The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 6 (October 1, 1930)
New Zealand Railways Magazine — Important Utility Enterprise
New Zealand Railways Magazine
Important Utility Enterprise
In the Railways Statement for 1930, recently presented to Parliament, the General Manager of Railways, Mr. H. H. Sterling, makes the following interesting reference to the important services performed by our Magazine.
I regard the Department's official monthly Magazine as an enterprise of the very greatest importance. Its establishment is right in line with modern business development. Every business concern in any way approximate to our railways in the size of its business and the extent of its ramifications has its “house organ,” while among railways the principle of a magazine has met with practically universal adoption. It is one of the few means by which the railway authority may become articulate to its staff and public, and it is certainly the most attractive and effective means of so doing. After over four years of publication, I can say definitely that this journal performs a great and manysided service for the Department—a service which is being energetically maintained. As an educational journal dealing authentically and in detail with the current problems of railway economics on the one hand, and with the varied national interests of New Zealand on the other, its high standard and general appeal is freely and generously acknowledged alike by the members of the Railway service and by the press and public of the Dominion and overseas. As a medium for the establishment of contact between the management and the staff, and between the Department and its clients, the Magazine, in promoting an atmosphere of mutual understanding and goodwill, is performing a service of importance of which, directly and indirectly, it would be difficult to overstate. Both as a constructive factor in railway management, and as a medium for profitable Dominion publicity, the Magazine has a well-established place amongst the important community services rendered by the railways to the people of New Zealand.
The present monthly circulation of the Magazine is approximately 20,000 copies. Of this total, about two-thirds is distributed free to members in the various branches of the service, the remaining copies being circulated amongst the principal newspapers, business houses, hotels, boardinghouses, and public libraries in the Dominion. The overseas-distribution of the Magazine is substantial, copies being sent to the High Commissioner's Office in London for distribution, and to selected addresses in Europe, Canada, the United States of America, South Africa, and Australia. Thus is being disseminated each month a carefully compiled and connected review of railway and other activities in New Zealand—a review which has a publicity value of national importance.
Much interest is evoked throughout the service in the Magazine's special articles on the day by day developments of railway transportation in New Zealand and in the countries of the Old World. These articles, in which the contributors (drawn largely from the ranks of our service) strive to present, in simple and straightforward language, their assiduously garnered knowledge of the respective subjects, serves admirably towards the general enlightenment of the members of our railway service.
page 40