RAILWAYS FOR NEW ZEALAND

West Coast Times, Issue 914, 27 August 1868, Page 4

RAILWAYS FOR NEW ZEALAND

(FBOJI THE HOIEE NEWS.)

That New Zealand will one day be covered by a network of railways is as certain as that the country has been brought under the salutary influences of industry and civilisation. The recent improvements and extensions of postal accommodation to and from home and the active provinces of Australia aud Tasmania, must have inspired a desire for analogous extensions aud improvements in the means of internal communication. This, indeed, is manifest from the movements that are being made to introduce railways ; and we may here say that the work of driving a tunnel through the base of an extinct volcano is >vatched at home with no ordinary geological and engineering interest. Nor -have we heard, without feeling much satisfaction, of actual and projected surveys for railways to connect the rising towns of the two islands with each other and the sea. For nothing more largely or directly contributes to the production of wealth than easy and rapid means of inter-communication. A constant transmission of produce to the const, and the return transmission of impoits from the coast to the interior, not only occupies labor, but it is creative of capital, and a stimulus to progress in all collateral directions. Now that the provincial and general debts of the colony have been consolidated and provision made for their extinction, we foresee that the next stage of progress will be a well-devised railway system. For such a system, to be executed by degrees, as the necessity for each section develops itself, we may confidently say that English capital will be readily forthcoming. In anticipation of such an issue it may not be premature to offer one or two suggestions by which useless expenditure may be saved and the country be effectively supplied with those means of increasing its wealth which railways never fail to create and secure.

New Zealand has a physical configuration which, for the mobt part, renders the construction of railways upon the expensive system adopted at home practically impossible. It would be impracticable financially even if it were physically desirable. But it is neither. At home we have spent enormous sums in making tunnels and embankments which we now know might have been saved, if we had had the wisdom to adapt the engine to the country instead of adapting the country to the engine. The only excuses we cau make for the error are that our mechanical skill was imperfect, and that we had little or no experience to guide us. New Zealand, however, need not be under either of these disadvantages, and its railway system may furnish the best and the last illustration of the truth that knowledge is a continually increasing power. Intersected by numerous rivers, and presenting everywhere an irregular surface, iv many places diversified by bold inclines, though in others with level •plains, New Zealand is exactly the country to which locomotives should be adapted, if its railways are expected to be cheaply made and remuneratively worked. It matters nothing if inclines of one in twelve or curves of two ciiains radius abound, as they probably may, in the mountain districts, if locomotives can be produced to work them. At all events lines with such engineering features will be more cheaply made

than if tunnels were cut to save the inclines or straight lines run to save the curves, and experience at home ha 1 ; shown that our grcaf error Iris been that of spending too much capital on such works. There ai'C inclines and curves of the description just mentioned on the line just opened through the pass of Mont Cenis between France and Italy, There they are overcome, in a fashion, by the introduction of a central rail between the two lateral rails aud by the addition to the two vertical wheels of the engine of four horizontal wheels, two on each side the contra! rail, which, to seeui-e adhesion, grip it with a force equal^to the pressure of 12 tons per wheel. It need hardly be stated that this plan is both costly and wasteful. It is costly in construction, and wasteful in wear and tear. Tbe most remarkable fact, however, so far developed by the working of the Mont Cenis line is, that the horizontal wheels and the central rail have been little used as far as the locomotive is concerned ; and already the system is pronounced, by practical engineers unsatisfactory from its excessive friction and unavoidable complications. The true locomotive for mouutainous or -hilly districts, where economy and efficiency are as indispensable as they are in New Zealand, is that of Mr Robert F. Fairlie, of London, which, without the central rail or the horizontal wheels, ascends gradients of one in twelve, and sweeps round curves of two chains radius, at a less expenditure of s:eam and with greater tractive force than the engines in use on the Mont Cenis line. Mr Babbage says that the power of inventing mechanical contrivances, and of combining machinery, is not a difficult achievement or a rare gift. The Mont Cenis engine is a proof of the truth of this uncomplimentary remark, inasmuch as it is certain that the object might have been effected by simpler means. But the powers arc rare which can reduce the force of gravity to a minimum, aud altogether prevent centrifugal deflection by ordinary mechanical means. This is what Mr Fairlie does in his locomotive, which commands the admiration of all the practical men who have seen it, from the perfection of its effects ; aud he does it by placing the boiler upon bogie frames, in such a way that the whole machine adapts itself invariably to the peculiarities of the line. It is always in balance in turning curves, however sharp, and it always &eourcs effective adlie.-ion in ascending or descending inclines, however heavy the gradients. ■We have deemed it right thus to call attention to Mr Fairlie's locomotive, because the construction of surface lines in mountainous countries is so engaging attention iv Europe, that it cannot fail to attract corresponding observation in New Zealand ; and because we earnestly desire that a colony in which England is so deeply interested should enjoy, in its railway system as a whole, the advantage of the latest aud best experience acquired at home.