THE EXPRESS TRAINS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19277, 2 April 1925, Page 4

THE EXPRESS TRAINS

The Minister for Railways must indeed be an optimist if he expects his praiseworthy project of speeding up the New Plymouth and Napier express time schedules to go through without opposition from centres eliminated from the “stop” list of stations. The manner in which he faces this opposition will demonstrate the fibre of the man. From Levin comes a lusty protest, voiced at a public meeting convened by the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce, and an intimaticn that urgent representations are to be made to the Government to include Levin, as “the largest centre on the Manawatu line,” in the list of express stops.

It is a perfectly natural desire of course for a thriving community to have its importance officially recognised by the drivers of express trains. It is one way of placing a town definitely on the map. But as most of the communities in this thriving young country are thriving more or less, the line must be drawn somewhere, and it is in the drawing thereof that the life of a Minister for Railways becomes a burden. It is not so easy to dissociate the management of the railways from political influence as one would imagine. Mr. Coates has less of the malleableness of the politician than most, but he has to reckon with his colleagues in the Cabinet, to say nothing of the pressure of influence from without.

Now, it becomes necessary to remind the public, and particularly that part of the public which seems to prefer the parochial view, that the primary object of the new express service is to enable the Government, which is the taxpayer, to cope -with the ruinous competition of motor transport. If, in spite of this and other expedients which the Minister with commendable industry and pluck is inaugurating with the object of overtaking the loss which the railways have been suffering as the result of a previous policy of waiting for the bailiff, this competition still prevails, then the country will be face to face with a crisis of serious magnitude, and “to let” or “for sale” notices will drape the station buildings. Private enterprise would like nothing better than an opportunity of making a handsome thing for its shareholders out of the New Zealand railways. But would private enterprise stop the express trains at Levin?