THE COLONIAL RAILWAYS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1226, 7 February 1878, Page 3

THE COLONIAL RAILWAYS.

The “Southland Times” supplements its report of the banquet to the Hon. Mr Larnuch by publishing the following : Mr Carruthers, the Engineor-in-Chief, while responding to the toast of “ Our Railway System,” said that on this occasion he had had an opportunity of seeing more of the district than during any previous visit which ho had made to Southland. He had travelled through the Western district, and he had no idea there was such a wealthy district in Hew Zealand as we had here. The railway system of the colony was progressing. With the assistance of Mr Conyers, ho had come from Christchurch to Oamaru; a distance of upwards of 150 miles, in five and a half hours] travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour. Between Amberley (in Canterbury) and Kingston there were only three breaks of seventy miles altoget her, and these ho hoped would be done away with, if not before the next session of Parliament (if the talk goes on in the same way as it did last year), at all events before it rises. The Western district lines bad in a manner dropped into his department. Ho had had nothing to do with their design or carrying them out in any' way—that having been the work of the Provincial Q-ovornment of Otago He had come down now for the purpose of making himself thoroughly acquainted with the lines. The Riverton "line would be opened very shortly, and the Government had issued instructions that the railway to Otautau should be carried on with every rapidity. Until the Riverton line was finished, it would be impossible to make much progress with the line to Otautau, but if they could save any time by shipping sleepers round to Riverton that would be done. There would be no further delay ; everything was being pushed on. The General Government had been blamed for not having a sufficiency of rolling stock, but they had had to draft a large quantity on to the Provincial lines, which were very insufficiently equipped, and this had to a certain extent been a strain on the resources of the General Government, which previously they had nothing to do with. He proposed in four months coming from Christchurch to Dunedin in eight and a half hours, and at the end of twelve months, travellers would leave Christchurch at six o’clock in the morning, and dine with the people of Invercargill at eight o’clock in the evening. The colony had spent last year, on railway construction, over a million of money, which was just about as much as could be expended advantageously. When they spent more money, the result was that they ran up the price of labor, and what they gained in one place was lost in another, lie wanted to acquit himself of the charge of dawdling in not having the lines finished. He was not quite sure but what it was good policy to go on at a moderate pace. In the course of his remarks Mr Blair said that the railway system of New Zealand might have its faults, but on the whole ho believed it to be a sound one. They had gone in for having their bread buttered thin. They were only beginning ; there would be plenty of work for generations to come. On the way down they had completed another link in the chain (the Balclutha bridge) which binds Dunedin and Invercargill. Some people down here looked upon Dunedin as a monster which was going to swallow them all up ; but he could assure them that the Dunedin folk looked upon the Southland district as their backbone —the more it grows in strength the more will Dunedin increase and prosper. At the end of the year they would have 1000 miles of railway finished, which was more than they had in Victoria.