Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1 (April 1, 1936.)

Railways and National Development

Railways and National Development.

The decision of the New Zealand Government to complete the North Island East Coast railway from Napier to Gisborne, naturally brings into prominence the part generally played by railways in the development of the country which they help to open up.

From Russia comes news of the fast development of traffic on existing lines in 1935, and of the pressure maintained to duplicate portion of the Trans-Siberian railway, construction work being carried on even throughout the winter with the thermometer frequently 700 below zero. Another immense railway system in the same country is planned, to reach in a 7,500 miles stretch from the Black Sea to the Pacific. Coal is to be brought to copper, and copper to hydro-electricity in the Kazakstan area, in size the second republic in the U.S.S.R., where a new 300 miles of railway makes feasible an industrialisation hitherto impossible of achievement.

In New Zealand the areas concerned are on a comparatively miniature scale, and nature is so kindly that work can be carried on all the year round without temperature causing any real hardships.

Gisbrone is about 340 miles from Wellington—a little less than the distance from London to Edinburgh.

Judged on the basis of what has occurred in every other district of New Zealand where direct rail access has been given, the effect on the life of the people in the area concerned, and in the tendency towards increased settlement and the fuller development of the land and related industries, may be expected to be something which will be of immediate benefit to those in the locality, and which will at the same time react very favourably upon the whole course of business in the Dominion.

The new aspect which the rail-car offers for dealing with passenger transport in sparsely populated districts is of great importance in a matter of this kind. Admitting that, under modern conditions, the “mixed” train (as the train which conveys both passengers and freight is known in New Zealand) ceases to meet requirements if faster and, at the same time, more economical methods of train transport are available, the rail-car comes as a solution which gives all the speed desirable for passengers at a most economical operating rate, and allows freight to be worked by separate trains devoted to that purpose alone, with, of course, greater mobility of operation.

With all these old and new features of rail access working in favour of the East Coast line, primary and secondary developments of no mean importance may be looked for “up Gisborne way.” To railwaymen the new line opens up prospects of further activity in their own particular sphere of employment, the importance of which cannot be disregarded. To the travelling public it means a valuable extension of the facilities the railways provide for travel either for business or pleasure. To the people of the district along the new route of railway, the new construction will have the effect of bringing them more fully than ever before into the general life of their own country.