EXPERIMENTS CONTINUE

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1930, Page 8

EXPERIMENTS CONTINUE

GARRATT LOCOMOTIVES MINISTER CANNOT SCRAP THEM. SUGGESTION OF DIESEL ENGINES (By Wire—Parliamentary Reporter.) ' Wellington, Lant Night. Curiosity was shown by some members of the House of Representatives when the Railway Estimates were under discussion yesterday and to-day as to how the experiment with the three Garrett locomotives, which were imported some time ago, is turning out. The Ministe.l - of Railways (Hon. W. A. Veitch) said the engines were still being experimented with in order to make them suitable for the lines on which they were employed. < . Mr. W. L. Martin: Are there anymore of them on order?

. Replying in the negative, the Minister said it could not yet be said they were proving satisfactory, but as the result of a. good deal of careful work' on them the engineering staff of the department had effected some improve.mjuts. “One does not like to take the' responsibility of scrapping these- engines,” he said, “and we must make an earnest attempt to make a success of them, and that is being done. I think I should say as a matter of fairness it is not the Garratt patent device which is not giving satisfaction. Replying to a suggestion by Mr. ‘E. J. Howard that Jiesel locomotives should be used oil New Zealand lines, Mr.- Veitch said .that although they showed great possibilities they had not yet ■ passed the experimental stage. An officer of the department who returned from abroad some months ago had found that they were still beinoperimented with in Canada and had advised the Government to wait and y-.tch developments from the very expensive experiments which were being conducted in other parts of the world. He stated that no real advantage would accrue to New Zealand by duplicating the cost of experiments'being made abroad. • The matter was far too. important, said Mr. Vhitch. to be overlooked 6r cast aside, and the Government intendc. to wait until further experimental work had been done. Mr.- W. J. Polson: Did that officer go to Germany? The Minister: Yes.

Mr. Howard: They have been in use there for years.