The Happy Travellers.

We New Zealanders, when we travel, are a happy, hungry people. We like our snack and we like it often. A healthy climate, fresh bracing breezes and clear radiant sunshine, make for hearty appetites.

Even when staying at home and working, our “five-meal, meat-fed men” are no figment of the imagination. They are very real, solid fellows. And our women make tracks to the cupboard quite often too.

There is the surprise of visitors at the universality in hotels of the seven o'clock cup of tea and bread and butter or biscuits. The full rich breakfast. The forenoon tea and cakes. The hearty luncheon of lighter fare—cold meats or pies and salads and sweets and tea. The afternoon tea with its wide variety in cake and pastry. The real full-course dinner in the evening, and then the supper before retiring—the glass of milk and biscuit, or the complete regalement of sandwiches, frilled chicken legs and accessories and a little something to drink with it.

But when we travel, the excitement of motion and the companionship in the cars of trains seem to give still another fillip to our capacity for enjoying a few additional snacks. On the average, there is a refreshment room on the Railways of New Zealand for every 80 miles of track—and they all do well. Last year the 30 counter refreshment rooms and four dining-rooms run by the Railway Refreshment Service earned £16,022 for the Department, and the whole operation of this service showed a net profit of £2,132. There are also eleven of the smaller stations at which are located refreshment rooms that are held on lease. There is actually a total of 42 stations where refreshments are available to the traveller—and when the word “refreshment” is used in this context, it covers a multitude of possible passenger requirements. Fruits, aerated drinks of various kinds, smokers’ requisites, chocolates and other sweets, ice-cream (in season), and even headache cures—although there is not usually a headache in a trainload of carefree passengers—these are among the things which travellers may obtain at very reasonable rates at the refreshment counters. Even in sandwiches there is a range from the standard ham variety to the egg and lettuce kinds, whilst pies and sausage rolls, buttered buns, fruit cake, small cakes, and biscuits are among the range of eatables from which choice may be made.

The “snack bar” just recently opened at Paddington Station, London, appears to be modelled to some extent upon the practice here, and if it is to be fully tried out, should carry an equally wide range to meet the desires of travellers. In reference to it, “The Railway Gazette” speaks of the spacious, clean and attractive refreshment counters throughout Australia and New Zealand, and states that “the quick service of the white-robed waitresses is invariably excellent.” Some remarkable tributes to the high quality of these services in our own country have been paid by visitors to New Zealand; and the constant patronage of New Zealanders themselves proves that the system is in popular favour.

We cannot quite agree, however, with the “Gazette's” further statement that “at these stations most of the eating and drinking is done at the counters, where crowds of men, women, and children apparently endeavour to drink as much tea as possible in the usual seven minutes allowed.” Certainly people “line up” at the counters in great array, and large numbers like to have their “tea and …” on the spot; but those who have any fears as to whether they can finish in time usually stroll back to the train, taking their spoils in their hands, and proceed to enjoy the refreshments there, carrying on comfortably if they so wish, after the train is once more under way. At the next main station the crockery is collected from the train, and there is quite a business for the Refreshment Branch in balancing up supplies of crockery as between the various refreshment stations.

The happy travellers are those who can find something they want at every refreshment halt. It bucks them up for the full enjoyment of the ride between.