Railway Carriages.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 9, 1 July 1911, Page 727

Railway Carriages.

For this same service a number of specially roomy day and night coaches were constructed, and in their appointments these carriages reach the high-water mark of railway carriage construction which has been going on in New Zealand for a number of years, both in the Government workshops and in the Wellington works of the late Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company.

The width of the Main Trunk carriage is 9ft. 3in., one foot wider than all other carriages in use on the railways, and the length over all is 50ft. The sleeping cars have accommodation for twenty persons to sleep. There are six compartments in each car, four of which hold four passengers each, and two have two bunks each. The banks are arranged across the car, what a seaman would call athwart-ships, and a corridor runs the length of the carriage, with lavatories at each end. The day coaches and dining-cars are of the same roomy type, the second class being unusually comfortable.

The whole of a North Main Trunk train is New Zealand built, from pilot to taillights, and while the critical mind can find faults in some points, such would be the

case in any railway equipment. It is, on the whole, a very well appointed train, and the only pity is that the fine engines which haul it are not given better opportunities of showing their pace. The timetable is too slow.