NEW ZEALAND'S CONCUSSIONAL RAILWAY SYSTEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8999, 12 March 1888, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND'S CONCUSSIONAL RAILWAY SYSTEM.

Ocr Mfttakohe correspondent thus writes respecting the torture the New Zealand Railway Department daily inflicts :— No one travelling by the Auckland railways can fail to notice the fearful jerks and bumps which break the monotony of the journey, and sometimes come near breaking the limbs of the passengers. These concussions are caused by the barbarous method adopted of coupling the carriages—a method no country, I think, but -going New Zealand would tolerate. Everywhere else in the civilised world the couplings of railway carriages are screwed up tight, so that the butlers are not only in constant contact, but the springs they actuate are always more or less in compression, thus rendering a rude shock impossible. In the Auckland carriages fully four inches separate the buffers, the result being that the starting of a train creates a most tremendous jerk in every carriage, and shutting-otf steam, or putting the brake on the engine, causes a concussion at times sufficiently violent to dislodge passengers from their seats. While the human victims of our railway mismanagement, who have hands to hold on with and seats to sit upon, thus sutler, who can gauge the agonies of fear and pain endured by cattle while undergoing a journey on a New Zealand railway. The poor creatures are packed in a sort of loose box truck, and every jerk throws them from end to end, and tumbles them over in heaps, maiming some, and bruising all. Mr. E. Coates, of Matakohe, the wellknown sheep breeder, has lately suffered a serious loss, caused, it is believed, by the defective rolling stock employed on the railways in the transport of cattle. A few weeks back he purchased two pure Canter-bury-bred rams from a gentleman at Hamilton, who two years ago had paid 25 guineas a piece for them. The rams were duly forwarded, and arrived here in a deplorable condition, one with three ribs and shoulder-blade broken, and the other with a badly-fractured thigh. The report got about that the rams were suffering from scab, and on its reaching Mr. Coatefe' ears he immediately sent for Mr. A. Elliott, the inspector in charge of the district, who came up to inspect the suffering animals. One he found dead on his arrival, and the other so badly injured that he considers its recovery doubtful. He, however, did not discover the slightest trace of scab or any disease, and was fully of opinion that the animals were injured during transit in the railway trucks. So much, Mr. Elliott informed me, do the Waikato farmers dread the railway journey for their sheep and cattle, that the bulk of them are now driven to Auckland, the butchers stating that those sent by train arrive in such a damaged condition as to render a considerable portion of the meat unsaleable. With regard to Mr. Coates' rams, I understand the railway authorities deny any responsibility in the matter, and say that if they were injured in the trucks they must nave been fighting. Now, in the first place is it possible to conceive that there are rams in existence possessed of such courage and insensibility to danger as to engage in combat during a journey in an Auckland railway truck (two men prosecuting a boxing match at the scene of and during the late Tarawera eruption would be nothing to it in point of cool audacity); in the second place, is it possible to conceive that the railway authorities—knowing well the shocks and jerks that form so prominent a feature in Auckland railway travellingwould place two valuable rams at large in a truck, in which there was room enough to fight. If this was indeed the case, what a gay time those rams must have had whenever the break was put on. There is a society in Auckland for the prevention of cruelty to animals, which occasionally pounces down upon the driver of a limping horse or the rider of a girth-galled animal. I ventute to think that periodic visits on the part of its agents to the Auckland terminus, when the several country trains are due, would probably throw some real good business in the way of this society.