THE NARROW GAUGE.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 14, 6 April 1867, Page 3

THE NARROW GAUGE.

The question of narrow gauges for railways, where the traffic is limited and the country difficult, is attractingmuch attention, and it is one of great interest to the settlers of the Wairarapa. There is a railway in Merionethshire miles long, with arise of7oo feet, and where some of the curves are so exceedingly sharp as to have only a two chains radius, where the speed travelled is from eight to ten miles an hour, and the gauge only two feet! The distance would he about the same over the Rimutaka, but the curves would be nothing compared with the above. The average weight taken up the incline is 50 tons, at a rate of 10 miles an hour. The total capital of the company which constructed this railway is £50,000 A narrow gauge is of great advantage in a hilly country and is much less expensive than a broad gauge. From 3 feet to 3 feet 6 inches is considered sufficient. Upon this subject the “ Canterbury Press” a short time ago made the following interesting remarks;— Now is the time when the whole question ought to be considered before we go still farther in a wrong direction. If we can make “two" miles of narrow gauge for the same sum for which we can make “ one" mile of the broad, and the narrow gauge will carry all our traffic, will any engineer or financier point out what is gained by the more costly line ? Even the narrowest gauge will press severely on our means. If such a line in a difficult country costs £SOOO or £6OOO a mile in Norway, it may safely be put down at nearly double in this country. That is to say, the seventy miles of railway through the mountainous part alone of the route to the West Coast would cost £700,000; yet we must look forward to the time when this must be done. Our present object should be to fix on such a gauge as shall render these mountain lines possible without break of gauge. We must advance with the advance of engineering science, and year by year it is evident that gradients and curves are coming into use, by the aid of new inventions, which were formerly unheard of. Railways are now possible in countries and at a cost of which the old engineers never dreamed. Take, for example, the line now constructing over the summit of Mount Genis, Long tunnels and gigantic cuttings will soon belong to the barbaric age of railway engineering, and shareholders have been taught by bitter experience the relation between the cost of such works and “ dividends." Here where we do not want dividends, but to pay a fixed interest on the capital spent, we shall find the difference in the “cost of traffic.”