Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WED., AUGUST 12, 1925.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16806, 12 August 1925, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WED., AUGUST 12, 1925.

TRANSPORT TRANSFORMATION. It is interesting to look back, oven within our own limited domain and experience, and see the revolutionary changes which are taking place in transportation methods and facilities. We have seen in New Zealand, with the development of railways and highways, streams of traffic diverted into new paths. The line coastal passenger steamers, which were so great a credit to New Zealand, have gone into other trades or been left to rust away in Rotten Row. Coastal vessels nowadays are mainly used as cargo carriers, the amount of passenger traffic, except, between island and island, being negligible. The completion of a metalled highway between Gisborne and Napier, with : Iho use of high-powered motor cars, brought an immediate change in local traffic conditions, and it is probable- that the motor services will hold sway until the railway comes along and establishes a speedier connection. ■ With the construction of the road between Gisborne aml\Tolaga Bay, for which, we are,, informed, liberal votes are to be provided in the coming Public Works Estimates, a new complexion, will be given to travel on the Coast,, which will bo freed from its isolation and given greater facility for development. No people who have occasion to travel the East Coast will regret the passing of the coaches, which laboriously, in the winter season, plough through sens of sticky mud in the unmet ailed portion of the roadway, And vet to the older people among ns there are pleasant memories associated with the old coaching days. Those who can remember Cobbs' coaches starting from the Duke of Edinburgh corner, Wellington, and who saw the fine teams spanking along the Ninety Mile beach; others who have travelled by coach through the .Duller Gorge, the Mnnawatu Gorge, the Forty Mile Bush, or enjoyed the sensations of the .journey across the (Him; or, to come nearer home, those with remembrances of the manner in which the late Mr. McKinlay used to handle his team on the narrow, mountainous roadway of Ahimanu and Parikanapa, sometimes plunging a way through snow, but always delivering passengers and mails safely and well up to time—all.with such memories will understand the spirit that has prompted. English people quite recently to revive the glories of coaching on English, country roads. We have become so accustomed to the changes and advances of transportation that it is difficult to realise that railways, which play so large a part in our modern life, are scarcely a century old. Not until September 27 will the full hundred years have been completed; for it- was ort that date in 1823 that traffic was opened on the world’s first railway, between Darlington and Stockton, in England, over it track nine miles in lchgtlu Celebration of the event was held a few weeks ago; when it remarkable pageant of transport, a “march pnst” of the century’s trains w as held. Our late townsman, Mr John Town Icy, was one of those who witnessed the running of this first railway, ah account of which, shows that the train was advertised tri start from Stockton at 9 a.m., and before that hour Spectators gathered in crowds — pedestrians, men on horseback, and parties in gigs, post-chtiiftes; and carts. Three hundred tickets htul been issued, but.twice,as many people crowded into the 154 waggons of the train, a number of which contained the flour itnd coal for which they were • mainly flojigned. Just before starting “Loeo-

motion No, 1” let off steam, and the more timid of the. spectators fled in all directions. When a horseman with a flag had taken his place in front of the train and a matt had mounted behind each waggon, ready to apply the brakes when necessary, Stephenson turned on steam, and the train began to move. Cheering its progress, people on foot ran after the waggon at their best speed, while horsemen rode besido tligm, clearing ditches and hedges. Soon they wore loft behind as the train, with pennants flying, passed on in triumph, its springless wheels clattering beneath it. Suddenly one of the waggons slipped off the rails and had to be uncoupled, and a little later the train was again stopped, some Oakum having worked its way into the feed-pump. Two hours from the start the journey’s end was reached at Darlington, where six waggons of coal were given to the poor. On the return run to Stockton a speed of 15 miles was attained, and on the completion (if the journey salvos were tired from seven guns. .For a considerable period afterwards most passengers were carried in horse-drawn• coaches, the locomotive being used mainly for coal and goods 'traffic, and it was not until 1834 that passengers wore regularly conveyed by trains with locomotives. British people will always remember with pride that the establishment of 'railways was due to English genius. The railway as wc know it was an English invention and in its main details t]ic work of a singularly gifted man, George Stephenson. His name is one that the country will ever delight to honor. He rose front the humblest circumstances and could not read of write .till he was IS, but he combined in a remarkable degree imagination and practical capacity." “Probably,’’ ttmarks the Daily Express, “no mechanical device has so influenced the life of man.as has the railway. It has abridged distance and made travel comfortable and cheap, and it has, above all, brought the country within reach of the general mass of town dwellers It is true that in the present century its ascendancy as a means of transport has been challenged by the .rapid development of tho motor industry, but it still remains the most economical means of movement for men and goods. In the United States, where it had to face intense competition from river arid canal traffic, it .defeated this competition after a sharp struggle.’’ As the Duke of York so aptly said at the recent celebration at Darlington, “the centenary of railways provides an opportunity for the twentieth century to pay its tribute to a predecessor to which belongs the honor and glory of a discovery of such tremendous importance us to mark an epoch in the history of mankind. Tho picture of a man astride a horse and bearing a flag galloping before tho first train, however" ludicrous it may appear now, faithfully represents an incident which took place within the life-time of quite a number of people living in this country to-day.’’ And what of the future? Who can tell? Already the cables are telling us of a coming revolution in motor transport through the deyelopinent of a new' synthetic fuel. The strides that motor construction lias made in the last twenty years arc remarkable. Twenty years ago a motor of 122 cubic inch displacement would have delivered about 10 to 12 h.p. maximum. To-day there are several designs of that measurement. that will deliver .140 to 150 h.p;, an increase of twelve'rimes the power originally possible. .One of tint' leading engineers of Amem-ri- predicts that the motor engines of the future, will bo of 150 h.p; and run (50 milest to the gallon. It is in the licit! of avia l tion, however, that the next two decades will sec the greatest, marvels. Sir Soften Bfancker, speaking before the Colonial Institute, recently,'declared that “the great air age’’ has actually arrived, and that aviation ik going to play a large part, in our communications’overseas, enabling us to travel rapidly to and from foreign countries and’ distant parts of the Empire. Sir Sefton Braneker observed that, it has taken live years “to live down the war-time reputation of tho costliness and peril of aviation.’’ But the advance in that time has been great. Five years ago an aeroplane which had been 250 hours in the air had exhausted its efficiency; machines arc now doing 1500. to 2000 hours in the cross-Channel services without overhaul, which is equal to a seven-fold < ircuit of tho equator. The modern machine has not. only much greater mechanical endurance, but! it is safer. Travel in the air is’also becoming cheaper. Min the next two or three years,’’ ho declared, “wc shall have airships, with a haclf-way halt at Isniailia, regularly running to India, with a base at Karachi,-rind'Alienee to Australia; and aeroplanes running rogularly to the East, via Bagdad, Enabling a man in India with forty (lays’" leave to spend a fortnight in England.” And so the wheel of progress turns —the wheel that never stands still, but which, as was so ably iiortrnyed in tableaux at Darlington, is ever carrying humanity onward to higher stages of comfort end civilisation.