea .of a railway, for as early as 1866 they had a special Act passed entitled “The Nelson, Cobden and Westport Railway Land Act, 1866” to the effect that: When any person contracted with the Superintendent of the Province of Nelson, to construct a railway from the Port of Nelson, to Cobden and Westport, the Superintendent could reserve waste lands of the Crown (in the Nelson Province) and on completion of the railway, the contractor was> entitled to such lands, not exceeding 10,000 acres for each mile of the railway. In 1868 this Act was amended by giving to the contractor, when he had completed each twenty miles of the railway, the right to 5000 acres for every mile of each twenty so completed and on completion of the whole line, he was entitled to receive the balance of bis land. It will be noted, the contractor was to receive no cash whatever, but evidently was to pay himself by selling or otherwise disposing, if he could, of the lands from time to time ceded to him. Considering the fact that there was pp market whatever for farm produce or timber, it is hard to see how the contractor was to get rid of any land for either of those purposes; his only chance therefore was minerals, and there was no show of his doing anything in that line, so that even if the promoters had launched the scheme, that is as far as they would have got, and it is a great pity, for had the line actually been constructed it would have been of much greater benefit to the Coast than the Otira, and it may have led to a Harbour being constructed at Point Elizabeth and thus saved a groat deal of useless expenditure elsewhere. Although the later Welling-' ton-Manawatu may not have had any greater prospects than the Nelson line, it is doubtful if its construction would, but for immigration supplying the labour, have been the success it was. Labour (or rather the want of it) would also have knocked the bottom out of the Nelson line.