ENGINE REPAIRS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 18 March 1925, Page 5

ENGINE REPAIRS

SAVING IN SIGHT

£200,000 ANNUALLY

R AITAYAY REORGANISATION

(By Telegraph.—-Special to Star.) WELLINGTON, March 17

Some remarkable figures, showing the possibility of immediately saving £103,4 030 annually on heavy engine repairs, were given to a Wanganui deputation which urged the Minister of Railways to relieve the anxiety of the district regarding the future "of the Eastown workshops. Mr. Coates, in reply, said the .commission had pointed to one of the greatest weaknesses of the whole railway system, the method of shop repairs. They rightly said that in New Zealand we had a number of very inadequate machine shops, and immediate attention should be given to this point. Their recommendation . was that the equipment should J be modernised. The Department, in addition to the commission’s advice, had had its own men, Messrs Spidey and Sim, whose whole t attention had been airected to >the shops. Mr. Spidey was for nine years production engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railways, where they had reduced the cost of repairs to. the apparently irreducible minimum. The cost, or average for heavy repairs of locomotives in New Zealand was £IOOO to £I2OO, and the average running of locomotives before necessitating heavy repairs was 10,000 miles. But in South Africa —though he could quote' many other systems —their cost for heavy repairs was down to £303 per engine, and they ran 50,000 miles. “Obviously, if we can reduce expenditure like that,” continued the Minister; “we have at once achieved something. ~By movipg quietly, and not rushing intocentralisation;' but modernising ’ the chief shops, say two in the North Island and two in the South Island, one a car .and wagon , shop and the other a locomotive repair shop, we can reduce the repair cost by half, which would show a saying of .about £200,000| annually, and .in. addition.,pay .quite a lot of the interest and sinking fund of the money necessary to bring the shops up to date. So far our plans are directed to the four principal shops, and it is not a question of centralisation, but to at onbe’ put' durselves into v position to bring down our annual costs, and do it quickly, and the most feasible way we can think of is to!concentrate on our : shops. By the concentration methods for, heavy repairs e can reduce the number of idle days for locomotives by 25 per cent., which means a big profit to the railways, and would even be worth bringing an engine all the way from Auckland, if necessary. The small shops can be used for light repairs. Our objective is not to scrap anything, but we have to concentrate on questions which are bearing heaviest upon us. The Department could nob afford at the moment o modernise all the railway shops in New Zealand, for the cost to modernise the four shops and running repair shops, was going to lie £1,500,000/’ shops, would going it o be £1,500,000.”i