SHORTAGE OF TRUCKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17113, 19 March 1919, Page 6

SHORTAGE OF TRUCKS.

Auckland is again confronted with the perils of a coal famine, due to a shortage of railway trucks. This is | a periodically recurring condition | which the Railway Department. seems incapable of overcoming. A 1 steamer arrives from overseas coal i laden. There is a certain amount of haulage to be done, and, on the principle of robbing Peter to pay i Paul upon which our railways are ( conducted, trucks are diverted from the Huntly coal traffic. On another | clay a regatta is being held at | Ngaruawahia; the Department has: not enough passenger vehicles, and I the carriage of coal from Huntly is i further reduced. The fact is that: the railway lines running into the most populous and the most pro- j gressive city in the Dominion are j being starved for lack of rolling' stock. The remedy lias frequently been urged in the Herald—an exten- : sion of the workshops at Newmarket' or new workshops at Penrose so that j a sufficiency of cars could be built I on the spot to carry the district ■ traffic. Petone and Addington' cannot meet the requirements, of the North. We must have' without delay our own fully-equipped j workshops capable of turning out the j locomotives and the cars required to j carry on the growing Auckland ser-1 vices. It is high time the Auckland , members of Parliament asserted themselves on this point and on the subject of suburban services, and the facilities on the Main Trunk line. On the one hand the Department pleads that it cannot increase services because of shortage of coal, and on the other it forces the Huntly miners to idleness because of its inability to supply trucks. By its inaction in the one case it provides itself with an excuse for further inaction in the other. The whole policy is worse than weak; it is verging on imbecility.