MAIL TRAIN SPEED.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160711, 26 July 1920, Page 8

MAIL TRAIN SPEED.

We are quite in accord with the opinion expressed hy the New Plymouth News that the duration of the mail train journey from Wellington to New Plymouth can be curtailed by at least an hour. Our contemporary points out that the speed of a “fast” mail train is twenty-one miles an hour, that being the average at which the train in question covers the journey of 254 miles—much below the speed of an ordinary motor car. The impediments to speeding up the train, as set forth by the Premier, in reply to a question asked in the House last week by Mr S. G. Smith-, are the number of stopping stations and the heavy grades on a considerable portion of the line. Why should the journey from Wellington to Marton take the New Plymouth train forty minutes more than tho Auckland express? asks the News, whose comments will be endorsed by “Herald” readers: Possibly lack of suitable haulage power, but, whatever may be the reason, it is deaf, there can be no justification fof this difference. The matter is one that comes within the scope of management—it may even be regarded as a test of efficient management, or otherwise—and if one set of officials cannot, or will not, provide a remedy, then the business course to be taken is obvious. In contending that the duration of tho journey can be curtailed by at least an hour, we are taking only a moderate estimate. The number of stopping places can be considerably reduced by the passengers therefrom and thereto travelling by the slow trains, leaving the mail train to stop at only the important towns. All that is necessary is for the whole train service to be reorganised so as to prevent undue inconvenience to people using wayside stopping places. Hitherto the railway officials have preferred to say the speeding up of the mail train cannot be done, and that fact has held. The truth is that no intelligent of determined effort has ever been made to speed up these mail trains, and it would seem the time has arrived when that effort should be made, though it appears as if nothing short of a revolution would achieve this end. The same may be said of the faulty accommodation. It is puerile to persist in saying no improvement can be effected in the speed of the mail trains. All things are possible, and if the Minister in charge of the Department were to put down his foot and insist on speedier transit being provided, there is no question that a remedy for the existing evils would speedily be found, the alternative being a change in the responsible officials. A determined agitation should be kept going until the desired result has been attained.