FROM HOOFS TO ELECTRICITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 7, 8 January 1920, Page 6 (Supplement)

FROM HOOFS TO ELECTRICITY.

PUBLIC CONVEYANCES,

THE OLD 'BUS DAYS,

AND THE HORSE TRAMS.

When one looks back even much less than fifty years one wonders how the Auckland people got about. Presumably more people walked than is the case to-day. It seems but a few years ago that the only public conveyances of the "hackney coach" type, as the old by-laws have it, were the three-horse 'buses that used to start from the ton of Queen Street by the Anchor Hotel"for Parnell and Xewmarket, from the Union Bank corner for Ponsonby, and ■ from other stands for Onehunga, for Remuera, and for Mount Eden. They would hold possibly fifteen not too bulky people, and still these slow-trotting vehicles, which used to toil up the Parnell Rise and College Hill at a snail's pace, sufiiced for the people who used to travel to those suburbs. HORSE CARS. Then came the horse trams. When these in turn were superseded the cars were sold for summer houses and similar purposes, and several of them are to be found here and there in stiburban gardens. They don't look as bijr as the old 'buses. It was in ISB2 that the Auckland City Council entered into an arrangement with the St. Helier's and Xorthcote Land Company (afterwards changed to the Auckland Tramways and Suburban Company) for the'establishir.ent of tramears jn the city. The contract was executed in January of the following year, and by ISS4 we "read in the old records of the Council that the tramways "have been inaugurated as far as the roads at present will admit, and so far are satisfactory to the promoters and the public." FOOTBALL CROWDS. On the flat these queer little vehicles were drawn by three horses hitched abreast, and at the foot of Wellesley Street there were kept leaders, in charge of small boys, which hooked on for the big pull up the rise out of Queen Street. The Epsom trams went via Wellesley Street East and the Ponsonby ones by Wellesley Street West. There were no trams to Parnell in those days. On football days at Potter's P.addock (now Alexandra Park) it was a'sight to Eec the cars, pitching like a b'b'atj|ii( r a

seaway, loaded to the stens with hangers-on making for "Potter's." Still at the most they coma only have carried a mere handful of people. CITY TAKES OVER. The negotiations that led to the electrification of the traniwav system were started in 1895, and the present system was inaugurated in lS)O2,"the promoters being an English company. The rapid spread of suburban population after the various new lines were opened up Cornell, Remuera, Onenungn, Dominion ■Road. Mount Eden, and Mount Albert — is- too recent to need any recapitulation. In mi!) the Auckland City Council exercised its rights under the leased which was for twenty-one years), and took over the tramways as a going concern.