O'er Swamp and Range: A History of the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Co., Ltd., 1882-1909

Abstract

In order to gain a true insight into the exploitation of rural lands in New Zealand due emphasis must be laid on the important part played by the railways. Many writers are inclined to neglect this aspect and only too frequently insert a paragraph or perhaps a short chapter, without due consideration of sequence, in an effort to chronicle the "progress of civilization" and to show the wonderful results of the "increase in communications." Few attempt to explain why the building of a railway through a rural district causes an immediate rise in land values; or how it is that the mere providing of transport enables a forest to be cleared and grassy meadows substituted; or how it is that many localities have remained practically uninhabited and quite unproductive until the advent of the "iron horse." In New Zealand we find that the railway fixed the location of the towns, after 1870, and governed the rise or fall of those that had been previously located; in older countries on the other hand, the position of the towns governed the location of the railway. To show up this difference is one of the aims of this work; the other is to show the success that followed private enterprise during a period when similar national services could barely pay interest.