THE STRATFORD RAILWAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 257, 20 March 1913, Page 5

THE STRATFORD RAILWAY.

TENDERS CALLED FOR TUXXEL. I By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. .The Public Works Department is inviting tenders for the construction of the tunnel and the adjacent piece of lifie on the Stratford-Ongarne railway tunnel, which will pierce a hill in a very difficult piece of country at the eastern end, about four miles from the Main Trunk, and will provide a key to communication between the fertile Ohura Valley and the outside world. The tunnel will be about a mile long, and the piece of line to be built a mile and a half over very broken country, requiring a remarkable zig-.».ag route to be adopted for the line.

PROGRESS FROM NORTHERN END,

Writes the Taiinranmni correspondent of the Auckland Herald:—The work at this end of the above line is going on steadily. Xe?.rly 100 men are engaged on it. Okahukura, as the junction is called, presents a very different appearance now to what it did a little over a year ago, when Sir Joseph Ward turned the first sod of the railway. Four neat cottages for the officials, workshops for the carpenter and blacksmith, as well as a number of other buildings give the place a settled viir. The station building has been moved there from Te Koura, a few miles distant, though trains still stop at the latter place for the convenience of a few settlers, The chief operations on the line at present are making rutting and formin" embankments. The great bank leading irom tho side of the" hill towards the site of the future bridge over the Onaarue river is growing day bv dav. The bridge will apparently be at a high level. The service road which crosses the ridge into the Ohura. roughly parallel with the railway route, is now completely formed and nartly metalled. Twentyfour chains of it have been treated with burnt papa, which, before it is fired, is of a. blue-slatev color, and afterwards resembles red brick.

During the cutting of the road a seam of shell-rock 10ft thick, similar in appearance to a quartz reef, was discovered, and this has been utilised for metalling a mile and a-half of the road. It is intended to metal the remainder, as pumice, however good for a makeshift, has not the wearing quality of metal, and wherever the latter is procurable it pays in the long run to use it.

It is said that the men at present employed on the works are very satisfactory—the best, it appears, 'that have yet been on the job. Only 48 hours per .week must he worked, but if time is lost on any day owing to wet weather, etc., it can he made\ip during the remaining five days. The average wages made by the co-operative, workers vary ' from 9s 'to 10s 0(1 a da>, according to the energy of the men and the hardness of the material excavated.

Testing the river bod for suitable foundations for the bridge is now being carried out. Tenders will probably soon be willed for the making of the tunnel, 75 chains long.