THE WELLINGTON FOXTON RAILWAY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 429, 3 April 1880, Page 2

THE WELLINGTON FOXTON RAILWAY.

■ (From the Wanganui Herald.) Evidence has been given before the Public Works Commission as to the prospects of the Wellington-Foxton line. MrTravers, , as if he had been stating, a case: at nisi prius, " produced a statement, of the amount of traffic between Wellington and the ports on the West Coast—Wanganui, Foxton, andßangitikei," He showed that" the passenger traffic by steamer was upwards of 10,000 persons a year, and the goods will be equal to 12,000 tons." What shall we soy of evidence which desires to make out that the bulk of the steamer traffic will be transferred'to the railway 1 Do our Wellington friends expect to close all the ports on.the Coast 1 It appears to us that the principal advocates of the railway are a number of large land speculators. The Post reports one of the gentlemen as follows" Mr Braithwaite, of the Hutt, who lias taken a station a Ohau, said that the land referred to was of very rich-quality. ... A large Australian land owner recently went over the district with him s and subsequently passed through Canterbury, Otago, and Southland, When he returned lie said that the upland country behind Ohau was t the finest he had seen in all His travels/" 31 *' The next witness was Mr Jamea Gear, the large Wellington .butcher, who said that "he had invested largely in land near Otaki, and he had a considerable portion of the country on lease from thefffiktives —he considered it, as a block, equal to any he had passed through in New Zealand." Why, the evidence is positively damnatory of the line. The speculators have already got the land. What a fiasco !