Editorial: Have patience, drivers - that's our prosperity trundling past

Mark Dawson, editor of Wanganui Chronicle

You may know the feeling ...

It's morning and you are in a rush to get to work, you put your foot on the gas heading toward the city and then ...

The red lights start flashing, the barrier slowly descends and the traffic starts to back up.

Just your bad luck — a train is slowly trundling its way across Whanganui, grinding its pedestrian path along tracks you usually glide over with barely a moment's pause.

What on earth is a freight train doing there at this time, you muse as you curse it under your breath.

You may even have tried a few sharp turns to try and beat it, and get across the lines before the next barrier goes down.

That short delay seems to take an age. Aren't freight trains a thing of the past, something consigned now to country and western songs?

Well, that's just great, you mutter sarcastically.

Well, in fact, it IS great — those lumbering trains are a sign of economic growth in the city, and we will be seeing more and more of them.

Our revived rail line is serving a growing number of businesses and its cargo-load has been steadily rising.

Dairy product from Open Country, logs and meat are the main commodities, but a whole lot of smaller businesses are jumping on the railway bandwagon to transport their goods.

It is hard to put a dollar value on the freight moving out of Whanganui, but nobody is questioning the worth of the rail route down to CenrePort in Wellington.

So I, for one, will no longer be cursing when held up at one of the railway crossings.
Patience is a virtue to be cultivated, and we will need more of it as those trains add an ever-growing number of wagons.