RAILWAY BUNGLING.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1180, 16 September 1885, Page 3

RAILWAY BUNGLING.

Bailway mismanagement has long been a stock subject for discussion in New Zealand. A good deal of the mismanagement has undoubtedly been due to strength of local influences. A case in point may be cited. There is a suburb of Dunedin called Caversham, a very populous borough, at which there is a railway station on the Main Trunk line. Two or three miles to the southward lies Green Island, and a good deal further south Kaitangata, from both of which extensive colliery districts, large supplies are constantly arriving. Cavershain is about a mile and a half to tbe southward of Dunedin. Yet the rates of carriageof coal from the places named is higher than those for delivery at Dunedin, which is further north. This discrepancy arises thus. Some years ago the Government of the day was subjected to special local pressure, and under this they put in the siding in such a position as to render it practically useless for coal trains. It was so placed as to run out of a steep incline, and consequently heavily laden trains could not possibly stop to shunt the special coal waggons for Caversham, but had to take the entire lot into Dunedin, whence the Caversham cargo had subsequently to be returned. This of course involved additional cost. Now, did ever anybody hear of such a bungle as this ? People have to pay unreasonably high rates because the Railway Department has been mismanaged. It is not enough to suffer | privation of certain advantages which i proper management would have secured for us, but people must also pay for the bungling. The Caversham people lose the advantages of direct communication with the collieries, and then they have to pay extra in order that the Department may not be at any loss through its own bungling. We are not fightiDg the battles of the Caversham people; we merely select this case as illustrative of the unsatisfactory character of the management of the New Zealand railways. The case is not a singular one. There are dozens of cases just as glaring. — " South Canterbury Times."

In deserting the Soudanese " f riendlies" we are only playing our usual rßle. It is of immense advantage to us that the savages should kill each other as soon as possible. A camel 'sometimes lives to the age of 100 years. No wonder ho has a hump upon his back.