AUSTRALIAN RAILWAYS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2075, 16 March 1922, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN RAILWAYS.

LECTURE IN LONDON. [By Electric Cable — Copyright.] [Aust. and N.Z. Cable Association.] LONDON, March IS. Mr L. R. Johnson, formerly Railwav Commissioner of New South Wales, and lately engineering adviser to the Pekin Board of Communications, lectured before the Institute of Transport on the railway problems of Australia and China, u He endorsed the Australian Commission's recommendation of 19 21 for the adoption of the New South Wales gauge, and pointed out, the overwhelming advantages from the point of view of I defence, of diverting the proposed I north and south line to the eastward, j thereby linking up Queensland with i the. east and west lines. This was better than the Oodnadatta route. ! Victoria was leading the Common- : wealth in regard to the electrification jof railways. Hon J. Cook paid’a tribute to Mr Johnson’s services to] ! the railways in Australia, and said ) | that well-informed opinion favoured) j the new south line via Queensland, j j Ho deprecated the reference to the) j "desert lino” as he had the* best auth-1 j ority for saying that in this territory there were hundreds of millions j of acres capable of carrying millions |of cattle when water bores were |in operation and railway transport I I provided. In Kimberly alone there I were one hundred million acres of the l‘finest cattlo country in the* world. Lord Kitchener had repeatedly informed him that lie favoured the Queensland overland route, not only! for military purposes, but from the! economic point of view. The speaker i advocated the spending of millions | on railway extension and land development, thereby employing hundreds of thousands of immigrants and promoting- the expansion of industries.