THE PROPOSED RAILWAY ROUTE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1255, 22 February 1872, Page 2

THE PROPOSED RAILWAY ROUTE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HAWKE'S BAT TIMES. Sir,—As the railway question seems to be the absorbing topic of the day, and your journal seems to be the only independent one on the subject of the proposed route, I hope you will afford me a little space in your next issue. I ask, sir, if it is. not monstrous that a tew interested estate-holders at Meanee, for the pake of their own selfish ends, should endeavor to get the public money squandered in a swamp. The public have not yet forgotten the floods which occurred some three years ago, when, to a person standing on the top of the Bairack Hill, nothing was visible all around Meanee but a few trees and houses. It was almost expected that the whole of Meanee would be swept out to. sea, and where then would the railway have been? and who can tell but that the next flood will be much larger than the last? We all know thai those floods come periodically, and with sometimes periods of six or seven years between them. The cuse of Greymouth, on the West Coast of the other island,, is an instance in point, and should serve as a warning to us. Again, have wre not a natural highway, which the very highest floods have never reached, and where a railway can be made and kept in repair at a trifling expense, compared with that of the other route. Ask any disinterested person, with a grain of common sense, who has no landed estate at Meanee, which is the proper route* and he will say that the top of the beach is- the natural highway for the railway. As regards the statement oi our future Mayor about its frightening noises, it is all moonshine. Horses at first might feel a little frightened, but would soon get used to it, as they have done in London, Melbourne, and other places, where trains run constantly through the very town If his horse is so 'highly fed and bred, let him take the beach road, and he will be far enough away then from the railway.—Hoping I have not trespassed too much on your space, I am, &c., A Townsman.