The Globe. THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1875.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 181, 7 January 1875, Page 2

The Globe. THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1875.

Our new railway management is not successful. New brooms are generally supposed to sweep clean, but our latest importation in the shape of a traffic manager seems to be unequal to the burden laid upon his shoulders. "We have before referred to the acci- • dent iu the tunnel, information about

which is still denied to the general public by the Government, and which we shall have to call attention to again; but our object to-day is to show how little the present management can be relied on in cases of emergency. It will be in the recollection of all our readers that on last New Year’s day, which opened fairly enough, shortly after one p.ra., rain begain to descend, with a steadiness which indicated that there was very little chance of its again clearing up. A very large number of people had been conveyed by rail to Port Lyttelton, to witness the regatta which took place on the day mentioned. It was hardly to be expected that these people, many of whom came from a distance, would care to remain in Port after the rain had fairly set in, if there was any means of returning to Christchurch, The consequence was that the railway station in Lyttelton was rushed, and the scene there fairly baffles description. It seems that the efforts of Mr Jones and his subordinates, even with the assistance of some members of the police force, were quite ineffectual in preserving order, and many people who were in the throng, will retain unpleasant reminiscences of the first day of this year. We should be glad to be informed if the traffic manager was present at the Lyttelton Station. He appears, as far as we can yet learn, to have been conspicuous by his absence, and if there was one occasion more than another on which it was incumbent on him to have been on the spot when his authority was required—viz., the platform of the Lyttelton Station, this was the one. We need not enquire where Mr Marshman would have been on such an occasion. Even those who are opposed to him will admit that he never was absent from his post at the time of a sudden and heavy call upon the resources of the line. It would surely have been easy enough to have commenced to send the disappointed excursionists back again through the tunnel, the moment it was seen that the weather had taken a turn against pleasure trips; but, instead of this, a very large crowd of people, many of whom were ladies and children, were kept (in some cases as long as four hours) waiting for trains to convey them back again to the plains. The management had fixed 4 p.m. as the hour at which the first return train should start, and red tape was so completely master on this occasion that, in spite of the inclemency of the weather, the crowd, thoroughly sodden with rain as most of them were, had to remain until the clock pointed to the time stated. The station was crammed to suffocation at 2 p.m., and it was then two hours before any relief was afforded. Again, the trains sent through from Christchurch between the hours of 5 and 8 p.m. averagt d from five to six carriages, and consequently could convey but a very small quantity of the anxiously waiting excursionists. Altogether such a scene as occurred in Lyttelton on New Tear’s Lay is thoroughly disgraceful, and reflects the greatest discredit on some one connected with the railway management in this province.