"RAILWAY MISMANAGEMENT"

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 253, 13 July 1918, Page 8

"RAILWAY MISMANAGEMENT"

Sir,-" A Shareholder in the New Zealand Railways, etc.," has utruck the right note in his letter -in your to-dny s issue.- The whole thing is riot only a comic opera, but a huge farce; and the ghosts of the Lord High Executioner in the "Mikado" need not be invoked, as the man who plnyed ,the part (Mr. Howard Vernon) is in the Dominion at the present time. I am sure that if ho was asked for what punishment ha would allot to the mismanages of the Now Zealand railways, ho would eay: "Let them walk bare-footed over red-hot stones alongside a railway track, upon which was perpetually passing palatial Pullman car trains filled with joyous racegoers ami picnic parties, who were inviting them to come" and join them." 1 am also one who has used the railway in all parts of the world, and for muddling I have never known ite equal. I ordered some benzine urgently some time back, and although the Kooda were delivered at the station twenty-four hours after my order wns received, it took ton days to travel under fifty miles; and I bad to pay 6s. 6d. per tin for five cases more than my own benzine cost me when I bought it from local euppHere to keep me going, while the muddling, mismanaged railway held five cases of mine somewhere between Wellington and my station. This is not an individual case, but can bo supplemented by hundreds of other cases if required, not only in cases of benzine, but of other goods as well. I wanted to go by train to the races, but was shut out through shortness of ticket iesuo, and had to pay 10s. in one of the lorries, and had to stand all the way. I was moro shnken by the- trip than if I had walked the whole way, and was pretty well wot through. I wished I had had the insight to have bought a ticket to Featherston or further, and gono to Upper Hutt, like "A Shareholder, etc.," had done; but that is all over now. Cannot something be done to waken up the controllers of our railways to compel them to give the people who pay and foot the bill something llko reasonable consideration and service? I saw one lodr train pull in to Trentham to talco tho Forty-first Reinforcements up to Wellington. Why could not that train have been scheduled to take passongers to Trentham on its downward journey? I suppose it was too big a question for our muddling mismnnagers to handle. Hoping something will soon be done to end the mismanagement—l am, etc., ANOTHER SHAREHOLDER IN THE RAILWAYS OF N.Z., ALSO WITH A VOTE July 12.