NZ intercity rail: a conscious break with the past

Today it was reported that the Green Party is promoting investing $9 billion in a major expansion of New Zealand's rail transport capacity to shift the balance of intercity transport from a road-dominated approach towards a mix of road and rail as is commonplace in all the European democracies we conventionally compare ourselves with. This would see electrification of tracks to expand passenger rail networks out from the three main centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch over the next 10 years. It would in effect reconstruct the rail network that connected New Zealand for a century, but was allowed to wither by successive administrations in favour of a strong policy preference for roading projects and prioritising commuting by private vehicle. It would also build a rail network capable of delivering much higher speeds than the present outdated, congested network, which would in turn allow much faster intercity rail journeys.

While in recent years New Zealand has often forgotten how to invest in long-term infrastructure, we only have to look at the Vogel administration of the 1870s that borrowed heavily to build the railway networks that engineered regional growth across the country for the next 75 years. Or the hydro schemes that broke the back of the post-war energy crisis and inadvertently gave us a largely sustainable energy source. While the Green proposal is a big-ticket vision and as with all such things, a Parliamentary majority is required to implement it, it's noteworthy that all three parties of the current Government are pro-rail to a greater or lesser extent. National's transport policy is the only outlier.

And the spending doesn't all come at once: the it would be spread over 10 or even 20 years, which is a realistic goal for implementation given the scale of the projects. It's about making a conscious break from the car- and truck-centred transportation bias of all recent transport policy, and saying there's actually a better way to move people and goods. And that way makes more sense both environmentally and financially. It doesn't change people's right to own and operate personal vehicles; it just says we won't continue to choose the congestion and pollution of the outdated transport planning of the past.

Yes it's a lot of money, but so was the previous Government's Roads of National Significance policy, which delivered decidedly mixed results for its very substantial expenditure and was supported by dubious cost-benefit modelling. This rail proposal is one of the ways we can reshape our infrastructure and economy to move past fossil fuels. It will also help the people who are desperate to stay in their own cars, because it will alleviate congestion. And the end result would be being able to take the train between Auckland and Wellington rather than fly; I know which mode of transport I'd prefer.

See also:

History: The break of gauge, 14 January 2014

History: The old Western Hutt line, 10 October 2013

History: Take the 'A' train, 10 October 2009

West Wind

Putting El Alamein into perspective

The Second Battle of El Alamein has entered history as the starting-point of the counter-offensive of the Western Allies which ultimately carried them into central Germany. The sum of that achievement has rightly been called a "mighty endeavour", and everything has to have a beginning. For a perspective, however, it is well to recall that the Axis forces at El Alamein consisted of four weak German divisions and eight Italian divisions of varying but generally unimpressive quality (a total of some 50,000 Germans and 54,000 Italians). The Axis forces on the Eastern Front in 1942 amounted to 232 divisions, of which 171 were German (including 24 Panzer divisions) - a manpower total running into millions. Against the attenuated Panzerarmee Afrika, the British Eighth Army brought 11 divisions (four armoured), 195,000 men, with crushing superiority in guns and tanks. And the Desert Air Force immediately established its own crushing superiority in the air.

- John Terraine, The Right of the Line: The RAF in the European War 1939-1945, London, 1985, p.384.

[Elsewhere in Terraine's book, he makes the entertaining observation that 'Lord [Bernard] Montgomery had a way of enunciating principles of war as though he had not merely personally brought them down, like Moses, from the high mountain, but had also had a large hand in inscribing them up there']

See also:
Blog: Meet the gang 'cos the boys are here, 15 December 2014
Blog: If all else fails, we can Pee-at them, 15 July 2012
Blog: His finest hour, 16 September 2010

Walter Nash's advice to a would-be MP

Advice given in September 1935 by Walter Nash MP (1882-1968), who at the time was the member for Hutt, but who a few months later became Minister of Finance in the first Labour Government of New Zealand, a role he held for 14 years. Nash also later served as New Zealand's 27th Prime Minister, leading the one-term second Labour Government from 1957 to 1960:

• Cultivate Self-Control and determine to follow the urge for right purposes without giving too much thought to the consequences for yourself.
• Cultivate the habit of thinking. Do not be satisfied with ready made opinions either from books or newspapers. 
• Study so that you have some reasonable knowledge of the purpose of Life...
• Remember that while you have thought out the subject you are speaking about, the other person's thoughts are worth examining and they may be right.

- Quoted in Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations, Auckland, 1988, p.496.

Elite Dangerous: rares trader

Cmdr Totinges pilots the Krait Mk.II Bruce McLaren

This Easter, having realised that the once-legendary Robigo run was no more, I decided to revisit the age-old enterprise of rare goods trading in Elite Dangerous. Starting from the Ceos system on the outskirts of inhabited space, I flew my Krait Mk.II, the Bruce McLaren, around 400 light years to join the famous rare goods circuit at the Witchhaul system. The Bruce McLaren is rigged for hauling rather than fighting, but as a nod in the direction of self-defence it's equipped with two Class 3 burst lasers and two Class 2 beam lasers, all gimbal-mounted. (I later swapped the beams for Class 2 seeker missile racks). Top speed is 310 metres per second, with a boost speed of 434. Its current maximum jump range is 44.3 light years, although this declines to around 33 light years fully laden.

After picking up a load of Witchhaul Kobe beef, I struck a snag at the next port, Futen Station in the Fujin system, at which due to some bug there was not only no famous Fujin Tea for sale, but the starport market had no goods for sale at all. Skipping on to the next stop on the route, I collected Tauri Chimes at 39 Tauri, Zeessze Ant Grub Glue at Nicollier Hangar in the Zeessze system, and, for the devotionally-minded, Pantaa Prayer Sticks from Zamka Platform in the George Pantazis system.

Then it was time for the first long hop of the loop, the 141 light years from George Pantazis to the Zaonce system, where the full cargo of the Bruce McLaren could be sold and the second half of the rares run commenced. In one of the intervening systems Cmdr Totinges had his only brush with piratical intervention, being interdicted by an enterprising Cobra Mk.IV. The ensuing skirmish showed I was very rusty in combat, but the Krait's big guns eventually paid dividends, bashing down the Cobra's shields and sending it scurrying to escape. 

At Zaonce, with a newly empty cargo hold, I started the route back to Witchhaul by purchasing the strangely popular Zaonce Leathery Eggs (there's no accounting for taste). Hopping the short distances around the planets of the Old Words cluster, I visited the legendary Lave Station for its fiery Lavian Brandy, snapped up Azure Milk and Leestian Evil Juice at George Lucas Station in Leesti, and stocked up on Ma Corn at Shifnalport in Diso. I didn't complete the full rares circuit because after visiting Orrerre and purchasing its Vicious Brew there was no room in my cargo hold to visit either Uszaa or Shinrarta Dezhra. So instead it was a straight run of 192 light years from Orrerre back to Witchhaul. With a full hold this took six stops, scooping fuel from stars en route with exotic names: Gaohikel, Anyanwu, LHS 2447, Baxbakaeris, Borr and Metzili. 

After returning to Witchhaul and selling off my rare goods, I netted MCr4.194 in 82 minutes, which is an hourly earning rate of MCr3.07. Hardly a guaranteed pathway to easy riches, but still a fun way to see the universe as long as you've got a fast ship with a decent cargo hold. Next stop: Alliance space to raise my profile and make some new allies.

The Bruce McLaren's cargo hold at its final destination, Witchhaul

See also:

Games: Realising childhood sci-fi dreams, 27 April 2015

Games: Fine-tuning the Robigo Run, 2 March 2016

Games: David Braben's 22kb galaxy, 10 March 2017  

Games: 1000 hours of Elite Dangerous, 25 June 2017

From halfway up Makara Peak

Finding Eva Morganti

I've always had a soft spot for sending and receiving postcards, but until recently I'd never collected any vintage ones. In the past year I've been sending local postcards to random strangers through the website Postcrossing, and receiving cards back from other random correspondents around the globe. I've also been enjoying listening to the odd episode of Tom Jackson's postcard podcast Postcard From The Past, in which two guests, often writers or comedians, are invited to share their personal collections of postcards and their associated personal connection. I've always loved the idea that a small rectangle can flit its way from the other side of the world to a friend or family member's letterbox as a small way of sharing the joys of travel and to indicate that in some small way the recipient was being thought of, far away.

While I've sent plenty of postcards over the years, and received a few too, I'd not purchased anyone else's postcards before my visit to Cambridge (the Waikato iteration) in early March. There in Colonial Heritage Antiques on Duke St one particular card took my eye and became the first in my collection. I prefer postcards that have been sent with a message, rather than the more common unused postcards. And this one was a real beauty.

The postcard depicts Edwardian stage siren Gabrielle Ray (1883-1973), who was one of the most photographed women in the world at the time. Indicative of her star power at the time were the performances she gave in 1907 at Daly's Theatre just off Leicester Square, as Frou Frou in 'The Merry Widow', in which 'Ray's dance number, complete with handstands and high kicks, all performed on a table at Maxim's held head high by four men, was a show stopper'.

Miss Gabrielle Ray, 1906 postcard

The postcard was sent from a Peckham postmark in East London on 27 July 1906 to the far side of the world: the isolated colonial town of Westport on the South Island's West Coast. On the day he sent the card, the Times in London was advertising on its front page the famed Hippodrome spectacular 'The Flood', a twice-daily inundation involving '300,000 gallons of water' (which doesn't sound very environmentally sensitive). Madame Tussaud's was promoting its star attractions: a 'realistic tableau' of the Burning of Rome ('Mr Beerbohm Tree in the character of Nero'), and a 'lifelike portrait model of the late Sir Wilfred Lawson', who had only died on 1 July. The day's Court Circular recorded the Prince of Wales' (later George V) planned visit to Aldershot to inspect 3 Battalion, King's Royal Rifles. And the Times theatre correspondent was positively irritated by the Garrick's production of the 'coster story' 'Down Our Alley', adapted by Arthur Bourchier from an original by Anatole France, 'Crainquebille'.

New Zealand in the Edwardian age was awash with postcards and other forms of written correspondence. As recorded by the 1906 official yearbook, at the end of 1905 there were 1937 post offices in the country, which translates into one post office for every 486 people, given the estimated national population of 942,533. The postal services in 1905 dealt with over 69 million letters (74 per capita), but also 3.6 million postcards (3.9 per capita), a 58 percent increase on the year before. The postal rate within New Zealand, and for many Imperial overseas messages, was set at one penny from 1 January 1901, which had led to a rapid increase in postal traffic, including the newly popular postcard medium. Robinson's A History of the Post Office in New Zealand records (p.184) that between 1891 and 1911 the number of postcards sent in New Zealand grew at a rate even faster than the growth rate of letter traffic:

	1891	1911	Incr %
Letters	23,745,462	99,307,587	+318%
Postcards	991,065	5,425,914	+447%
Telegrams	1,746,115	8,268,340	+373%

A colourful May 1906 article in the New Zealand Mail, a Wellington weekly paper established in 1871, described 'the post-card craze', and mistakenly claimed that it signalled 'letter-writing [was] in its death throes'. The author describes the avidly-followed pursuit of collecting postcard correspondence, including ones similar to my 1906 card:

In Wellington there are hundreds of young girls struggling with the fever of post-carditis, who have written to and received signed post-cards from the leading lights of the British stage, and who on the least provocation will exhibit them proudly to others who might not be up to the dodge.

The author proceeds to interview a newsagent engaged in the profitable postcard trade, who corroborates the collecting craze:

The message on the Ray postcard is brief, written in not entirely confident penmanship, from a would-be suitor to an unmarried young woman. Romilly St and Fonblanque St are still a part of the Westport town grid.

Note the oblique angle of the stamp placement. This is probably a secret postal code between courting couples, or at least from a potential swain, welcome or not, to avoid parental scrutiny: at this angle the stamp code is 'Accept my love'.

Miss Morganti (for 'Stannie' seems to have spelt her name wrong) may not have been that impressed with her correspondent suitor, because the Norsewood Cemetery online records indicate a different fate for her. Born Genevra  (or perhaps Genever) Katherine (or perhaps Catherine) Morganti on 16 September 1887, she would have been 18 going on 19 when this postcard was sent: prime marriage material in Edwardian New Zealand. Two years before she had experienced family tragedy, when a relative - perhaps an older brother? - sadly drowned off the rocks of Granity, a small village 28km north of Westport: 

On Sunday morning a young man named Antoni Henry Domini Morganti, aged 20 years, was drowned at Granity. He was fishing off a rock with two brothers, and one of the lines becoming snagged Morganti went down on a ledge to loosen it. The two brothers later missed deceased, and a search being made they recovered his body, but life was extinct.

- Greymouth Evening Star, 19 January 1904

I can find no record of Miss Morganti marrying until 12 September 1921, when aged 33 she wed Claude Raymond ('Ray') Redward, an Ormondville farmer and member of the Rechabites and Order of St John. Ray appears to have served in England and France in the Great War, and at that time his home address was recorded as 'Ivy Hill', PO Box 2, Ormondville. He died in 1973 and Eva died in 1980, and is buried in Dannevirke Cemetery. While I know little about her life, I love the fact that she decided to keep Gabrielle Ray's charming postcard portrait, and that her memory and Stannie's message live on as a result.

See also:
History: Early overland mails between Auckland & Wellington, 23 March 2019
History: NZ postal rates 1936, 1 January 2018
History: The arrival of an English mail, 26 January 2015