RAILWAY MUDDLES

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 228, 24 January 1885, Page 3

RAILWAY MUDDLES

The disgraceful condition of the Auckland Railways is becoming more apparent every day. JS'ot only were the lines constructed on the cheap and nasty principle, but every successive (-Jovernmeiit, having 1 the fear of a .Southern majority before its eyes, has obstinately refused to provide an efficient staff and adequate materials, or even to effect iiose improvements which experience dictated. On the other hand, the railway lines in Canterbury and Ouigo are maintained on a scale of munificent liberality, as if the people there belonged to a race immeasurably .-upeiiov to the Northerners. lam assured by a gentleman who was in the train at the time of the •uvident to Judge Fencon that no mishap would have occurred to him had a first -class smoking carriage been provided. Hue tilings ; •)!■■> cut so extremely fine on this line that the Department cannot or will not afford sue!i an ordinary convenience to the travelling public, so that a gentleman who desires to enjoy a pipe, or cigar must go out on the platform, for, of course, nobody but a cad would presume to smoke inside a firstclass carriage to the annoyance of ladies. One can fancy what a hubbub the Canterbury swells would kick up if they were denied a first-class smoking carriage on the most insignificant line in their system of railways, but the people of Auckland arc as patient and long-suffering as Iseachar, no matter how grievous the burden of injustice laid upon them. The necessity for railway bridges over the lines, or tunnelled underneath, according to the nature of the grade, at the most dangerous crossings has so often been advocated that to go over the ground again seems like damned iteration. "These works will probably be constructed when some Minister of Public Works gets run over and converted into sausage meat at some railway crossing, or about the time of the Creek Kalends.