NORTH ISLAND TRUNK RAILWAY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 349, 9 March 1889, Page 5

NORTH ISLAND TRUNK RAILWAY.

The Waitete contract on tho North Island trunk line is now, ib may be said, completed, although the maintenance has to go on for some time yet. The viaduct was " officially tested " the other day with three engines, trucks, and a P.W. staff. It stood up, of course, considering that Mr Robertson, the contractor's manager, had been running heavy material and ballast trains over ib for four or five months past. It is a beautiful structure, and a fine piece of engineering skill and mechanical construction — one of the sights of New Zealand public works, and one which, in conjunction with the Poro-o-torau Tunnel, will stand out prominently as a monument of the wasteful expenditure of our borrowed moneys. This line will nob pay interest on the cost for generations to come, and in the meantime there lies so many hundreds of thousands of pounds on which we poor colonists have to pay interest. Such is life, at least our life. One thing can be said, however, that no better work has ever been done in the country than on this line, and no contracts more faithfully carried out. It is a pity not to see the line kept busy, bub there is literally nothing to make it so. — (Waikato Correspondent. )

The firsb setblemenb of the English in Bengal and British India was at Calcutta in 1689.