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safety requirements of modern civil aviation. The search for a suitable airfield site was continuing at the end of the year under review. In the meantime Kaitak continued to serve the growing needs of commercial air traffic as well as those of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Civil air lines were not slow to resume operations after the liberation although British aviation was not well represented, carrying only 10% of the year's passenger traffic. China was the predominant user of the Colony's airport and half of the departures were Chinese- registered C-46 and C-47 aircraft bound for the interior. Throughout the year passenger traffic steadily increased, the total for December, 1946, being nine times that for January, 1946, and the year's total of 25,000 three times as great as in 1938. Freight traffic also increased though not in the same proportion. Arrangements for the reception of passengers, including medical and customs examinations, were perforce of a somewhat austere nature during the year under review, since all terminal buildings and offices as well as the hangars and workshops were removed by the Japanese in the course of their extension of the airfield. Some of these buildings have now been replaced, and the construction of a temporary ter- minal building was in hand by the end of the year.

In spite of the sometimes hazardous approach to Kaitak, no accident occurred to any civil aircraft during 1946. Five civilians were killed in a service aircraft and this was the first casualty to a fare-paying passenger since flying began in 1930. Various navigational aids were provided by the Royal Air Force and a number of wireless telegraphy channels were opened by the Directorate of Air Services for opera- tional communication. The navigational aids included high frequency and very high frequency direction finding, radar beacons, a medium frequency beacon and a beam approach beacon system; of the civil aircraft using the field during 1946, only the British Overseas Airways Corporation aircraft were equipped to use radar aids.

The Railway.

Kowloon is the southern terminal of a railway system extending to the north as far as Hankow in central China. From Shumchun on the border of the New Territories north- ward to Canton the route is now operated by the Canton- Hankow Railway, and is referred to as the southern section of that line. From Shumchun south to Kowloon, a distance representing 36 kilometres out of a total of 183 kilometres from Kowloon to Canton, the railway is operated by the Hong Kong Government and is known as the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway. As the railway is operated in two sections an agreement was in force prior to the Japanese occupation whereby each section collected its own local fares while the rates for through traffic between Kowloon and Canton were divided in the proportion British section 28 per

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cent. and Chinese section 72 per cent. At the present time, pending the conclusion of a new agreement, the British section is receiving a share amounting to 20 per cent. of the receipts and a terminal charge of 20 cents per ton on all traffic originating at Kowloon.

It was clearly a matter of importance both to Hong Kong's and to China's economic recovery that the railway from Hong Kong to Canton should be put into effective opera- tion as soon as possible after the conclusion of hostilities, but the task of re-equipping the railway was a heavy one. During the period of occupation the Japanese had carried out no adequate maintenance of railway property, not even of the locomotives which were still in use at the time of the Japanese surrender, and the workshops at Kowloon had been so stripped of machinery that completely new workshop equipment was required. In the meantime,

In the meantime, pending the arrival of new ma- chinery, overhauls to rolling stock of every description had to be carried out with the minimum of tools and with plant improvised from local resources. By 14th November, 1945, a through train service between Hong Kong and Canton had been re-started. For most of the year under review it was possible to run only one train a day from each terminus but in November, 1946, a second train a day each way was added to the schedule. During the same period the running time for the journey from Kowloon to Canton was progressively reduc- ed from 814 hours to 411⁄2 hours. By the end of the year it was considered that there was sufficient passenger traffic for a third daily train but through lack of rolling stock and difficulties of maintenance it had not so far been possible to introduce this extension of the service. At the end of the year there were as many passenger train services running between Kowloon and Canton as there were in 1938 but local services and goods trains were not as frequent as in that year. Passengers carried in 1946, compared with 1938, were about 12 millions against 214 millions. Similar figures for tonnage of goods carried on the railway showed a decrease from 482,000 to 197,000 tons. One factor which delayed the rehabilitation of the railway was the lack of replacements for normal railway material such as rails, sleepers, signalling apparatus, workshop plant and tools. Many months passed before any major equipment for the railway was received in the Colony, with the exception of certain bridge material and a number of locomotives. Some assistance was rendered by the Canton-Hankow Railway and the Chinese Ministry of Communications' local supply office which lent a quantity of rails, sleepers, fish plates, and bolts, but at the end of the year much work remained to be done.

The operation of the railway during 1946 earned for the British section about 4 million dollars, against which must be set an expenditure of about 211⁄2 million dollars, a rather great- er excess of revenue over expenditure than the 1938 figure.