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Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 524, 1 July 1869, Page 2

The Nelson papers are jubilant over the news which has, by the last mail, been received with regard to the enterprise of initiating a company for the construction of a railway to connect Nelson with the West Coast. The Mail concludes that " the railway scheme is no longer the mere chimera it has been considered by some of its opponents." The Examiner will not yet " sing peans" over this " most gratifying news," but will go the length

of saying that " tho matter at present wears a promising aspect." The grounds for this gratification and congratulation we have already quoted, and we are sorry that, however much propriety there would be in sympathising with our contemporaries, we fail to see that the scheme is yet far removed from the region of chimera, or that its success with the stock-broker is at all ensured. The idea is a grand one, no doubt, particularly by comparison with the place and the people whence it emanated, but we have a suspicion that it is a shade too grand for speedy realisation, especially when we consider the character of much of the country through which the line would have to pass, and the comparative absence of traffic to justify the work. Of course railways usually create traffic, and it is in the faith and knowledge of the greatness of that creative power that the immense lines of American railway have been made or are now being constructed. But the plains and the pampas of America, as are the plains of Victoria, are very different countries for railways to intersect compared with the " hills that rise in giddy grandeur " throughout a great part of the country over which this proposed railway is to pass. But, granting that the work may be perfectly practicable and highly recoininendable,weare most suspicious of its success on the money market, so long as we find railway schemes much more practicable, and as thoroughly brought uuder the notice of the English capitalists, left uutouched and unconsidered. We refer especially to the failure of Mr W. Carr Young, who, as tho representative of the Province of Otago, made a special mission to England, and was unfortunate enough to fail in the object of that mission. In that case there was much more reason for a ready appreciation of the scheme by English capitalists or contractors. The railway there proposed to be constructed would start from the commercial capital of tho Colony —Dunedin, and would not only pass through a stretch of agricultural country superior in size and quality to any district of Nelson, but would communicate with a navigable river on which steamers already ply both to a port-town and to digging centres in the interior. Finding as we do sueli a sehorno as this fail to bo taken up, although emanating from a wellknown and important section of tho Colony, and, no doubt, ably advocated by Mr Young, we may well receive cum grano sails the news of success with regard to the Nelson scheme, either practical or problematical. We are also half - disposed to insinuate that there is a little of the chimerical about the importing of " 2000 laborers and artificers with their wives and families," about the proposed "scparatedepartment of municipal control," and about them being placed " under the charge of an officer of experience, who would be sheriff of the new settlement, to which it is proposed to give tho na:nc of New Lan cashirc." Here is a rush of ideas quite refreshing both to the present colonists, who would probably like to know where this New Lancashire is to be founded, and to the advocates of the 'county system aud "sheriffs." We hope we are not writing in any carping spirit, or with the dos ign of ridiculing any more than what seem to bo still some poetical features of a scheme altogether somewhat fanciful. We should hope that the people of the West Coast are sufficiently alive to the advantages of a railway, and, with them, we should be glad to have it, " asking no questions for conscience sake." It would, no doubt, be of infinite benefit to the Coast, although, perhaps, more especially to Nelson, and it would be the most wholesome and magnificent " pill " that Separation could possibly get. But, on the West Coast, we should really for the present be content with a fewsmaller and equally practicable schemes,not foi-getting the much forgotten scheme of a railway from the Mount Rochfort coalfield to the port of the Buller.