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Your Own Railway

The following is the text of a little booklet, explanatory of the services and facilities of the New Zealand Railways, recently issued by the Railways Publicity Branch and distributed to all schools throughout the Dominion.

Your railways are the largest industry of New Zealand, whose prosperity depends on their cheap freight services for farms, timber-mills, coal-mines, factories, and so on.

The main lines and branches have a total length of nearly 3,300 miles, serving the principal districts of the North and South Islands.

The passenger service is the cheapest and safest in the world. During the past four years your railways have carried a total of one hundred million passengers without causing one fatality amongst them.

For the making of the railways, the stations, workshops, goods-sheds, engines, carriages, and wagons, the people of New Zealand have spent fifty-six million pounds. If you counted that huge sum at the rate of a pound every second, going on for eight hours a day, except Sundays, the task would take over six years. When you had finished the counting you would understand well why the people should help their railways to earn interest on this money, every pound of which has been borrowed by New Zealand.

In your railway service there are 19,000 employees. This means that the livings of about 75,000 New Zealanders (including wives and children) come directly from the railways. You must consider also the merchants, shopkeepers, and others whose welfare depends on the custom of railway workers.

(To be continued.)

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