RAILWAYS IN TASMANIA.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 955, 28 March 1872, Page 2

RAILWAYS IN TASMANIA.

" iEgles," in the '" Australasian" of the 10th Feb. writes : Tiisinauians have been blithe and gay. They have acted and raced—they have "danced and flirted. In the exuberance of their spirits and the heartiness of their hospitality they have been ' going on ainyhow.' There is, however, a skeleton in the closet. The ghost in the baek-pa'rlour "refuses to be laid. The position of the Launceston arid Deloraine Railway is one which puzzles the whole financial ability of the coflbny, and no one cart foresee the final outcome of the tangle. It Won't pay to carry on the traffic, and the traffic can't be stopped. It may have the curious effect (for a railway line) of actually depopulating the district through which it runs.. I don't suppose that a similar complicai tion ever before arose. .Without being actually precise, the general position is this:— There ft a special railway rate on the lands through which the line runs, amounting to 3s 4d in the pound. This is independent of, and beyond ordinary taxation. The traffic is carried on at a loss of about £IOO per week. It will neither pay to stop the trains nor to run them. If stopped, the income from the special rate ceases ; if carried on there will soon be nobody left either to pay the rate, travel on the line, or transmit produce over it. The payers of the special rate are making efforts to get out of this liability, but they are, in sailors' phraseology, ' hard up in a clinch.' Perhaps Mr O'Shanasay (who is a great financial luminary, and has had some experience of an unprofitable railway line) could, during his visit, recreate himself by solving this little difficulty for the s6rely exercised Tas> maniaus."