EAST COAST RAILWAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19040, 10 June 1925, Page 11

EAST COAST RAILWAY.

THE CLOSING. OF THE GAP. WAIHI-TAURANGA SECTION. , ENCOURAGING PROGRESS. CONTRACT JOB IN FULL SWING, "No. 1. • The closing of the gap on the East Coast Main Trunk railway is within sight. The Public Works Department will have no difficulty in completing the two short sections in its hands by the end of this year and the energy with which Sir William G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co. aro attacking the section of 18 miles embraced by their contract holds every promiso that the job will be done by March of 1927. Then nearly 100 miles of lino will come into the North Island system and possibly more, for by that time Taneatua, the terminus under present authorisation, is not likely to be the railhead. Opotiki is the natural objective of the present phase and if further votes aro made tho Public Works Department ought to have no difficulty within the period of making a considerable extension beyond Taneatua. Never has New Zealand had hotter cause for satisfaction over the progress of a 'great national work—a work that will not only extend settlement, but also remove from railway finance the deadweight of a long isolated section of line, representing capital partly idle. Experts of long experience say that the only occasion before . the business policy of the Hon. J. G. Coates was inaugurated, when comparable expedition was shown in the construction of a railway, was when the Main Trunk line was pushed to completion. And' that, of course, was before mechanical appliances routed the pick, shovel and wheelbarrow. . Six Hundred Men on the Gap. • To-day the Armstrong-Whitworth firm and tho Public Works Department are employing nearly 1000 men upon the East Coast line, at least 600 being engaged on '' the gap between Waihi and Tauranga, and the mechanical plant represents "the labour of many time 3 that number of men. The contractors have six Rushton steam navvies at work, each doing two eighthour shifts a day and in six months they have completed nearly half the total excavations Over 18£ miles. One of the steam navvies, working under 'the most advantageous circumstances in a cutting where the minimum swing has to, be made, achieved the record of 495 cubic yards in eight hours. The average over all the machines is in the vicinity, of 300 yards a shift. Each machine keeps three rakes of ten side-tipping waggons working at full speed even though the tipping Joints for the fillings for which the spoil as to'bo used are sometimes upwards of a mile away. . The speed in removing the clay is obtained by the use. of petrol engines familiar to every soldier who fought in France. All tho engines were made for war service and carry bullet-proof armour; several were employed on actual war service, the only change made in them being wv patch over the hole through which the barrel of a machine-gun used to protrude. It "is. another instance of where they have beaten their swords into ploughshares and their> spears into pruning hooks. V In .making a tour of the new works one is astonished at the extent of what might be as preparatory essentials. At the Mount the contractors have complete workshops arid a jetty at which there is 20ft. of water at high tide. A five-ton steam crane is in use. The larger vessels bringing material must berth at the Harbour Board's wharf, which is within n few hundred yards/but at the firm's own jetty there is constant activity for eight punts are always at work carrying loads of 30 to 40 tons to various points of the work. Broken but Beautiful Shore. Owing to the shockingly bad condition of the roads giving access or what is supposed to be access to the railway route, the contractors must rely mainly upon water carriage. It may not bo realised by the general public that the railway, route east of Xatikati more ">r loss skirts the shore, of Tauranga harbour. A very short distance inland rise steep bush-clad hills, the .same range that is seen behind Te Aroha.' The strip of settled land between the; harbour and the hills—parts r>f which represent the work of three generations of farmers—does not run .do.wn to the long sweeping shores. Every creek is an estuary. These tidal reaches or salt marshes on which mangroves flourish, penetrate deeply* into the land and the _ railway for the *lB miles and more will be a series of cuttings, fillings arid bridges. It'should be mentioned that this section of the lino will become famous for its scenery. View after view of sea, island and promontory will be presented as the train rushes through. the cuttings. Always the lofty Mount will dominate the picture. On. the landward side of the line the forest of the hills "sawing savage at the sky" will provide a beautiful contrast. The whole harlour region is wonderfully beautiful. But the broken nature of the shore with its wide estuaries and mangrove marshes makes the construction, of the line a job of difficulty. In the 18 miles there will be no less than 15 major bridges and at the ends of most there will be lengthy embankments. Difficulties of Estuaries. Some of these tidal streams are wide and although shallow have a' tremendous depth of: silt. For instance, the Maungawhai estuary, over %vhich the railway will be carried . partly on embankment and partly cm a bridge, has been literally swallowing the spoil from a huge cutting that has been poured into it for months. Probably much more clay is now below the surface of the mud than is seen above it. Some of the? piles for the bridge had not, found "the - hard" under 60ft. On either side of the embankment that: is being built up at the west side, the silt bed of'the estuary has risen just as peat does sometimes on , either side of a road filling through a swamp. The clay is sinking deeper and deeper in search of a hard bottom and the silii nftust rise. This was anticipated. The contractors had as data the results of the preliminary borings made by the Public Works Department and-therefore they are not concerned over the disappearance of so much of the clay . torn out of the ridges,.

. Before leaving the question of essential preliminaries, reference * should be made to the scores of temporary cabins and houses so constructed that they can bp speedily shifted in sections, to the fact that in several instances fresh water for human .uso and for steam engines has had to be brought, by pipe line as far as three miles owing to the brackish condition of the water on the spot, and to the huge dump of materials embracing everything from coal and carbide, used for lighting cuttings at night, to steam locomotives ajid pile drivers. It is only when there is a concentration of effort along a whole section that one realises the extent of preliminary labour and expenditure and makes wild guesses,at what proportion of the total cost plant and preliminaries represent.