PETONE-HUTT RAILWAY.

NZ Truth, Issue 67, 29 September 1906, Page 5

PETONE-HUTT RAILWAY.

♦ THE MUDDLE OVER THE " STRAIGHTENING." WHY THE STONE SUPPLY IS SLOW AND SHORT. Another Specimen of Government Departmental Ineptitude.

The Big Pencarrow Head Stone Quary Proves to be a Pig m a Poke.

j There has been a great deal said and written, for many months past, about the extraordinary deliberateness of the advancement of the operations for straightening and doubling I the railway line between Petone and Wellington, with the aocompanying reclamation works, and to all enquiries the responsible Minister has replied— acting of course on information supplied to him by the officers of the department— that the delay was caused by the shortness of the supply of stone and' that the person responsible for this shortage was the contractor who ( had undertaken that part of the work. Accordingly the contractor has been reviled on all hands and the Government almost oondoled with on its unhappy position. . Under the ter,ms of his contract, this contractor, for the supply of stone, Mr Powell, was to get the material from the new quarry acquired by the Government, l-£ miles inside (north) of Pencarrow Head ; the Government first laying down a light railway for its conveyance along the shore to a wharf which was run out m the elbow of a reef of low rocks which were supposed to offer it shelter from the swell that sweeps m through the Heads from S.E. S. or S.W. The word "supposed" .is used advisedly, as it has been proved that the shelter was purely supposititious by the total wreck, the bursts ing to matchwood, on the beach, of one of Mr Powell's tremendously strong punts and the frequent and continued impossibility that is found to load the punts or tow them out when loaded,. v The punt that was lost was left ov^r -night, ready to be loaded lTrst thiiig in>the morning. The sea was then as calm as it ever is and the night was fine. In the morning the swell' was rolling clean over the "protective" rocks and was pounding the great, solidly-built "box" to. chips and splinters on the beach. Her moorings had held "but the heavy loggerheads had been torn right out of her and watchers aver that if they had not given way the wharf would have been milled clean over and the 'dolphins— to which she was also moor©tMwould have been torn up by the roots* as a dentist plucks a tooth. To give a fair idea of the tremendous power' of the sea on that part of the shore, it may be said that an attempt was made to put down a slip- «iv which to haul the punts for repairs or what not ; but it was found impossible. One side-timber was laid down, a beam 12x8 and J2O feet long, and it was bolted by jo iron bolts sunk deep into the rock of a shallow slope m the very quiet- ' ed and most sheltered corner to shoreward of the wharf. Yet the terrible onrush and backwash tore it oft m a night \ So much for the "sheltered" position of the wharf, where a surging punt has snapped seven ply of si heavy Manila hawser. . -And it does not need to be stormy m Wellington for the sea to 'be rough at Pencarrow Head. Yet official johnnies, sitting m cosy Government . of- | fices m the. city; telephone excitedly to know why the stone is not being brought across the harbor and when the reply is that the punts cannot be loaded by reason of the swell, they set quite "angwy" and splutter about "dilatowyness." There have been days and weeks on end, during the winter, when it would have been madness to take the splendid little tug -Togo any where ■ near the wharf, let alone taking a -punt. There we have one good, sound reason for delay. But that is not all ; the real causes of delay are the fact that the quarry is "a duffer," and that the Government inspection is so extraordinarily rigid that most of even what stone the contractor can get out is rejected by the inspector and his little hammer. . The contract calls for 50,000, tons of stones, weighing from 1 to 30 cwt, of "the best the quarry will yield." When it was handed over to the contractor it had been very slightly tested by Government men and only on such outcrops as caught the eye and that a toy could see were good stone. The very fact that they were outcrops, jutting points or pinnacles, would suggest to the meanest intellect "Chat they were so because the surrounding "country" was soft, rotten, and had crumbled away under the hand of time and the hissing;, spume and spindrift. But the princious Government expert found the hard knobs, like his head, and after hitting them a nasty hard smack with a jolly hammer, bai jove ! he reported the whole mile or so of towering cliffs to be hard stone, and Government resumed the land. Now that the hills have been thoroughly, tested for "good" stone it turns out to be the rottenest of conglomerate, with nearly all the hard rock no present use to the contractor, that it comes down after every blast m a torrent of spawls that are of oo present use to the contractor. They would have been if the Government had kept to its agreement to take 20,000 tons or so for backing and metal ; but the Government now whines that it is not ready to keep its word.

Yet its officials are now insisting on the contractor removing these "rills" of spawls and trying underthem for the good stone tney are certain is there. . . • As the Harbor Board won't allow him to stack them below high water |mark, and as the railway runs just above high-water mark and the spawls have run down m rocky streams to close; to the very rails.. Hie only way the contractor could remove the spawls would be. to load them into captive balloons^ and let them hang- like Mahomet's coffin, oi;

else freight them ,away to paddocks at enormous expense and the cost of two handlings. The trouble became so acute that it was considered advisable -that the public should be made aware of the facts and "Truth" sent a representative, accompanied by an expert, to inspect this much talked-of quarry; and the above facts arc some of the many gathered during the visit. There can be absolutely no question but that stone any better than a I whole lot of fine stuff rejected by the inspector, exists now only at one point and that should, on appearances, be worked out m a fortnight at most; All the other outcrops have been "bottomed" and the deepei the seekers go the more absolutely rotten is the country. The Government "experts" charge that 'the smashing up of the falls into spawls and the fissured appearance of the country from which the "rills" ran 'is the result of high explosives ignoranttyi handled. That such a view is either wilfully incorrect or the result of dense ignorance, is proved by the fact that nearly every face of every spawl m any heap along the cliff bottom is .oxidized by the soakage of minerally impregnated water. It is natural fissures, too ; that crease and criss-cross every new "face"; as close inspection would satisfy any but a fool or a wilfully blind person. Even when, out of these crumbling, disintegrating masses of prehistoric upheaval, large stones of "a ton oc upwards are recovered, at great labor, and laid out for inspection, they are condemned by the presiding geni of the- hammer ; though to all ordinary eyes they seem calculated to withstand any strain the stones of the \Petone sea wall are liable to be submitted to,, and the very fact that they have survived among so much decay proves their soundness and superior strength. There are thousands of tons of stones of the required! weights, lying alongside the line, which have been rejected by the Government inspector. And yet the contract only calls for the best that is m the quarry. These are the best. What more can the contractor offer ?• As it is, not one ton m every hundred got out is passed as suitable. This system would ruin a whole army of contractors, let alone one, and vet- a vastly higher percentage js suitable stone and certainly answers the description qi the specifications "the best m the quarry." "Clear away the fallen spawls and rubbish and find the good stone that; is underneath," is the cry of the officials. As if a practical man with such, a job m hand, on a time linyt, Vould not test his ground as ."he went up. He would naturally say, that there was less chance of fracture with stone got out at a low level than with that rolled down 50 or 60 feet of cliff. And yet they continue to squeal that he has buried good stone by sending down "tho high hill tops," As a fact, fn every portion of the workings it is apparent that the further m they got the more rotten became the country. Obviously the points, pinnacles or even odd boulders m a face, were ivtstances of "the survival of tho fittest." . • And still the howl goes up for "more stone," while tens of thousands of good enough stone lies condemned at the rail aide, and often a piece that has been pointed out by the officials as good stuff to shoot down, has panned out one stone to 20 tons. No wonder there *s no stone coming forward and the worics on the railway line hang fire. The quarry simply will not produce the ■quantity of stone of the quality enforced, and there's, an end to it. The contract only stipulates "the best m the quarry," "and when the one point referred to above is gone, it would appear that Mr Powell would, be able to force "the best m the quarry" on the Government, to complete his contract! or else enforce a forfeit. Moreover the Government is itselt getting and using stone from Paparangi that 1 is inferior to any being put forward and condemned at Pencarrow Head. Also it is m another muddle of miscalculation on that side, of the harbor. The department experts knew that the. job would absorb 100,000 tons of boulders, but only called for tenders for 50,000 tons. Why ? Because they figured on. getting the other 50,000 tons out of the cliffs along the job, and these have mostly proved m practice to be. clay-quarries with a few boulders scattered about, like plUms m a puddinfr. Finding this, and their own consequent inability to supply their share, they .have heckled the Pencarrow contractor with a view to making him keep the job going while they looked round them. It also appears as though they knew Pencarrow would not pan out up to estimate, for they have gone to Paikakariki for 10,000 tons extra. There has been blundering all along the line and the department has been bluffing the public,- Parliament, and even the Minister for Works, when it threw the blame for delay on the Pencarrowi contractor. . ~