EXPRESS TRAIN TO WELLINGTON.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 9645, 11 March 1893, Page 2

EXPRESS TRAIN TO WELLINGTON.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — The attention of all inte estod in the welfare of this district (at length so prosperous beyond mistake as to turn the hitherto malicious ridicu c of other portions of the colony into something liko respectful envy), should Buroly bo directed, among other matters, to the serious injury and injustice inflicted year after year upon Taranaki by the continued inefficiency of through railway communication between the capital Wellington and the town of New Plymouth. The subjoined statements are taken from the official railway time tables of lapt month. Every morning of tho fix working days in each woek, an ' express" train leaves Wellington via Palmerßton and Woodville for Napier. This train completes the entire distanco of exactly 210 miles in a few minutes over eleven houre, giving an average sped of, as nearly as possible, 18 miks per hour. Certainly this is not a tery brilliant performance, even compared with the ayerago rate of express trains on the Hurunui Bluff Line in the South Island, which may bo set down at twenty-throe miles per hour. But look now at that astonishing performance of th© through "express" train which, on two days only in the week, conveys the enraptured tjaveller from the thriving but malodorous capital on Port Nicholson to this port on the West Coast; enraptured indeed, especially if a weak woman with a young child, to quit a snug homestead before sunrise and nrrive at Mb or her destination long aftei nightfall; potter, patter, jigetty-jog, at the fearsome rate of sixteen and a half miles per hour; more than fifteen hours actually expended over the distanco of 252 miles between Wellington anJ New Plymouth ! Sir, if one of Her Majesty's Ministers (that I believe is the latent title assumed by members of our majestic cabinet), if, say, those perpetually peripatetic gentlemen tho Honorable Messrs Sodden and Reeves, or Mr Maxwell hiineelf, were compelled to undergo this bi-weekly slow torture for only a month, instead of gliding gaily along in specials, then, I fancy, this insufferable and needless nuisance would, ere very long, be remedied. Meanwhile, may one or two suggestions be offered to our Government, Railway Commissioners, and the Directors of the Manawatu Line, which latter railway has already done such udruiruble service to the public. Is it, then, absolutely necessary to delay every train, including those flying machines — expresses —tho space of toa minutes, at Paikakariki and Turakina for example, for tho sole apparent purpose of enabling t.;e exhausted engine and exhausted passengers to obtain 'refreshment'? ; or, again, at such no doubt important stations as Patea and Hawera, where the main object Beems to he the exchange of social amenities between the celightod populace and the weary pa'cengers ? Would it not, moreover, be possible- to separate these through passon-ger-express 1 s, Vthich run bi weekly only, from a trifling dozan or two of timber waggons, goods' vans, milk vans, cattle and sheep trucks, the latter invar'ably crowded with 6avoury live occupants, breathing eahean odou s on tho breezes the entire length of the pasaongor cars? La>tly, could not the present leckless spood of sixteen miles per hour be blightly accele rated, cay, to eighteen miles, without seriously endangering the eafety of the paescngera ? There is not a bad story told of an American "globe trotter" in New Zealand, travelling round on our railways in one of these lightning expresses. Feigning ignorance of tho use of the cow catcher in front of the locomotive, ho called tho guard, and as-kod what this mechanism wub for Being informed, he repli-d, "I tell you, si], you have put that machine of ycurs at tho wrong end of \ our train of can* altogether. The right end is at buck, not in front. Sir, I tell you, you li never catch that old c jw ! No, sir ! Shell cuK-h y >v, und climb into that van cf yours one day ; beh'v.d is whero your co.\ -catcher ip bound to be." Egmont. Match 9th.