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LIGHT RAILWAYS. In last year's Public Works Statement I promised that I would this session lay before honourable members some further information on the subject of light railways. This has since been obtained from different parts of the world, and particularly from Tasmania, where a 2 ft.-gauge line is already being constructed from Zeehan to Mount Dundas. This railway, when finished, will be about miles long. The first 5 miles are over undulating country, presenting no special engineering difficulties, but for the remainder of its length the line skirts high and precipitous hills, presenting a very forbidding appearance from a railway engineer's point of view. The line starts at a height of 630 ft. above sea-level; at the end of the fifth mile, where the difficult country begins, the elevation is 829 ft. ; from this point to the summit, &i miles further on, the line rises 771 ft.; from here it descends to the Ring River, 5 miles further on again, the fall being 774 ft.; and from there it rises 284 ft. to the terminus, in a distance of 2 miles. The total length of the line in difficult country is 12J miles, but the end of the line at 17 1 miles is really only 5$ miles as the crow flies from the 5-miles peg—that is to say, it takes 12$ miles of railway to accomplish a direct distance of 5| miles. This is principally due to the height and depth to which the line has to rise and fall, and the consequent necessity of long gradient contours to overcome these difficulties. The gradients adopted are in some cases very severe, and in order to reduce the earthworks and bridging to a minimum very sharp curves have been used. To so large an extent have curves been adopted that a straight run of 100 yards is seldom obtainable. There are 300 curves on the line, and over half the total length is on curves, the total of degrees turned being about 17,000. The ruling gradient, allowing for curvature, is 1 in 22, and the sharpest curves are only lj chains radius. The sharpest curves on any of our New Zealand railways are 5 chains radius, and the steepest gradients (exclusive of the threerail incline on the Waiiarapa side of the Rimutaka Range) are 1 in 35, or, allowing for curvature, 1 in 31. Even these grades and curves only occur on exceptional lines, such as on the Wellington side of the Rimutaka Range and on the Lawrence branch-line. It will readily be seen, therefore, how very steep and tortuous this Tasmanian light railway really is. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the line to us just now is its cost, which was very low for a railway traversing such very rough country. The General Manager of the Tasmanian Government Railways reports that the cost, including surveys and equipment, was only £1,725 per mile; but states that a little more expenditure in rolling-stock and traffic requirements will be necessary, thus bringing up the cost to, say, £2,000 per mile. Even this rate, however, would be too low a standard to take for the construction of similar lines in New Zealand, as nothing is allowed in this amount for compensation to land-owners for the land occupied by the railway, as the whole line is constructed on Crown reserves. The rails also only cost £3 3s. per ton—second-hand rails being used —whereas new rails of, say, 40 lb. to the yard Avould cost about double this amount landed at our principal ports, and the cost of transporting them to where they would require to be used might cost another £1 or £2 per ton. The Tasmanian line, moreover, is not fenced, and the timbers used in the bridges only cost from 7s. 6d. to 13s. 6d. per 100 superficial feet, and the sleepers under Is. each, adzed and bored ready for laying. These rates would be largely exceeded in this colony. Some detailed information .respecting light railways and several illustrations of points of interest on the Tasmanian line already referred to, of which photographs were kindly furnished to me by the Government of that colony, will be found in an Appendix to this Statement. Light Railways asked for. Several applications for the construction of light railways have already been made to the Government, of which the following are the principal lines :— Paeroa to Waihi, Eltham to Opunake, Tauranga to fiotorua, Dannevirke to East Coast, Rotorua to Gisborne, Blenheim to Culverden, Tauranga to Gisborne, vid Opotiki, Fairlie to Pukaki, Gisborne to Napier, Dunedin to Otago Heads.