RAILWAY PROBLEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22685, 24 March 1937, Page 14

RAILWAY PROBLEM

SHORTAGE OF TRUCKS

GOODS TRAFFIC IMPEDED

SOME INCONVENIENCE CAUSED

Manufacturers, mine owners and others are being handicapped by an acute shortage of railway trucks, which the Railway Department is making strenuous efforts to overcome, not onlj by the manufacture of extra rolling stock, but also by conveying goods, m many instances, on Sundays. There have been occasions in the past few months when mines have had to ceas? operations in certain departments by noon because waggons were not available to clear accumulated stocks of coal. Fertiliser producers and others have had to curtail labour at times owing to difficulties in getting supplies away, and dairy factories, recognising the department's difficulties, are pursuing a policy of quick unloading and loading in order to assist. Difficulties become especially acute whenever there is a fair amount of shipping at Auckland.

It is stated that the trouble has arisen because the department failed to make provision in time for a trade revival. For sortie years, owing to depression economies, supplies of rolling stock were short, but not acutely so. When the department realised the impending situation it put into effect a big building and assembly programme of waggon.?. Unfortunately it was handicapped in its efforts to overcome the trouble by difficulties in obtaining steel and various parts which it imports. However, it is expected that in about two weeks some new waggons will be completed, and thereafter the workshops will be making steady deliveries of fresh rolling stock. While very welcome, the relief will come late in the season, the peak of which will be well past.