THE RAILWAY SERVICE.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1425, 10 November 1923, Page 4

THE RAILWAY SERVICE.

WITH the near approach of midsummer and the period when increased numbers of pdople all over the Dominion will be travellnig to visit friends and relatives in other parts of the country or to spend holidays at the seaside the time Is opportune to remind the management of the New Zealand railways that it also should prepare to demonstrate its competency and its resourcefulness, so that the increased business may be handled effectively. The Department has been given time to repair its financial condition by overhauling. its working expenses, and it Is more than likely that its heads will claim that no more can be achieved in that direction. The one way, therefore, in which profits can be increased is by exploiting every possible means of Increasing traffic. Passenger traffic is naturally most easily influenced and

the summer months are the period most favourable /for the application of efforts to foster railway travelling. The recent caustic comments of a Wellington man who compares New Zealand and Australian railway systems, very much to the detriment of the former, prompts the question: Has the Department any proposals to make its services more attractive, its trains more comfortable, to make a railway journey appear a pleasant prospect instead of an irksome necessity? It has now the advantage of control by a Minister whose policy of businesslike efficiency should give it ample scope for the display, of qualities that may not have been adequately encouraged in the past. That policy indicates both satisfactory profits and comfortable services, neither of which has yet been produced by the present management to the extent anticipated by the general public. Many changes are seemingly needed in the railway sex-vices; the only alternative would seem to be a change in the management. And in view of all the circumstances, this present summer will probably reveal whether reforms are possible from within the Department or must be applied to the Department itself.