The Wairarapa Daily SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1880.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 572, 18 September 1880, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1880.

Our contemporary the Post has recently deplored the ignorance we have displayed in the matter of railway mechanics, and has, as a contrast, paraded its own superior wisdom on the question of single or double buffers. Our contemporary says:— " The central buffer, so strongly condemned by this able 'official,' whoever he may be, are among the latest improvements introduced on English lines. All the Pulman cars, now used on the heaviest and fastest English expresses, are fitted wiih them, as they give greatly- increased safety and steadiness in running, especially on sharp curves, and it has been remarked more than once when accidents have happened to these trains the passeugers in the Pulman cars have escaped almost uninjured, although the mortality and damage in the ordinary carriages have been frightful." We can quite understand that in rounding a curve a central buffer is more convenient than a pair of buffers, but common sense suggests that supposing a carriage to be about to turn over, a single pressure on its centre would be a sort ef pivot on which the structure would revolve but that a double pressure from two different parts would check the rotary motion, and tend to keep the vehicle in its place. To use a homely illustration, a man wheeling a barrow on a windy day could steady it better with using two handles than he could if his barrow had one central handle. We do not wish to enter the region of railway mechanics with the Evening Post, We are not, like it, officially inspired on such a theme, and when we see serious accidents taking place we are somewhat doubtful about official inspiration, and rather lean towards the mother wit and practical common sense of lesser mortals. The manner in which the late accident has been discussed by the Wellington Press appears to us to be somewhat unsatisfactory. The Post flashes a lot of railway statistics about weights, sizes, and Heaven knows what information doubtless supplied it by some engineer connected with the Government, and joins in the chorus, "There is nobody to blame." The Ooroner, a paid Government official, holds an enquiry and finds that there is " nobody to blame." There can be but one to blame, and that one is the department—the Service, in other words, the Government. Would coroners and railway officials and their subordinates be likely to challenge the perfection of the Government arrangements, or quarrel with their bread and butter 1 We do not say that the Government or the Department is to blame, but we do say that an independent enquiry made by disinterested persons, capable of investigating nice points of railway management, ought, in the interests of the public, to have been demanded by the press, The Government is in the position of a railway company, with this saving clause, that it is not, like the company, open to be sued for any injuries persons may sustain through its negligence. For this very reason the Government should be more open to criticism than any private company, and in a case like the present one, instead of it being contented with a clean certificate from one of its own country coroners, it should seek to be judged by railway experts—if any can be found in New Zealand—who are not receiving Government pay. There may be another weak link" on the Eimutaka line. Would not an independent investigation probably result in its detection 1 Without one we must wait for another accident to reveal it, and another triumphant verdict of" no ono to blame" will no.doubt be recorded.