The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4. MORE SPEED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 4 October 1907, Page 2

The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4. MORE SPEED.

Apart from the mail train, train travelling in Tarauaki is painfully siow and tedious. Take the one and four o'clock trains from New Plymouth to Hawera, and the morning and afternoon trains up from the latter place to New Plymouth. The fastest time they make is three hours and ten minutes! The distance is but 48 miles, so the speed is just a little over 14 miles an hour! Fourteen miles an hour—and this is the twentieth century, and we are allegedly an up-to-date and progressive people! Stage coaches, under normal conditions, can and do travel at the rate of ten miles an hour, so we have made no improvement in our transit facilities worth boasting about. Trains 14 miles an hour; coaches 10 miles—one has but to make the comparison to see how greatly we are neglected in regard to the pro-

vincial train services. If the railways were in the hands of a private concern, we would not tolerate for a moment the snail-like and totally inadequate services we at present have to suffer. We would want services more in koeping with our requirements, and if we did not soon get them we would want to know the why and the wherefore. Really the Government, with its monopoly of the railways, should do more for the public in the way of accelerating the local services. In our view, there is not the slightest reason why the provincial trains should not be made to do the New Plymouth-Hawera section in two and three-quarter hours. The mail train makes the journey in two and a quarter hours. We cannot expect the other trains to be run just as quickly, on account of their more frequent stoppages, but we can expect, and have a right to expect, a vastly quicker service than the present. The Department can easily enough improve the speed of the subsidiary trains if it would discontinue the running of Hie "mixed" trains and put on separate passenger and goods trains, as is done in other parts. Under the present time-table the trains run to the maximum lime allowed: which is to say, that if thye is only a small amount of shunting, etc., to lie done at the stations en route, the trains make their destinations no quicker than if the maximum stoppages were made. It is pretty rough on the unfortunate traveller. That the Department can increase the speed of the trains when it has a mind to was exemplified on Dominion Day, when the speed of the 7..10 a.m. Hawera train was accelerated from Stratford to New Plymouth, the train arriving fifteen minutes earlier than usual. If fifteen minutes can be saved in the run from Stratford to New Plymouth, another fifteen minutes can just as easily be shorn off the journey between Hawera and Stratford, and the saving of half-an-hour the saving should be even greater—would be an immense boon to travellers and the settlers, of the province. An improvement, too, could with advantage be effected in the running of the Saturday trains. Under present conditions the morning I train arrives too late in the day to permit people down the line to transact their business in 'the town with any degree of satisfaction. Were the trail to start, say, half-an-hour earlier and the speed increased, the train could arrive in New Plymouth an Tiour earliei than now. The extra hour would make all the difference to the operations o1 the country folk. The Department were it a little more enterprising,woul< also consider the matter of putting or another train from New Plymouth or Saturday nights; giving country peopk wanting to shop and transact businesi on tire Saturday evening an opportunity of doing so "without having to stai overnight in town. The Governmen wants bringing to a realisation of it responsibilities in the matter, and w hope the Chamber of Commerce and th Tradesmen's Association wili take ac tion to bring under its notice the defi cienefes and disabilities of the prcsen «ervice—or apology for one—and th urgent need there is for alteration am