PERSONAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 5, 5 December 1931, Page 6

PERSONAL.

The friends of Mr R. A. Noedl, of Palmerston North, will be pleased to learn that he is recovering from his recent acute attack of lumbago. Mr R. N. Brasted, of Wellington, national secretary of the Y.M.C.A., was the guest of Mr and Mrs C. C. Woods, of Stanley Avenue, during the past week. After fifteen years’ service, Dr. Kelly, editit.- of the New Zealand Tablet, retires this month and will return to Rome, says a Press Association message from Dunedin.

Mr J. Turnbull, who has been visiting his parents, Mr and Mrs T. G. Turnbull, Pohangina, since his return from Samoa, has left to take up an appointment in Wellington.

Former well-known residents of Palmerston North in the persons of Mr and Mrs C. A. Bierre, who have resided in Wellington for the past 12 years, have recently returned to this city. Mr Bierre has been appointed local manager for Messrs Hallenstein Bros., Ltd., (N.Z. Clothing Factory). Mr H. H. Sterling retires from the position of general manager of the New Zealand Railways to-day and assumes the chairmanship of the Government Railways Board. He succeeds Colonel J. J. Esson, who was appointed temporary chairman when the system was removed from political control.

Mr Thomas Sherriff Ronaldson, who was, when he retired from the Government service, assistant Public Trustee, died yesterday, in his 76tli year. The late Mr Ronaldson was born in Cork, Ireland, and was educated at Dublin University. He came to New Zealand in 1875. He spent 35 years in the Public Trust Office, from which he retired about ten years ago. He was a member of several athletic clubs in the Capital City. There passed away at his residence in Wellington, on Thursday, Mr Archibald Hall, a pioneer who played an important part in early transport in the Dominion. Mr Hall was born in Sutherlandshire, Scotland, in ■ j.o*2, and when a lad went out to Australia and was in Victoria for some years befor coming over to the West Coast of New Zealand in 1872. He was engaged in a coaching service between Wellington and Foxton in the days when the long beach from Paekakariki northward served as the trunk road before real roads and railways ran through the district. He later had a service in Taranaki. Soon after the Parihaka affair, Mr Hall found a new “beat” in the Manawatu during the construction of the WellingtonManawatu railway, between Wellington and Longburn. Later on he returned to the West Coast, and operated between Nelson and Reefton. Mr Hall was engaged in that service when on a visit to Wellington he was offered a lease of the old horse-drawn tramway service. As the result of negotiations he leased the plant and the company’s rights for a term of eight years—from 1890 to 1898. At its termination the tramways reverted to the company, which ran them for a couple of years and then sold the whole system as a going concern to the Wellington City Corporation.