A.—4,

120

The management of the Railway Stores has been changed several times, each successive system having been superseded before it had time to get into full working order. The result has been, as might have been anticipated, great confusion in the stores accounts, which are not at present fully adjusted. The system at present in force is, in the minor details, all that can be desired, but the form of the final account is still unsettled, and the relations between the Treasury accounts and those of the Railway Department are still to be determined. There are four principal stores—-those at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin—that is to say, stores into which purchased goods are delivered , but there are sub-stores at Napier, Wanganui, New Plymouth, Picton, Nelson, Westport, and Greymouth, which are supplied with goods from the principal stores, but issue to the lines. The books kept in the sub-stores are in the same form as those kept in the principal stores. The book of chief importance kept in all the stores is the Stock Ledger, in which the numbers of the articles received and issued are entered in columns, a separate column being allotted to each separate article. The entries are of numbers and quantities only, without rates or values. In the principal stores the vouchers for goods purchased are supplied by the contractors weekly in duplicate, one copy being retained in the store, the other sent to .the.Stores Manager at the seat of Government. In the sub-stores, the invoices accompanying the goods transferred from the principal stores are supplied in duplicate without values, and are treated in the same manner as invoices for purchased goods in the principal stores. In all, the requisitions for the issue of stores are in triplicate, one copy being retained by the sender, and, of the two others, both of which are receipted, one is filed in the receiving store, and one is sent to the Stores Manager. The two first contain no values. On the third the values are inserted by the Stores Manager The Storekeepers have therefore a complete account of the stock in their charge, but have nothing to do with its value. All the accounts relating to the values of the stores are kept by the Stores Manager, whose office is at the seat of Government. His duty consists in managing the purchase of all the railway stores, and passing all vouchers for payment , in keeping all the accounts of their receipt, and of their issue to the several branches of the railway service. All his books, therefore, comprise values as well as quantities. He keeps a store ledger against each of the eleven stores throughout the colony, showing the goods received into and issued out of each, with their values. These ledgers are posted from the vouchers before the latter are sent up for payment, and, for the issues, are posted from abstract sheets made up four-weekly from the requisitions. Upon the latter are entered the several departments of the Railway service to which the stores are issued, and a schedule is made monthly from the abstracts, and sent to the Accountant, by whom each department is charged with the stores it has consumed. The workshops are treated as a separate department, and materials are issued to them from the store, as to any other department, at cost price. The articles made in the workshops are brought into the store as fresh goods, as if supplied by a contractor, the price being made up of the cost of the material and wages, with 10 per cent, added as commission to cover the expenses of the shop. The accounts of the workshops, at least those of the Middle Island, are brought into a general balance-sheet showing the profit or loss on the establishment at the end of the year. In practice there is always a profit shown on the account, which is expended in buying fresh machinery and tools, and otherwise improving the plant. Virtually, therefore, the charges on the working expenses of the lines are, to that extent, increased by expenditure which ought to be charged to capital account. All goods procured in the colony are, as a rule, bought on contracts, which run for one, two, or three years, according to the article. Thus, the contracts for coal, timber, iron-castings, and forage are yearly contracts , uniforms for railway servants are for three years. Goods imported from England are bought by the

The Bailway Stores.