NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9460, 16 March 1894, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Mr. Price Williams, who is now in Wellington, stands at the head of railway engineers and experts. He is a pupil of Heald and Robert Stephenson, has been intimately*associated with all the leading railways in the United Kingdom, and wit the systems of management which, have been adopted on the European and American Continents. He has been commissioned at various times by the Imperial Government and the Board of Trade to ma '0 estimates upon the moat abstruse prob ems relating to speed and power by the stu pendous development of English rai way passenger and goods traffic. It wa ® 1 '® gentleman who was employed by a oja commission to inquire into the extent an duration of the British coal measures, with the following result, that at the date the inquiry (1871) the quantity of coal unused to a depth of 4000 feet might ba estimated at 146,736 million tons, whicn would last 360 years, at which remote period the population of Great n should be according to present increase, millions.

This gentleman has been interviewed X the Wellington Post. He is travelling colonies with a purpose to construe railways to cost from £1600 to £ - 000 p mile to connect lines already constructs incompleted in country districts. On general subject of railway manaeemeti considers that the "commission 18 if jit is independent of politics » end He believes that railways should be manufactured foe the benefit of coun / districts, but under regulations P enoci ' / fixed. That railways exist for the eop ' he thinks, defeated when Governments . power to interfere. Mr. travelled the Australian colonies » times. He was in New Zealand eight years ago, when he examined t condition of the railways. He i« pointed that since that time there has kittle increase of mileage, so h tw n been done for the connection of rouU» any form. He felt astonishment when*.

, had not yeb been con- °° d wit Wellington. He expressed p ® C f „ disgust" withjthe "political logTJ'who is a mere " parasite" upon all r °! e effort in this direction. Very much " orTbe thinks ought to have been done to detail the populous centres.

rrnnine to his own position and the purof his present visit to the Australasian Trie* he is the representative of a svndiCo !' of capitalists to promote "continuous Lv construction" — thab is, to construct !" al railways a, feeders to railways .1"dv completed and open. The specific Wect is explained with greater precision d detail in the following paragraphs me English leading financiers, amongst hom is the leading financial firm of Jar- * e and Matheson, who have worked out a Theme for railway construction in the Monies, which Mr. Williams has been trusted with, and has submitted in writing to Sir George Dibba, for New South Wales, with whom he is to treat concernin" it on his return to Sydney, with a view to its adoption there. He is equally epare d to construct railways on similar tern* in New Zealand. Mr. Williams' proposition is something like this, the Usenti.-'l features of the scheme being that will not involve either the alienation of the Crown land or the expenditure of public revenue. The Government is asked to I've the land necessary for the construction (flight rail way son the standard gauge. Such railways Mr. Williams is prepared to construct for flGOOamilein open level country (including bridges here and there), and for £•2000 a mile where clearing has to be done. Land contiguous to the proposed railway would he entrusted to these trustees for settlement in 320-acre blocks, by selected settlers. If the right kind of settlers were not forthcoming here, Mr. Williams says there are plenty of well-to-do yeomen in the old country who would take up land, the rough work upon which had been done [or them.