NEW ROUTE FOR MAIN TELEGRAPH LINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9021, 6 April 1888, Page 5

NEW ROUTE FOR MAIN TELEGRAPH LINE.

Our Hamilton correspondent writes : All are of opinion that there is urgent need for a second telegraph line between Auckland and Wellington, but the line of route is quite an open question. The present lines all more or leas run along the coast, and for this reason are more subject to mishaps than an inland line would be, and it is felt that to bo a really satisfactory and permanent undertaking, the new line must be as far as possible clear of the causes that at present obstruct the lines. One of the chief of these is the long extent of bush they run through, and tho consequent falling of trees across the winis. There is one route that has hardly yet been mentioned, to which our attention has been drawn within the last few days—namely, the line laid out for the Main Trunk Railway. This route has the great advantage that its whole length has been opened up oy tracks and bridges, and that while there is plenty of totara to be got for poles within a reasonable distance, it is remarkably clear of bush. By making a deviation where the Whanganui ivnd the Whakapapa rivers join beyond Taumaranui, and cutting through a narrow strip of bush on to the Ruamata Plain, and then passing to the east of Tongariro and Ruapehu, a line of country wouldoe found entirely blear of bush, except at the point referred to, where it would occur over the spaco of about five miles only, and at the Poro-o-tarao tunnel, where there would be only about a couple of miles of bush to pass through if carried straight on, and not by the railway line. There would be a bitofbueh to be gone through at the southern end of the line, but altogether the extent of bush traversed would not be near so much as that along the existing lines, or by the proposed connection with the Taranaki lines, which would be by far the greater part through solid bush, and over an exceedingly broken and ruggod ooantry, and which would probably cost more than the central line now referred to, although only about twothirds of the distance, and for this reason that by the central route now under discussion some fifty miles could be laid off on railway tracke, while the rest is all more or less opened up by tracks and bridges, and through a comparatively level and an almost entirely open country.