Railway housing scheme

WELLINGTON: The Railway Department has inaugurated a house building scheme on a large scale. The present programme involves the erection of 400 houses as a commencement. The scheme involves the establishment of a factory equipped with modern machinery for cutting timber to standard lengths. This will enable rapid progress to be made with the construction of the houses. The houses will be built to standard type, and will be provided with modern conveniences. A commencement has already been

made with the erection of a number of houses at Kaiwarra to relieve the pressure in Wellington, where the housing problem is at present most acute. Twenty chains of road has been formed, 15 sites excavated, and the erection of 10 houses is in hand, some of them being well forward. The plans of the New Zealand railway house show a compact arrangement of rooms built on the plan of an English house, with the rooms entering off a passageway, and not entering off each other, which in the American houses is very common. The standard type being built at present contains kitchen, sittingroom, three bedrooms, bathroom, scullery, and washhouse with copper and tubs built in. In addition an outhouse is provided for wood and coal. A hot and cold water service will be installed in each house, electric light will be provided wherever it is available, and each house will have, in addition to the lighting, a connection for an electric iron.