EXPERTS DISREGARDED

NZ Truth, Issue 1262, 6 February 1930, Page 7

EXPERTS DISREGARDED

Political Bungle of Middleton Railway^Yards

WHY SERVICE DOES NOT PAY

(From "N.Z Truth's" Special Christchurch Eepresentative.) Installed at a cost of almost a quarter of a million pounds, the Middleton railway yards, used by the Eailway Department for the marshalling and breaking up of freight traffic to and from Christchurch, stands as another monument to political inefficiency and. lack of vision for the future.*

LAID down "three years ago, the yards have not so far justified their existence m the Canterbury railway system, and it has now been found necessary ,to spend .an . additional £22,000 to reconstruct arid improve them" to a state of efficiency: Up till the -advent of a unified system of control, administration of ; the Railway Department and the expansion of the service was malnljr a game of political blind man's buff. New services were introduced with scant regard - for their usefulness or necessity. The Middleton yards are the last product of the old regime, and it is not a mer^e extravagance of words to say that the then Minister of Railways (Hon. J. O. Coates) sanctioned a. game of fireworks with a quarter of a million of the country's: money when he induced Parliament to authorise the construction of these yards. ; T At that time the £r overnmen t had before it the Fay-Raven report on the railway system, which recommended among other items the reconstruction of the Addington workshops. - t . * That reconstruction has been carried out aiM has practically amounted to a re-erection of the whole building. ' The site occupied by the workshops, at. the junction of the south and north lines, is the .logical, site for the railway: marshalling yards, and had .any importance ibeen attaohed to, the future requirements of the province the /feasible solution was to „ re -erect , the shops further afield, at. Middleton if necessary, and? lay down the yards .at Addington. . ' \ "■■ But with the typical departmental disregard of expert advice, the yards were laid down at Middleton, and so inconvenient was the lay-out and design of the various "roads" that they have proved . practically , useless from

a labor and time-saving point of vie-w. \Thua the remodelling of the yards became an urgent necessity, and even under the, new management the advice of experienced men who have to work m the yardß all the year round and know their own requirements have been disregarded. The new. yards are going down as the theorists think they ought to, and the proposals submitted by the shunting experts who work the yard have been rejected even though they were estimated to cost £7000 less than the scheme at present m hand. That the new yards were due to the exuberance of an enthusiastio Minister and came long before they were needed Is apparent from the recent experience of the Railway Department m Christchurch. .. The reconstruction has been going on for some week* necessitating all the marshalling and breaking up of freight trains being done m the station yards at Christchurch Central. Passenger traffic has been particularly heavy, stock traffic opened the season with a rush and shipping has been heavier this year than m previous years. , ■. :'# Yet, apart.^from"..occaslpnal'vconges:tion of wagions; 1 there has-been very little loss of vtime -in the despatch of freight trains: and the only real inconvenience .has been caused through shortage of cargo accommodation. Railway traffic has increased considerably since . the Middleton yards were first . laid down, and the recent experience atVthe central station yards over the holiday period strikingly illustrates that: Middletonr was an ex-r travagant superfluity m the service. r It is such 'bugbears' as' this that will continue to:' keep a millstone round the neck of- the railway aferylce and prevent it from ever paying- its way.