RAILWAY EARNINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19217, 5 January 1926, Page 12

RAILWAY EARNINGS.

NEW SOUTH WALES SERVICE. MAGNITUDE OF UNDERTAKING. [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY, Deo. 24. - The Chief Eailway Commissioner, Mr. I ■ • Fraser, astounded the public the other day when he revealed to them, in a speech bristling with figures, the magnitude of the New South Wales railway and tramway services, the capital invested in which, at the end of the last financial year, totalled £111,000,000. Last year j the railways and tramways earned I £20,388,000. The department spent about £15,115,000, leaving £5,274,000 to pay 4.88 per cent, on the capital. This return on capital, according to Mr. Fraser," has not been equalled by any railway in the world operated by white labour. In j that period, furthermore, the services j achieved upwards of 50,000,000 tram and ! train miles, the trains carried 128,532,'000 i passengers and 16,200,000 tons of goods, ! and the gross ton mileage was j 7,000,000,000. 1

Mr. Eraser, whenever hd makes a public speech, which is rare, fairly revels in figures. He has worked out the approximate seconds in a year at 30,000,000. In ! each of these seconds his department earns ■ 13s 4d. In the face of figures like this one can understand how it annoys Mr. Fraser when a person who has lost a threepenny parcel on the railways, not infrequently through his or her own carelessness, wails a lament through the press about the bad administration of the railways. In his 47 years of service in the railways Mr. Fraser has unquestionably put up a great record. A tall man, of somewhat spare build, Mr. Fraser has two other commissioners with him, but he is generally recognised as the Titan of the service, as the man on whose shoulders the burden of controlling this huge service falls mainly. Incidentally, the Royal Commission of British experts, which investigated the railway service ?ome time ago, not only vindicated Mr. Fraser, but it paid tribute to his great work.-