The Daily News FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7. A NOTABLE ANNIVERSARY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81899, 7 December 1906, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7. A NOTABLE ANNIVERSARY.

LAST Saturday was the forty-third anniversary of tho day on which the first railway was opened in New Zealand. It is difficult to realise * u at I forty-three years ago there was no railway service in the colony. Now we have almost 2500 miles of rails I open for traffic and carrying nine million passengers yearly, besides haul ing four and a half million tons of live stock and merchandise. To Canterbury belongs the distinction of having built and opened the pioneer rail road, the ceremony taking place on December ist, 1863. The Canterbury "Pilgrims," after their arrival, had a Maori track as their only means of communication between the harbour and the plains. But they had all the resourcefulness and ambition

that characterised the early settlers of il.iis colony, and within ten years of their arrival they had obtained Parliamentary sanction for the promotion of a railway between the pont and settlement. Evidence of the dauntless spirit of the pioneers is seen in the fact that their plans included the construction of the great tunnel which is to-day a monument to their energy. The ceremony of 43 years ago, as it was reported by the chronicler of the day, seems to have diered little from

such a ceremony as is known to-da. The town and the railway buihlin;

:re gaily decorated, the whole popi

lation turned out and picnicked a; near the railway line as they couh get, and a north-west dust-storm rai riot among them. The opening o. the line was apparently a somewhat

unceromonial function. The Superintendent of the Province, Mr Samuel Bealey, the members of tho. Executive Council and the heads of Provincial Departments and other personages of note were the passengers by the first train. "Everything being arranged by 2.3 p.m.," wrote the historian, "the train started with an imperceptible motion, soon quickening into a pretty fast pace, and landed its contents without the least interruption at Ferrymcad at 2.13 p.m. exactly. The train returned to Christchurch in the same time, which, considering the

shortness of the run, may he calle prettv good work." The train wa enlarged for the next trip, and tool if the historian is reliable, 853 passei

i>crs on the one run. The train n backwards and forwards incessant till nearlv 8 o'clock, and it was es' mated that 3500 people travelled 1 the line. The whole equipment of t railway comprised only an engii four carriages, and about 30 "box a

ballast waggons." The ceremony would have been incomplete, even 40 years ago without a banquet, and that was held in the railway goods shed.