ELECTRIFICATION OF RAILWAYS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 125, 24 February 1928, Page 8

ELECTRIFICATION OF RAILWAYS

POSSIBILITY IN NEW ZEALAND The electrification of the railway system of New Zealand was foreshadowed bv &Ir. C. J. McKenzie, Assistant En-gineer-in-Chief to the Public Works Department, in his presidential address at the New Zealand Society of Engineers. . . , t. “A start in this direction has been made in the case of the railway between Lvttelton and Christchurch,” he said, “and this will undoubtedly be the forerunner of manv lengths of electrified railways near our centres of populatl°‘\Ve have, of course, a noteworthy example of electrified railway in this country at Otira. But this was a necessity on account of the impracticability of' using steam trains on the steep grade in the Arthur’s Pass tunnel; it was not brought about by the presence of cheap power nor by the density of the traffic in the locality. As a matter of fact, the electrification of the Lvt-telton-Christchurch railway . was due mainly to the presence of a tunnel and the inconvenience due to smoke from steam locomotives; but still, I think it mav be cited as an example of electrification due to dense traffic near a city and the possibility of obtaining cheap hydro-electric power.”