THE INITIATION OF RAILWAYS.

Timaru Herald, Volume II, Issue 65, 12 August 1865, Page 2

THE INITIATION OF RAILWAYS.

Thus it was the idea of the Bluff Harbor and Invercargill Railway first arose out of a dire public necessity of providing means of transit •for the population so suddenly and apparently permanently settled amongst us. In this action the Government of Southland, eupported by the Provincial Council, and sanctioned by the General Government, were only carrying out the true aim and scope for which nil Governments should exist —viz., the wellbeing of the communities under them - and not cis has been attributed, for the purpose of diverging the development of industry from its legitimate channels. The action and expenditure of the Otago Government m this matter it has been shown tended directly to that end; but certainly not that of Southland. Any centralised Government having only the colonial welfare m view, if they had moved m the matter at all, would have acted m a precisely similar manner t> that of the Government of Southland.

These remarks al o apply — although m a less \\ «<:ided manner -to the Oroti Railway— a light -and inexpensive line, intended to connect the Bluff and Invercai^ill Railway with certain plains thirty mile. 1 ? up m tho interior. Here again the absence of suitable road metal entered largely into the question, and while on the one hand it was found that a good viable road was absolutely required, both for the existing through traffic to the inteiior, and also for tho purposes of ordinary settlement; on the other it was proved that the expense of transporting the metal by the common* method would be greater than by first constructing a tramway for that purpose along the proposed line. And here it may be well to observe that m the opinion of the most able and practical engineers who have seen and know the groat want of stones m the locality, the cheapest and best method of constructing any of the main roads diverging from Invercargill will be by first laying down a light tramway alongside.