LIGHT RAILWAYS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7894, 10 April 1897, Page 2

LIGHT RAILWAYS.

Sydnet, April 10. The Moree-Narrabi railway, the pioneer light line of a number intended to open up outside agricultural districts, has been opened. Its length is 62 miles and cost £133,000.

The following letter from Mr D. Whyfce, of Tiniroto, is published in the Wairoa Guardian : — " Many thanks for the newapaper you sent me re light railways. The people of the district should, I think, now see that there is very little difficulty in getting a railway if they only stand shoulder to shoulder and go forward for one. If the Tasmanian railway the Premier speaks of only cost £1725 per mile, a. railway from Napier to Botorua on the route I propose would not cost over, say, £1000 per mile, and would open up about 5,000,000 acres of land that has been for the last fifteen years at lease completely shut out for want of railway communication, entailing hardships on settlers and a, loss of millions of money to the Government. There are no high rocky hills to cut through, and it may not be generally known, but it is a fact all the same, that for twenty miles south of Wairoa to within a few chains of the Bouth-west boundary of my ground, there is no difficult grado but one at Te Reinga Falls, and that is a distance altogether of about fifty miles, j The only bad bit of country between Napier aud Gisborne is obout twelve miles along the side of the Fangaroa river ; it starts at the point mentioned near the boundary of my ground, and extends north to the Hangaroa village settlement. Few people outside of the district know of the fine area of land that lies between the eastern border of the Taupo pumice plains and the sea coast, and between Napier on the south and the Bay of Plenty and Rotorua on the north, an area that would find an outlet for the rising generation for many years to come if it wa s properly opened up by light railways."