Outline:
- Railway travel compared with old-time travel.
- The advantage of speed, asset to commerce and industry.
- Formerly dangerous, now safe and more comfortable.
- Great material gain, and for the good of the people.
When our grandfathers wanted to travel, they prepared a bullock-cart and laid in food for a long, slow journey over bad roads. Now we pay for a ticket, step into a railway compartment, and are taken rapidly to our destination in hours instead of days as before.
This saving of time is excellent for a business man who has to travel hundreds of miles, for to him, “Time is money.” So it is very necessary to have a well-developed railway system if the commerce and industries of a country are to flourish. How could the salt of Khewra mines be taken to the consumers, how could the cloth of the Lyallpur mills be distributed throughout the land, if the railway was not available? Pakistan is a land of great distances, and railways help to promote both social and national unity by keeping people in contact with each other in spite of distance.
In a country with a great and growing population, it is a great benefit that so many are able to follow the occupations of driver, guard, station porter, watchman, surfaceman, and others. The capital which is invested in railways affords a living to thousands of employees. In time of plague or disease and epidemics, relief and medical aid can be taken to the afflicted spot in the shortest possible time.
In all countries, the railways give better accommodation to rich people than to poor travellers. The third-class railway carriages in Pakistan have for long been a source of complaint. Men, women and children are packed together without sufficient space, without adequate lavatory accommodation. Nowhere is the inequality between the classes seen so strikingly as on the railway. It is hoped that in the future this great abuse will be remedied. Perhaps there was something; lost when the old days of travel by bullock-cart or on horse-back ended. There must have been a delight in the leisurely progress through the unspoiled country-side starting in the fresh dews of morning and cooking supper over the camp-fire in the evening hour. Now we have sacrified everything to haste, and are rushed through the country so rapidly that there is no time to observe the beautires of Nature which are spread on every hand