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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 10 (January 1, 1936)

Travel Concessions Increase Traffic

Travel Concessions Increase Traffic.

One of the features of Home railway passenger traffic is the fact that something like ninety per cent, of the passengers handled are conveyed at special fares substantially lower than the ordinary standard rates. There are three fares divisions on the Home lines—first, second and third-class. Second-class is a relic of Victorian days, and in practice it is only on very few routes that second-class carriages now run. The standard fares for single journeys are based on the English mile—1,609 metres. They are respectively: —first-class 2 1/2., second-class (where in operation) 2d., and thirdclass 1 1/2 per mile. Return fares are normally double the single. Single journey tickets are available for three days, and return tickets are available for use on the outward or return journey any day within three months. Children under the age of three years are conveyed free when accompanied by a fare-paying passenger. Children between three years and fourteen are carried at half fares. The various fares concessions, of which so large a number of passengers make use, include among others week-end and monthly return tickets, at a single fare and a third for the double journey; day and half-day excursion tickets; pleasure party bookings; anglers', hikers' and golfers' tickets; and the like.

Central Passenger Station, Zurich, Swiss Federal Railways.

Central Passenger Station, Zurich, Swiss Federal Railways.

page 48page 49page 50page 51
“Manners Makyth Man” The Chapel Interior, Christ's College.

Manners Makyth Man
The Chapel Interior, Christ's College.

fasts are still sunlit memories in the minds of men in many odd corners of the earth.

Lastly, there was Professor Cook, a Cambridge man, Sixth Wrangler in die Mathematical Tripos. He was a typical mathematician, and at first sight a severe and forbidding apparition “solid serious, dignified.” I remember well, finding carved in my back desk in his lecture hall,

“In spite of what the bard has penned

I find that distance does Not lend Enchantment to the view.”

He was an ardent music lover, a good cricketer, and an enthusiast about athletics. He, too, had a capacity for inspiring affection and above all, was a superb teacher. One of his pupils was Ernest Rutherford. There were other great men, but those three pioneers are the richest figures in retrospect. It is as well, however, to be reminded of Sir Julius Von Haast and Professor Hutton, two early great professors.

Since then, a procession of distinguished figures has adorned the many Chairs of Canterbury College and the graduates who owe their love (or dislike) of learning to them are found in every part of the globe. And, this has to be said. Canterbury has produced far more than its quota share of writers; in fact, no other province remotely compares with it. The achievement is of great variety, too, including our best short story writers, a woman writer whose detective stories are the most subtle and polished in English, our best women poets, and a host of men with the gift of writing prose poetry on scientific subjects. In making the first anthology of short stories of New Zealand I found that eighty per cent. of the material had to be the work of Canterbury writers. The explanation is not far to seek.

Please now look at our illustrations. The double quadrangle was an inspiration. On a summer day this quiet close has the dreaming beauty of centuries of age. Here, again, in some magic way, the haphazard, here-andthere growth of the various buildings has burgeoned into harmonious sweetness It seems incredible to imagine that half a century ago, this was a heterogeneous collection of stone buildings, tin sheds, wooden halls and other odds and ends. It has shared in the English genius for right growth, that genius which causes the foreigner to remark irritably that the British Empire was founded in a fit of absent mindedness. However unintended, however divorced from any set plan, however free from any scientific regime, Canterbury College is, to-day, a personality of grey stone, coloured creeper, green lawns, bright flowers, fused into a unity of ordered loveliness.

I show now the breath-taking beauty of the exterior of the Old Provincial Chambers and its fairy-like assembly hall interior. Here sat the little Parliament of the days when Canterbury governed herself and cared naught for Taranaki or Marlborough. In that misty dawn of the settlement, this exquisite example of Gothic architecture was raised by our forbears. The roof of scarlet and gold is a flawless and magnificent specimen of the Gothic-vaulted ceiling. Here, I might say, that much of the old world sweetness of these Christchurch scenes is due to the inherent love of Englishmen for the noblest form of architecture, the Gothic. Its pointed arches, sharp-edged fretwork, delicate tracery, flying buttresses and its slendertopped spires appeal to something deep-seated in English hearts. It suits and adorns the countryside and, in Christchurch, they have contrived to preserve this in great measure. Christ's College, in its ivied chapel, Canterbury College in its cluster of double arches, and the Provincial Chambers in their perfect outline, are visions of delight.

These works of the hands of men are symbolic of a feeling so intense that it is often almost inarticulate; the feeling that the things of Old England must be cherished and safeguarded wherever Englishmen may go.

Magnificent Gothic Interior of the Provincial Council Chambers.

Magnificent Gothic Interior of the Provincial Council Chambers.