History
The New Zealand railway network was initially built by provincial governments, starting with the Ferrymead Railway in 1863. From 1880 a central Government department, the New Zealand Railways Department, was responsible for operating most of the growing railway network. A few private lines were built, but only one, the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company (W&MR) achieved any measure of success. The W&MR was nationalised in 1908. In 1931 due to increasing competition from road carriers, the Transport Licensing Act 1931 was passed, restricting road cartage and giving the railways department a monopoly on long-distance freight. In 1982, the same year the land transport sector was deregulated, the Railways Department was reconstituted as the New Zealand Railways Corporation, a state-owned enterprise. The Railways Corporation restructured the operations of the rail network substantially during the 1980s, reducing staffing levels, closing workshops and introducing a number of measures to increase productivity, such as removing guard's vans, increasing train lengths and introducing new, heavier bulk bogie wagons.
Read more about this topic: Tranz Rail
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“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)