THE MAIN TRUNK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13939, 22 December 1908, Page 4

THE MAIN TRUNK.

Now that the personal attention of the Prime Minister has been given to the Departmental of the Wellington-Auckland service, of which the unnecessary discomforts and gratuitous hardships have been minimised, not exaggerated, we mayhope that through passengers will no longer be treated as though it was a favour to be carried at all. We must point out to Sir Joseph Ward that those who exercise Departmental control oyer this great public service constantly givo proof that they are saturated with this idea, and that our railways are much less advantageous than they could easily be made if the managing officials through whom the Government must necessarily, work were intelligently desirous of popularising the railways. There can be no doubt whatever that passengers have been regularly turned out of the trains at Ohakune and left p to shift as best. they can to and in that small township, where < there is utterly inadequate accommodation, as the railway authorities ought. to have known. If ; the trains cannot yet be eafely run at night, upon

which the public must' necessarily accept the statement of railway experts, the trains from Wellington ought to stop at Taihape, where there is much more accommodation for travellers than at Ohakune, not to mention that the Taihape township is close to the station. It is easy to say, as the. railway authorities may say, that confirmed grumblers should not travel over a new line, involving a night-stop. But Sir Joseph Ward, we are .confident, will agree with us that any railway manager who does not study as far as possible the comfort of those travellers who pay to travel on the Government lines ought to be superannuated. And it is disgracefully bad management to sell through tickets to hundreds of passengers, and then to tip them out of the train for the night at such a station as Ohakune. To travel by train from Wellington to Auckland ought to be a pleasant experience, not a disagreeable adventure.