PUSHING THE TRAIN ALONG.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 318, 4 May 1878, Page 4

PUSHING THE TRAIN ALONG.

Fears have often been expressed that our New Zealand railways would not be sufficiently patronised, but if we are to take the patronage accorded on Easter Monday to the New Plymouth line as any criterion, we should say there need be'no fear no that score. In fact the patronage bestowed on the trains on Monday was of the most liberal character, so much so that the resources at the command of the railway department in New Plymouth were scarcely sufficient to meet the demand made upon it. Many are the jokes that have been passed upon our railway. It has more than once been designated a toyand horsemen have boasted of beating it in reaching town from the Waltara. Natives have been known to run ‘in front of it and raco the .engine ; and other comical tales have been circulated, but what happenen on Monday evening when the 5.33 train from Waitara came to the Waiongona hill will scarcely he credited when we mention it. At the spot named, either the “Fox” or the “Ferret”—we are not certain which engine it was —failed to do its work in taking its living freight up the hill; and nothing loth a large number of the male passengers alighted from the carriage, and putting their shoulders against the end carriage, assisted the “ puffing* and panting ” iron horse to reach the summit of the hill with its load. We have heard of passengers by a coach getting out to lighten it when ascending steep hills ; but this is the first time we ever heard of it occurring on a railway ; and it is time that the attention of the Government was drawn to the fact that the engines employed on the line here are not powerful enough to perform the work required of them—Taranaki Herald.