EDUCATION BY RAIL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 November 1924, Page 7

EDUCATION BY RAIL.

“BETTER FARMING” TRAIN. AUSTRALIAN SCHEMES. SYDNEY, Oct. 23. Inspired, perhaps, by the success ot a travelling domestic science school contained in a beautifully equipped railway carriage introduced a year or two on the Queensland railways, the Victorian Government has introduced as an experiment a similar scheme for fawners. It is known as the “Better Farming” train. Incidentally there are features especially designed for housewives. Over £SOO has been spent in equipping an exhibition car and a lecture car, and it is hoped by the instructions and demonstrations that are being given to improve materially the standard of various’ classes of farming. For a start, the car wac dispatched last week to the dairying areas of Gippsland. The experts declare . that if the instructions prove effective it will result in doubling the butter and pork output of that rich area, arid thus be worth £500,000 a year to the State. Certainly the reception of the interesting cars at the little township of Bunyip, which was the first to be visited, was very encouraging. Farmers and their wives flocked in from the surrounding farms, and exhibits were the subject of the closest scrutiny throughout the day, while so- numerous were the listeners at- the lectures that the little travelling lecture room was inadequate and instead the addresses had to be delivered from the platform of the car to people seated below on butter boxes and ether improvised chairs The train provides plenty of illustrations of the good and bad ways of doing things. Aji exhibit of pork is carried. Two sides have been taken from pigs, the same age, fed exactly the same way, and reared under exactly similar conditions. Yet one side is valued at sixteen pence a pound, and the other at elevenpence. One is a purebred, and the other a mongrel. The fivopence a pound difference can be procured by the farmer without any real extra cost. It is just the difference between good and class-breeding. Another instance of the wanton carelessness that mean? loss on the farm is illustrated by a rabbit skin exhibit. Rabbit skins are largely sold from Gippsland. and are used in the making of hats. Tf imfproperly stretched, a considerable part- of the fur on a rabbit skin becomes greasy when the skins are stacked. Tn this way the value of the skins is almost totally lost. The results of huoleanliness in the dairv are strikingly demonstrated, and if the siiqple methods that ensure cleanliness and bacteriological purity , that are clearly shown by results to be effective are adopted there should not. he an ounce of poor grade hotter ! turned out from the district. Methods of increasing production are also fully dealt with. At nights the programmes are enlivened by items received by a fine wireless .set. equipped with a loud speaker, that has been installed on the train..