RAILROADS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 57, 31 July 1862, Page 6 (Supplement)

RAILROADS.

To THE EdITOK OF THE ‘ NELSON EXAMINER.’ Sir—My attention has been directed to a correspondence relative to Colonial Tramways and Pailroads, published in the Government Gazette , in which is included a letter from Mr. Bridges Adams, of London, to the Governor of New Zealand, wherein the former gentlemen states that the paper which I published in October, 1861, on the subject of an improved description of railroad suitable for the colonies was, in effect, pirated from him. I have to observe that the paper in question contained a discription of the Bun Mountain Railway, recently constructed, with which Mr. Adams never has been directly or indirectly connected, and of which he knows nothing more than he has gathered from my published description, which Mr. Adams nevertheless makes use of in his letter to Sir George Grey, thereby strengthening his application for the adoption of a light description of railroad in New Zealand, and for the supplying of the materials required for the same (through him and his friend, Mr. H. Green, of London), an object which he seems to have had chiefly in view when addressing his Excellency. ° In publishing the paper referred to, I laid claim to no originality, nor can Mr. Adams. There is nothing new in a light description of railroads ; nothing which has not been in use in Wales, in America, and elsewhere years ago. The first rolled rails made weighed no more than 301bs. to the yard, and the first locomotive engine construtced in England in 1830, the Rocket, weighed only nine tons. The publication of my paper would have been out of place in Europe or America, where light railroads are well known and appreciated; but was in my opinion, calculated to bo of sendee in New Zealand, where such a kind of road is unknown. Nor would I have written anything upon the subject, had I not the Dun Mountain Railway to point to as an example of what may be done by adopting a light and inexpensive kind of railroad. I cannot accuse myself of borrowing ideas from ’Mr. Adams, because he has advanced nothing new upon the subject of light railroads, and nothing which has not been before treated of byMr. diaries Light, Sir E. Denison, Mr. Burns, Mr. Train, and other authorities in their publications. I shall, however, be very glad to see Mr. Adams or any one else succeed in extending railroad construction in New Zealand, and shall always be prepared to forward undertakings of such undoubted utility so far as lam able ; and inasmuch as example is better than precept, I hope Mr. Adams will shortly be able to point to another Dun Mountain Railway, constructed under his own supervision. I am, &c., A. Eitz Gibbox, Engineer and Manager to the Dun Mountain Company.