It is a matter of historical fact that the huge progress and development marking the last 60 years of New Zealand's life has been made possible by the operation and extension of the Government-owned railway lines through most of the fertile lands of the country, and between the principal centres of commercial activity. Although there are still some of our inhabitants who “never see a train” and others who have no further direct association with the services than occasionally seeing one, the yast majority use the railways directly at some time or another. But even these hardly realise how the trains of the Dominion, running day and night, help to bring health and wealth in their wake to city, suburban, and rural districts alike.

Railway operations in this country are inseparable from national prosperity. Even in places where traffic has gone to competitors the public has benefited through the moderating influence of alternative railway rates. But it requires the assistance of graphs and parables and comparative figures to realise the vast scale of railway operations—the quantities of coal and live stock; the frozen meat, butter, wool and fruit for export; the big lines of imports, such as fertilisers and sugar; the port traffics; the big movements of holiday, seasonal, excursion, suburban and other peak loads of passengers. All these are moved upon the Dominion's three thousand miles of track, the transport giant which renders national service of an all-embracing nature.

It is only natural, therefore, that the New Zealand Railways Magazine, which for the past seven years has been putting the railway case before the public who own the lines, should become a national publication telling also the story of the country which the railways have done so much to build up.

Much of the tourist traffic within the Dominion is dependent upon an adequate presentation of information regarding the various localities whose natural attractions present special features of interest to the sight-seer, the student, the health-seeker and the sportsman. This is one of the services performed by the Magazine. Another, and one which will receive increasing attention, is the historic associations of men and events with Dominion development—the nation-building drama of a young country where real settlement did not commence till long after the Napoleonic wars, yet where a standard of culture, of comfort, of production and of citizenship has already been attained which many a country with centuries of opportunity and experience might well envy. With these and other aims to make New Zealand better known to New Zealanders and others, the New Zealand Railways Magazine will be increasingly concerned, while at the same time maintaining its service to the staff as a dependable reference work of railway information.