THREE COUNTRY TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 11

THREE COUNTRY TOPICS.

The Thaction Engine, Road making and Maintenance, and the "Lowest Tendeb." Some excellent practical remarks on the above topics fell from several of the speakers at the Liiidhuist Road Board's reunion on Friday evening, whicb, to keep the report within reasonable limits, had to be excluded. Their intrinsic value, especially to country readers, will, however, justify this recurrence to the occasion in question, and the production of the suppressed portions of several admirable speeches. THE TRACTION ENGINE. Mr Halliday, in the course of his observations, and speaking evidently under the impression that .the Southland County Council had assumed an attitude of hostility to the traction engine, said he thought the council wrong in obstructing the use of these locomotives. The traction engine was a form of motive power that could be used with great benefit by the majority of settlers, and they were not bad for the roads; indeed, instead of injaring, they rather improved the roads, their broad tyres and weight performing to some extent the functions of a roller. The only real obstacle to their travelling about was the weakness of many of the bridges and culverts, and these should be made fit to carry the engines with safety ; a little double planking and a few additional piles would be sufficient, and enable the settlers to have the use of this very serviceable machine. They were going about the country now with saw benches in train, so that a man could run one of them into his own bit of bush and cut up quickly and conveniently what timber he required . They could also be employed in carrying the produce of the farmer to market and fetching out his manure and other town purchases. They took loads of about 12 tons, and could do the farmer's work, in the way of carriage, at a cheaper rate than any other method available at present. Mr Feldwick concurred with Mr Halliday's views on the utility of the traction engine. In South Canterbury they had been largely used for a long time, and with great benefit to the farmers. If for no other reason they ought to be encouraged as being effective checks on the railway commissioners, who generally based their tariff on the opposition to be encountered rather than upon the service to be rendered. They were also exceedingly useful, and supplied cheap haulage in districts where there were no railways. He was so impressed with their usefulness to the country that if anything in the way of legislation in favour of the traction engine came in his way he would be found supporting it. Mr M'Callum Eaid Messrs Halliday and Feldwick were all wrong in assuming the county council to be antagonistic to the traction engine. What the council was against was the breaking down of bridges and the destruction of roads. Most of the bridges had been built f<sr ordinary dray traffic before the traction engine came upon the scene, and all the council did now was to warn owners that if they ran an engine of 10 tons over a structure designed to carry five, they did so at their own risk. Owners had therefore to take precautions in crossing, and they were not always blameless for accidents In one unhappy case, which everyone deplored, the risk had been doubled by the machine being driven on to the bridge at full speed. It was absurd to suppose that the council could at once double plank and strengthen all their bridges. The bridges of one river alone— the Mataura— would swallow all the rates of the county. All new bridges, however, and all bridges now needing repair, were being built to carry these engines. ROAD-MAKING AND MAINTENANCE. Mr Gardner, engineer to the Jate board, after acknowledging the toast of " The Officers of the Board," and mentioning that he had come to Southland many yeara ago through havirg had a" crack " with Mr Kinross about the district on the street in Dunedin, proceeded to deliver a very interesting short lecture on road-making and the difficulties er gineers had to encounter in carry ing road works through. Besides a multitude of minor difficulties met with here, but which were incidental to engineering everywhere, there were three of magnitude worthy of special attention. The first was that of being compelled to follow nonsensically surveyed lines ; lines that ignored all the natural features of the country, and simply plotted out a district on purely theoretical principles. He was sure that whoever had laid out the road lines he had been often obliged to follow against his judgment had not known anything of road-making, nor considered what labour and expense could be saved by taking advantage of natural formation. In fact, it had been found imperative in many instances, at great cost and trouble, to make deviations which should never have been necessary. The second great difficulty he would refer to was the chronic scarcity of funds with which nearly all public bodies were afflicted. This was purely a ratepayer's question, and should not in any way bother the engineer, but it did ; and he had many a time suffered a good deal of abuse and perhaps ill-will for nob having work done that it was simply impossible to do, or to do as it should be done, and as he would have liked to have had it done, for want of money. The third great difficulty, and perhaps the most aggravating of the lot, was THE LOWEST TENDER SYSTEM of letting contracts. It was a blindfold way of deciding a question, and often completely stultified the engineer, and made good work

less or more impossible. He thought public bodies should bake their engineer's estimate as their basis. If he were worthy of the office he deserved their confidence, and he had no doubt gone into every item, and presented a wellconsidered calculation of the cost. But then in came a lot of tenders,, some of them often from men who were unable or unwilling to make proper calculations. They gave the work little consideration, and jumped haphazard at a price. This kiud of tender was frequently the lowest, and ofben a long way below the engineer's estimate, and yet it was generally accepted. Then commenced the struggle between the engineer on the one hand, to keep the work up to the specifications, and the contractor on the other, to get it down to the price. As a rule, contractors of that sort began with nothing, worked with nothing, acd ended with nothing. He thought , the tender nearest the engineer's estimate the right one to accept ; and if that were thought to be objectionable, and they assumed that all the tenderers were skilled men and had put in offers after due consideration, then let tnem add the amount of all the tenders and the engineer's estimates together, divide the total by the number of the offers (including the engineer's estimate), and accept the tender nearest the average amount. On the

QUESTION OF StAINTBNANCB he contended for broad roads, with a very moderate curvature, in preference to narrow, high-crowned roads. He held that a road of, say, 20ft, would wear much better and be easier kept than one of 14ft, even although the samo quantity of gravel or metal per chain were put on both. It would be thinner, of course, on the 20ft road, but the room for deviation of tracks would be made use of, and the surface would keep smooth and run the water off long after the narrow one had been rutted down to the clay by the traffic being confined to one unavoidable central line. He also thought far too little attention was paid to drainage and surface work. He could see everywhere, and co could everybody, miles and miles of expensively made, and well-made roads, allowed to go to wreck — to need almost re-making — before a shilling was spent on bhem ; whereas they might have been kept in good order by a comparatively trifling outlay at the proper time — when they commenced to break up. On this point he waa certain that far too little attention was paid to surface work and drainage. The high-pitched, narrow roads, of which there were too many, inevitably got cut up in the centre. The narrowness of the metalled portion and the slope of the sides naturally kept the traffic in the game groove, and unless the ruts were attended to the road soon became a sort of .trench in the centre, through which one cart after another ploughed its way. In wet weather, too, the trench was apt to become a canal through neglect of side drains, and especially of outfalls. It was no uncommon thing to gee ditches full to the lip, almost filled up, or to see them cleaned out bub standing brimful of water for want of the outfall being cleared away. Every outfall should be kept perfectly open, and should be deep enough to let all ditches and culverts run themselves empty. — Southland Times.