A SIDING NEEDED.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15887, 27 July 1923, Page 4

A SIDING NEEDED.

A matter that the Chamber of Com meree might well take up is the necessity for a siding from the Thainec South Railway Station to the Shortland wharf. At the present time a large quantity of goods, including timber, come to the station for shipment to the Hauraki Plains, and these have to be 1 carted the short distance to the wharf to he loaded on to the launches. The charge for this extra handling amounts to 2/6 a ton and 9d per 100 ft for timber, besides the time lost in extra handling. This added cost would be done away with by an extension of one of the existing lines that now stop short of the wharf. With this completed there is no doubt that much more cargo would come through. A f the present time the N.Z. Dairy Com

pany send all boxes for their Huirau Road and Ngatea factories to Wharepoa, where they are loaded on lorries and delivered by road. The contract for this alone costs some hundreds of pounds per annum. The extra distance by rail to Thames South would not make any appreciable difference, but the saving by water transit to both the factories would mean a very considerable saving. The big Dairy Company has now its own coal mine, and it will want to supply fuel to its Plains factories. Shortland wharf is the place •hat this coal should go across.

The structure may not stand the \ve ; Tj’t a: the seaward end, but there is no reason why an extension of the rails eould not- be made to whore the fishermen land their fish. Punts loaded there would have to wait foi the tide, but that is neeessai;y in any case. Perhaps the business members of the Chamber will go thoroughly into this. Anything that minimises handling costs has much to commend it.