The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 1915. OUR SLOW TRAINS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 225, 2 March 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 1915. OUR SLOW TRAINS.

Visitors from Home frequently remark that the civilisation of New Zealand is fully abreast of that of tho Old Country in every respect with tho exception tit" its railway travelling, but that its trains are nearly half a century in arrears, There is- no more important branch of civilisation than the facilities afforded for travel. Lccky says that one of the signs of the slow advance of civilisation of the Old Country was the fact that it took Queen Carolines coach two hours to journey from Kensington to Westminster and that even then it was often upset and stuck fast ii- the mud. We have advanced a great deal since those days. But the provision made by the Government for the comfort and convenience of its rail-

way passengers 'still show much room for improvement. The true ideal of railway travelling is the maximum of comfort and the minimum o? expense. That ideal is a long way off realisation ir. the present system of the running of all our trains excepting, perhaps, that of the express. They have two very good qualities—punctuality and safety. They nearly always arrive to time, and accidents to them are 'also unknown, But there are several defects in their management which ought to be capable of remedy. To begin with the inquisitorial inspection of tickets by the guard is an intolerable nuisance. A traveller in Now Zealand has to show hia ticket between New Plymouth and Wanganui oftener than he would hare to show it between London and Edinburgh. It is not for us to point how the system is to be avoided). It is sufficient to say that it brands every passenger as a suspected animal and inflicts on hi.n a recurring torturo from the commencement of his journey to its close. A through passenger from New Plymouth to, say, Hawera or Palmerston North, having once produced his ticket ought to be let alone for the rest of his journey. But at present he is compelled, 'by 'order of the company,' to show it so f=oquently that he scarcely over has his hand out of his pocket. This constant demand for tickets is specially annoying to mothers travelling in the charge of little children. The writer of this article was once travelling from Palmerston to New Plymouth in the same carriage with a woman who had a baby in her arms and two little children leaning against her. The guard knew perfectly well that she was booked right through to the terminus, and vet he made her, about once every halfhour, lay down her baby to get at tho receptacle containing her ticket. The perpetration of such cruelty by an - one else than a railway official would be severely punished. It is continued only because it comes under tho order of the Railway Department. This nuisance is still further aggravated by tho construction of the carriages, which makes each of them an open thoroughfare. No sooner has the door at one end of the carriage been slammed by the guard, than that at the other end is opened by the itinerant vendor of literature or lollies. Before the banging of tho doors by him has died away they are opened by some restless passenger, ranging like Satan to and fro. in the earth. And so it frequently happens that in a railway journey of thicc or four hours, the passenger rlevr get- ten minutes of midisturbed peace. Put even this torture might bo endured if the train travelled at a rate sufficient to put one out of it in a reasonable time. Of course this is done l,y the express. But the slow trains seem as if specially designed to protract the torture as long as possible.- For example, the train leaving Tfawer-i i't ].-!") p.m. readies New Plymouth at .-..",0 p.,,,.. taking three hours and Iluve-,|„nrters to travel p. distant

><! IS mill's, which a motor-car would do ii: ahout an hour avd a. half. The

liumerous long stoppages on the journey, ten. minutes at one station, a quarter of an hour at another, are ostensibly Justified on the ground of the time- necessarily occupied in shunting. But often there is a dead pan*' of several minutes where there is nr «0 unting at all. Besides, thcrj is a luggage- train leaving at 4.5 p.m. By transferring some of tho luggage trucks to this surely a sufficient thru might be saved to enable the passenger train to- accomplish the journey in thive hours. At present the trains are run on the principle that freight is the chief consideration, and the comfort of the passengers such a subordinate one that it is scarcely worthy of being taken into account at all. Whatever excuses may be made for the Blowness of these trains the fact remains that they are such a torture to the passcngrrs that if criminals were compelled to travel by them every day for a year without books, paper, or tobacco, they woull find it a severer punishment than imprisonment. There is om other point to be mentioned in conclusion. The system of railway travelling ought to be progressive. Ours is stationary, if not retrograde. Some years ago, Sir Joseph Ward nndc a considerable reduction in the long "distance fares, and at the same tims abolished the concession on return tickets. After a few years of the experiment, the reduction of the long distance farei was discontinued, but the charge of double fare on return tickets was retained. So that we have now to pay about 50 per cent, more for our return tickets, while passengers by the slow trains receive no addition cither to the comfort or the speed of their travel. It is both the duty and the interest of the Railway Department to take into consideration what means can be derised f incorrecting these evils.