A DEADLY SECRIT.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 1586, 11 June 1920, Page 5

A DEADLY SECRIT.

ABOUT A RAILWAY ROU'U

RUMOURS THAT THE IRON HO RSIWILL LEAVE PALMERS'rOX.

Dame Rumour has been wagging 1 her more or less wise old head in Palmerston during the last few days anent a deadly secret arising out ot" a recent conference between the General Manager of Railways and the Palmerston P.orough Council. The Mayor has b-nn sworn to secrecy, the Borough Coo-noil has been sworn to secrecy. Nothing is to be divulged until the meeting Ot the Council on j Tuesday nigh*.- Nevertheless property owners at the western end of the town have been surprised! at visits- — sometime frequent visits- —paid them by philanthropists—noted philanthropists—heralded or accompanied by lii.nd agents, who ' have desired to be inl'ormed quite tentatively and hypothetically, of course —what they would be prepared'' to take —or what options they would be likely to give on sections, or for properties, say on the Boundary Road or its vicinity. Quite naturally some of these simple folk have come along to the "Times"' office in the hope of discovering theinnerness—the occult or hidden meaning—of this sudden interest in Boundary Road. What do we think the "game" is? Has somebody found gold in: the Kawau drain? Is the Council thinking of instituting a garden suburb in that locality? Oh what is it? Land agents and speeuphilanthropists, they point out, do not burn petrol 1 for nothing! Well, the rumour is—and we give it for what it is worth —that the Railway Department contemplates in the near future taking- its railway station, yards, engine sheds and track clean out ot the borough, and makint? a diversion right round' the town on the western side. It is understood that the Council is unanimously in agreement with the new scheme —whatever it is. Whether the proposed diversion is to be made clean through from Longburn, or whether the railway will branch out from Awapuni on the far side of the abattoirs, is at present in the realms of speculation as far as the man in the street is concerned. But one or two people who have been gazing into a crystal, or consulting the oracles, forsee the early day when Main Street east will become a broad tree-planted boulevard, undisturbed by the rattle and scream of locomotives, and when the plangent warning of alarm bells will no longer be heard The people who are specula- > tins: along Boundary Road may be well advised, but what price corner sections in Main Street east? Of course there will be a railway station somewhere-the cognoscenti say in the vicinity of Rangitikei Line, not more than, say, a mile from the Bank ot New Zealand corner, a kind of Frankton Junction, but on a larger scale If and when this "comes off, no doubt there Mall be a cluster of workers cottages in the vicinity, and perhaps a Utile suburb with two boardinghouses, a rapid eating-house and perhaps a pub. But where? Where? That is what the people who are nearly, but not quite, in the know, would Hketo know. Presumably the Railway Department has been making its plans quite a long way ahead and lias secured some essential options for the accommodation of its buildings and yards. If so, it has been shrewd and slv to an unprecedented degree. Presumably also the land requiredL for the lines will be resumed under the Public Work! Act. Anyhow, this is enough Jo go on with. For the rest we must "wait and see."