A NOTEWORTHY RETIREMENT.

Wairarapa Age, 17 December 1924, Page 4

A NOTEWORTHY RETIREMENT.

The retirement of Mr B. W. McVilly from the post of general manager of the New Zealand Railways is an event which calls for some comment. Apart altogether from the change in system which it foreshadows, the retirement is a noteworthy one. Many people differed from Mr McVilly, and many considered that his administration of the railways was hidebound and too much restricted by his close adherence to the regulations, but nobody who knows him ever doubted his high efficiency and ability and his complete integrity in his relations with the great staff which he controlled. Mr McVilly, like many other prominent figures in the public and official life of the Dominion, was born and educated in Otago, and gained his first experience in the service there. He went faithfully through the various grades, rising to chief clerk under the general management of Mr Ronayne. Under Mr E. H. Hiley he occupied the same position, retaining in a large measure the control of the staff, and he succeeded Mr Hiley in the chief post in 1917. Mr McVilly had a really remarkable knowledge of the multitudinous railway regulations, and the worst that his critics could find to say of him was that he tried to manage the system too much by regulation and too little hy the ordinary principles of give-and-take which enter almost every successful undertaking.

That had a tendency to make him rather rigid and at times tactless in his relations with the staff, and not sufficiently amenable to suggestions from the business community. He has always been a herculean worker who never spared himself night or day. He did not delegate nearly enough detail work to the many capable officers by whom he was surrounded. The service is far too large for any one man to hope to manage it in detail. The Royal Commission, it appears, takes that view also, and is proposing the setting up of a board of management of which one member shall be responsible for the South Island and another for the North Island, with a third as chairman. The suggestion seems a reasonable one, and the Minister has any amount of material from which to select men for these highly paid posts. It is to be hoped that they will come to their task with the imagination which is essential to any successful business. The Minister has a fund of it and that is what the railways most want to-day.