RAILWAY TO MOKAU COALFIELDS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16467, 20 June 1919, Page 7

RAILWAY TO MOKAU COALFIELDS.

10 THE EDIIOB. Sir, —Your article in the Budget of tile 7th hast., in support of letter written by Mr. E. C. Jones, of Kotare, is, like Mr. Jones’s letter, so obviously based on inaccurate knowledge t that I am inclined to think that on this occar sion you have allowed your well-known zeal for the advancement of Taranaki to run away with your discretion. Your correspondent is so far out in his estimates of distance that one must assume that he has taken the present road measurements as iar as possible for his distances and for the balance has simply quoted air-line distances, without taking into consideration' the question of grades and curves required for railway purposes as affecting the distance. hor instance, he gets a. total of sixteen miles from the foot of Mt. Messenger to the nearestjf point on the Mokau at which his suggested line would tap the coal, whereas the airline is more than that. Again he gets four miles between the Mohakatino and the Mokau, when as a matter of fact the shortest air-line between the two rivers on his proposed route is six miles. If in the distailt future it should be found advisable to build the suggested line, I venture to say that the actual railway length will he close on sixty miles, costing somewhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand pounds a mile. When you take into consideration that the completion of the Stratford-Ohura railway will give Taranaki access to the southern edge of the same coalfield of which the Mokau represents the northern edge, it would be a better paying proposition to devote your space and energies to hastening the completion of that line, because, for one reason, a great portion of it is already in being and the balance is scheduled for completion as soon as possible. I do not think that it will require an extension of more than twenty miles from the present railhead to tap reasonably accessible coal, and although the railage from Ohura to Stratford as a distributing centre may be a few miles greater than from Mokau to Waitara as a distributing centre, by Mr. F. 0. Jones’s suggested line, the extra haulage on an already nearly established line would not justify a demand for the suggested line with its miles of costly tunnels. Although I will agree with you that the suggested .line from Waitara to Uruti would mostly go through good country and serve also fair country to the eastward, the_ same cannot be said of the country Between Mt. Messenger and the Mohakatino west of the Waiaraia and Tauwhitiraupeka ranges. East of those ranges the natural outlet is to the Ohura. The cost of building the line to Mokau would amount to a sum that would suffice to metal and complete every one of the roads mentioned in your correspondent’s letter as well as the Waitara-Te Kuiti road. New Zealand seems to ho in the way of becoming infected with a railway fever, of which your correspondent’s wild-cat scheme is but a symptom, and admitting that the lines in hand must he completed, I say that it is time that we called a halt, on the ground that a complete system of metalled roads and concrete bridges are the primary necessities in a pastoral country such as the greater part of New Zealand and especially North Taranaki. The development of the motor has become so favourable for the handling of commodities produced and required in such country as the greater part of Taranaki consists of that one may fairly assume that a properly developed system of reading, would settle the transport problem in what are now known as the backblocks, would render far easier the exigencies of settlement and bring greater happiness and contentment among the rural population by giving easy access to the amenities of social life, besides considerably cheapening the cost of living. The Government of the day seemsi to have come to the belated conclusion that reading should take place in advance of settlement. Had such a scheme been in operation twenty-five years ago the special settlements in Taranaki would not have been such a fiasco as they were, and devoid of the incentive to abandon their holdings settlers, blest with a happier family life, would have stayed in possession, instead of drifting to swell the population of the towns. But no matter how willing the Government may he to advance the primary transport facilities, they cannot do that and accede to all the demands that are at present being put forward for new railways. We have not got the means fop both, and no , further expenditure on railways, other than lines being built now, should take place until our roads are placed on a proper footing. In short the facilities tor transport by roads, as feeders to the railways, are not in proportion to the length of railways built and being built, and the difference in cost between building a mile of railway and a mile of motor traffic road justifies the preference for the latter in the present stage of the country’s development. To return again to your correspondent’s scheme: There may be no great engineering difficulties to be encountered, but it would he a very expensive line to construct, and from the point of view of serving the lower Waikato with, coal would be utterly unnecessary during the life of the present generation. As a matter of fact the present coal shortage is due to the decreased output of collieries at present working, which collieries are capable, given the necessary labour and shipping, of supplying the demand. The' opening of collieries at this time would but serve to accentuate the trouble, by absorbing in development work labour that could he more profitably employed in winning coal from established workings. Although not exactly connected with the subject matter of this letter I was glad to note the words of warning spoken by Mr. W. T. Jennings at a function in the Ohura recently, when he said that the demands being made on the public purse from all sides were such as to make him think that people had lost all sense of proportion;—l am, etc., WALTER. W. JONES. Gate Pa, June .14. [While bowing to our correspondent’s more intimate knowledge of the country referred to wo would point out that in supporting the Kotare correspondent’s ideas we stated that it would bo impossible to put the line in hand until others were completed, but that it would bo wise to take stops to have it scheduled. Somewhere about forty years ago an exploration survey of a line through Urenui and Mokau to Te Awamutu wa.s made, but the idea was abandoned, not because, of engineering difficulties, but because it was a coast line and not suitable for.

a trunk railway. It was admitted—and it is an undoubted fact—that such a line would traverse a large area of good country, would tap an important coalfield and also open up extensive areas of timber and large deposits of limestone, all of which are wanted. What the length of the line from Waitara to Mokau would be we do not know; our Kotare correspondent said about 45 miles, and many years ago Mr. T. Humphries, who knew the route, estimated it about 50 miles. Mr. Walter Jones says nearer sixty. But that is really a minor point. The main question is whether the country it traversed would furnish traffic enough to make it pay. We think it would. There is much to be said, of course, in favour of a road, in fact we have always advocated roads before railways. A first-class road would serve settlement for many years, but for heavy mineral and timber traffic a railway is necessary. It is doubtless true that the country a few miles inland of the route could be served by the StratfordMain Trunk line, but it would bo a long way round to cany coal, timber, and produce to Waitara or New Plymouth. _ The line, we admit, is very much f ‘in the air” at present, and it will remain so indefinitely unless people begin to entertain the idea of its construction some day.—Ed.. T.H. and B.]