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Railway Progress in New Zealand.
General Manager's Message.

The retirement, during the present month, of Mr. H. L. Gibson, District Traffic Manager, Dunedin, and Mr. W. P. Miller, District Traffic Manager, Wanganui, on the completion of forty years' continuous service with the New Zealand Railways, affords occasion for special acknowledgment of the excellent work for the Railways and for the people of New Zealand performed by these officers during their long period of service.

Their achievement and record of service should also afford inspiration to the younger members of the Department, for in the Railways perhaps more than in any other employment, the saying holds true, as it did in the armies of Napoleon, that “every soldier may be carrying a marshal's baton in his knapsack.”

The officers referred to won their way on personal merit in a service that aims to afford equal opportunity to all.

They joined the Railways at a time when both the Department and New Zealand were going through a period of steady development. They are able to look back on the days when the old oil lamps afforded the only illumination in the small unheated railway carriages of those days, and when other equipment and facilities for the transaction of business were equally primitive when compared with the modern conveniences of to-day.

The last forty years have seen steady and unfailing developments in signalling and safety devices, in the standard of buildings, in the improvement of running tracks, tunnels, bridges and viaducts, in workshops' structure and practice, in locomotives and other rolling stock, in through traffic business, in operating methods, in the speed and comfort of trains, in the training and education of railwaymen, and in the general amenities provided both for patrons and employees of the Department. So great, indeed, have been the changes and developments in the last forty years that it is unlikely the future holds the possibility of equivalent development. Those who have come through that period, as have Messrs. Gibson and Miller, and have held the respect and confidence of the Management, their fellow-employees and the public during that long period of development under changing conditions, have proved themselves to be men of the highest worth. The work they have done and the success they have achieved point the way for those who are to follow after in carrying on the affairs of the National Transportation System.

General Manager.