RAILWAY EXTENSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 231, 30 September 1929, Page 8

RAILWAY EXTENSION.

NORTHERN BRANCH LINE. WORK AT DARGAVIIXE. G'OOD PEOGTaESS MADE. (From Oiu , Own Correspondent.) DARGAVILLE, this day. Adverse weather has not delayed vigorous pushing on with the Dargaville branch railway line. Although work on the forward construction works, west of Tangowahine, have been held up, over 400 nio.li have been employed throughout the winter. During the coming months, it is anticipated, more men will be put on. The staif have concentrated on completing the line to the ten-mile S?g (Tangowahine), and, as a result, the epartment has been able to assure growers that their wool will this season ■be railed from Tangowahine station.

Considerable difficulty was found in bottoming a swamp at the seven-mile peg between tlie Elbow and Tangowahine, where considerable activity has gone on right through the winter. .A section of live chains, estimated to take 7000 cubic.'yards of spoil, took .30,000 cubic yards, before even the light lines could be • placed thereon. Two bridge gangs are busy driving the piles on the last of the permanent bridges on the ten-mile section, replacing a temporary structure which lias been in use for months past just at the "tail", of the much-discussed "balloon loop." At this point the double, line, with its double bridges and a traffic bridge on the section of the newly-opened'deviation of the Dargaville-Whangarei main highway, are all within a couple of chains of one another —quite an imposing array. ■ Visitors, travelling in the com" inerce train will be taken over ■ .this section, making Tangowahine their objective. " "