The station and buildings at Waikaka are also well under way.
The buildings are of a substantial nature, and are evidently erected with the intention of permanency.
There are not wanting those here, however, who assert that in a short time the Railway Department will find that when the enormous expenditure that has been incurred in constructing the line is taken into account the traffic will not be able to pay more than axle grease, and that in the interest of the revenue the line, etc., and buildings will have to be shifted to another and more important part of the country.
This is absurd, of course, but the line, when finally finished, will be the greatest monument in New Zealand to the present extravagant and wasteful policy conducted and carried on by the Public Works Department.
The line, if we may believe parliamentary statements, has already cost 50,000, and another 12,000 or 15,000 has been voted to finish it, so it will have cost the State about 5000 per mile."
• The announcement that Dr Charcot is taking 22,000 bottles of wine on his expedition to the South Pole (writes the Pall Mall Gazette) is calculated to cause amazement.
- ODT, 23.11.1908
