A RAILWAY MATTER.

Northern Advocate, 4 August 1924, Page 4

A RAILWAY MATTER.

Mr J. S. Clark, of Maromaku, waxes very indignant to-day in a letter concerning the railway service and the annual meeting of the Hikurangi Dairy Company, Limited. Holding that the meeting is the occasion of a large concentration of shareholders, Mr Clark thinks that for the convenience of these people the Railway Department should have been willing on Saturday to delay the north-going train for an hour. A request for this change having been preferred by the directors of the company and refused by the railway authorities, Mr Clark would have the head of the responsible official on a charger, or at least would dispossess him of his office. Mr Clark's enthusiasm is, no doubt, a fine thing, but we are afraid it is inclined to make him unreasonable. lit , claims that tecause a train can be delayed on the occasion of an important football match in Whangarei, and because the dairy company is a customer of the Railway Department, pr.ying £3000 in freights for a season, the company is entitled to fin alteration in the timetable. If the argument based on freights were sound, then a great many firms and organisations in the Dominion would be entitled to claim special concessions from the railway people, and in the long run the timetable would be a "go as you please" arrangement, fixed by outsiders and accepted willy nilly by the Department. This, no doubt, would be an admi nable way to make the railways safe and profitable. The fact that the Hikurangi company finds the railways useful does not justify it in asking for the concession desired by Mr. Clark, nor, we are afraid, does the "large concentration of shareholders" place tho dairy company's meeting on the same footing as a football match. According to our report, the attendance at the Hikurangi meeting was about 120, a proportion of whom would use the train. The number coming from the Bay of Islands to see their representatives play football in Whangarei would be considerably larger. On such an occasion the majority of the train passengers would probably be interested in the football, but the dairy company's members would scarcely constitute a majority of the train's complement on an ordinary Saturday. The Railway Department naturally studies the requirements of tho majority of the public, and as long- as it does that it does its duty. In any case the ordinary train service enables the northern shareholders of the Hikurangi company to spend some five hours or more at Hikurangi, and that is surely an ample allowance of time, even for a dairy company's meeting.