Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price 1d. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1886. Our Slow Railway.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1823, 21 April 1886, Page 2

Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price Id. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1886. Our Slow Railway.

Our .contemporary, the New Zealand Times, has recently devoted one or two articles to the subject of the Wellington-Wairarapa Railway line, and more especially to the rate of speed at which the trains run. On this latter point it remarks that the time from Wellington to Masterton is now four hours fifty minutes, excepting that a quarter of an hour is saved on the afternoon down train by the through run to Lower Hutt. Four or five years ago the regular time was four hours thirty minutes. The time of four hours fifty minutes represents an average speed of not quite fourteen miles an hour, the distance being CSJ miles, but as half an hour is absorbed by the three miles of Fell Incline, the rate over the rest of the journey is nearly fifteen miles an hour, the average speed which was originally taken as a basis for the construction of the railways. That, however, was only the average, including stoppages, the maximum on -101b rails and with tank engines being estimated at 25 miles an hour. If the latter rate were maintained as an average over the whole distance excepting the Fell Incline, the run to Masterton would occupy only about three hours. This rate of speed, however, could not with prudence he adopted so long as “mixed” trains, carrying both passengers and goods, are employed. The Times therefore suggests that if the passenger trains were freed from this incubus of goods, a vast acceleration might be effected without a material increase in expenditure beyond what would be involved in running a separate goods service. In that case, an average speed of 20 miles an hour might safely be maintained to Masterton, even allowing for the Incline. That would give a service of 3.J hfiurs, instead of four hours fifty minutes. Lower Hutt would he reached in 25 minutes, and Upper Hutt in Jan hour, Featherston in 2J hours, and Greytown in 3 hours. No excessive speed would be required to keep this time.”

There is much force in the views thus expressed. We see no reason why passenger trains should not be run to and from Wellington and the Wairarapa—the time being : Wellington to Masterton, 3J hours ; Wellington to Greytown, 3 hours ; and Wellington to Featherston 21 hours—the same time being maintained on the journey from the Wairarapa to Wellington. As the Times remarks, the thing wanted is the separation of the goods from the passenger traffic. The goods traffic could be taken at 10 or 12 miles an hour by the single boiler Fairlie engines ol classes "R ” and " S,” of which there are eight available. The passenger trains could be run at 25 miles an hour by the tank engines of the “ L ” or “ D ” class, of which also the railway possesses eight. In this way locomotive power would be ecouomised, and we need not see one of the 29 ton class “ R ” Fairlie engines drawing a light suburban train of half a dozen carriages, of which it could easily pull—and has palled—39 loaded, nor should we see a class •• L’’ staggering under a huge “ mixed ” train and wasting quantities of coal in the effort to keep time. This, then, is the end to which public agitation lor local railway reform should be directed—the separate ranning of the goods and passenger tin ilia, the slackening of the former and the q /likening of the latter.”