RAIL AND ROAD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21529, 16 December 1939, Page 28 (Supplement)

RAIL AND ROAD

GREAT AID TO PROGRESS The railway and road systems have played tremendous parts in the rapid development of this great country. To the South Island went the honour of having the first stretch of railway, a I stretch from Christchurch to Ferrymead, now known as Woolston. The Lyttelton tunnel, then the longest in the world, was constructed almost immediately and the full line to Lyttelton -was opened in 1867. The journey between Wellington and Auckland at that period occupied weeks—weeks in which the traveller moved slowly through tracts of virgin bush and camped dark nights in a country where a savage race, experts in warfare, and often hostile to the white man, might make his name a mere memory in the minds of his fellow-settlers in the town he had left. To-day citizens in both Auckland and Wellington may fly the same distance in under three hours with a maximum of comfort. Below, the land that made journeying an adventure for the settlers who made the country lies peacefully, its network of highways and railways gleaming far beneath. There are more than 3300 miles of State railways to-day, comprising a permanent way which serves as the main artery of the country for its produce and its people. The permanent way has made a valuable contribution to the prosperity and development of the Dominion, for it has stimulated settlement to the benefit of the community as a whole. It provides an efficient service, of which safety is the main characteristic; not one passenger was fatally injured in the last financial year, and many millions of travellers used its facilities. It is a far cry to the bullock tracks which, in the early days of colonisation, were the only defined means of access. With the rapid influx of immigrants the need grew for better means of communication, and as with everything else, the will of the settlers found a way. The formation of roads at the start was necessarily slow because of the primitive implements available for construction purposes, but the rapid development of scientific research provided new and improved appliances and methods, and in the last decade a veritable transformation has come about. New Zealand is now laced with a network of more than 52.000 formed roads that lead among the wooded hills and through the extensive farm lands of an agricultural country. There is a continual stream of laden cars travelling the roads that reach into every corner of the land. The road construction in New Zealand has involved much engineering; the numerous rivers have presented as big a problem as any other feature of the country to lx? roaded, and in the , 52,000 formed roads there' are 6227 bridges. Overseas visitors to the Dominion are often a little alarmed at the manner in which the roads skirt mountains and penetrate ranges through deep valleys, but there is an increasing road-sense among motorists and a national campaign for road safety that makes this means of transport one of the main pastimes in the country. New Zealand is one of the leading countries in the world for road transport, and provides a rich market for overseas manufacturers. In years past there have been more i motor-car owners than taxpayers, a state of a flairs that is probably accounted for by the fact that so many of the owners use their cars for business as well as pleasure. Coming of the Aeroplane In addition to road and rail transport services, New Zealand has rapidly come into line with the older countries in the provision of air transport. Until 1928, the year in which America was celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first aeroplane flight, New Zealand was practically without civil aviation. There had been a short period, just after the Great War, when three companies, using slightly modified military aeroplanes, had given many New Zealanders their first flights, and had even operated one or two passenger and mail services. But by the time that flying was beginning to be a real factor in the transport of most countries, New Zealand had almost forgotten about it. In 1928. however, the aero club movement began. It was born in Christchurch, and though other aero clubs began flying sooner, the Canterbury club was the first to be formed to operate under the Government subsidy. Side by side with the clubs several air-taxi firms came into being, some of them teaching flying as well as providing quick transport. They, too, used light training aeroplanes. Business men anxious to cover the country quickly, and tourists wanting to see it from a new angle, provided the air taxis with enough work to keep them in business, and to enable some of them to expand. To them, and to the aero clubs, New Zealand's commercial flying of the future will be much indebted, for it is because of skill and judgment of their pilots and mechanics that aviation has been able to demonstrate its safety to the country. New Zealand has taken to the air in miraculous fashion, and some of the finest specimens of the young manhood of the Dominion are. in this centennial year, proving of inestimable value to the Mother Country, in the- struggle for freedom.