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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 12 (March 1, 1940)

Assistant General Manager, New Zealand Railways, Mr. J. Sawers

page 62

Assistant General Manager, New Zealand Railways, Mr. J. Sawers.

Mr. J. Sawers, who has been appointed Assistant General Manager of the New Zealand Railways, joined the Railways Department at Dunedin as a cadet in 1906 and served in various capacities in the Otago District until his transfer to Head Office, Wellington, in 1924. In 1928 he became Information Officer and retained that position until his appointment as Goods Agent at Christchurch in 1936. In 1935 he was abroad for some months gaining information for the Department in regard to various aspects of work on other Railways. Mr. Sawers was promoted to Assistant Traffic Manager at Auckland in 1937, and was appointed District Traffic Manager, Auckland, the following year. Mr. Sawers as a graduate of the Institute of Transport, London. He served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the Great War and at its conclusion spent some time attached to the English Railway Companies.

(Spencer Digby, photo.)Mr. J. Sawers.

(Spencer Digby, photo.)
Mr. J. Sawers.

The etchings of Charles Meryon are now very rare and of great value. His best work is in the British Museum, but the Turnbull Library, Wellington, has prints of his Akaroa studies. These include—

Seine-fishing at Banks Peninsula, 1845; hills and sea, in the foreground men are hauling in a net.

Native Storehouses at Akaroa, 1845, against a background of bush and hills.

State of the Little French Colony at Akaroa, 1845. Smoke is ascending from the houses on the beach and from the bush behind into a cloudy sky.

“La Chaumière du Colon vieux Soldat à Akaroa, Nouvelle-Zélande, 1845. (This shows the cottage under a tree-fern.)—(See “The French at Akaroa,” by T. Lindsay Buick.)

“The incommunicable charm of Meryon's prints and their lasting fascination (says the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”) are due to the fact that behind all technical qualities, and as their very source and spring, there lies the potent imagination of the artist, poetical and vivid.”