WOODEN LINES OF RAILWAY.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 913, 13 January 1872, Page 2

WOODEN LINES OF RAILWAY.

Constructing roads in a new country is a question of the greatest importance. Where the land is open and level, like the Canterbury plains for example, roads in the early days of a colony gave little trouble; but in a wooded and hilly country the case is altogether different. In the one case, whiie the country remains unenclosed, a coach may be driven in any direction without requiring the expenditure of any large amount of money on road making ; but in the ether, it is wholly different, and a considerable outlay is necessary before even a good horsetrack can be made fit to travel over. It has always seemed to us that for the latter a cheap kind of railway would be the most economical contrivance, and the letter of Sir David Monro, which will be found in our present columns, describing Mr. Brownlee's wooden railway in the Kaituna Valley, gives a practical illustration of the feasibility of such a work. We believe we are justified in saying, that the money expended in the Buller Valley in forming what has not inaptly been styled " mud tracks," would, except the cost of bridging the rivers, have given a wooden line of railway from the Big Bush to Westport.—" Nelson Examiner."