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Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9070, 22 April 1908, Page 4

The Railway Department never seems to lie able to cope satisfactorily with the traffic during holidays. T.-ains are run in the most erratic fashion, and are invariably behind time, and passengers have to hang about for wearisomely long I periods after the hours fixed for departure —an inconvenience intensified in Maslerton by tne fact that there is only one bench on the platform for the convenience of waiting excursionists. On Hood Friday the Wellington express was forty minutes behind time in reaching Masterton, and throughout the whole day there wera inordinate and most

provoking delays. Yesterday the Masterton-Wellington train was delayed twenty minutes because there was no engine available to haul it. The explanation given is that the train had to be kept "Waiting for a 'light engine' to come out of the shed." Why, if that were so, it should be so has not been explained. But the fact is that the engine required for the train had been sent up the line the previous night, and so the carriages with their passengers had to remain at the platform until the locomotive returned to Masterton. Surely the Department ought, by this time, to be able to grapple successfully with any holiday traffic. Complaints in other respects are numerous, but they do not appear to disturb the equanimity of the traffic authorities. The travelling public has to accept the position, or "leave it alone."