TERRIFIC STRAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 57, 8 March 1932, Page 9

TERRIFIC STRAIN.

HARBOUR BRIDGE TESTED.

SYDNEY AGOG FOR OPENING.

THIRTY-TWO BANDS TO PLAY.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, March 3

Sydney Harbour Bridge has stood up j to the most exacting tests imposed on it by Dr. Bradfield, the' Government engineer, and Messrs. Dorman, Long and Co., contractors. For more than a fortnight 90 engines and tenders were anchored on the bridge railway lines, while an army of engineers tested stresses and strains on every bridge member, in varying temperatures. A spell of unseasonable cold weather gave them the exact comparison they needed.

The bridge stood a strain of 7G60 tori 3, which is far more that it will ever be called upon to carry in the ordinary course of traffic.

It is expected that a normal time-table of trains and trams will be running over the bridge on March 20, the day after the official opening. Every hotel and boarding house in the city and near suburbs has been booked to capacity to hold the thousands of visitorsfrom other States and New Zealand who are even now congregating for the bridge

opening. To witness the actual ceremony of the opening, which Mr. Lang will perforin, three huge stands will be built, tlio largest to hold 10,000. Two others, slightly smaller, are in course of construction, and these are being specially strengthened so that no accident will mar this page in the history of New South Wales. The procession and pageant will oe nearly 3000 yards' long, and the floats will represent all angles of history, and particularly those of New South Wales. A float, depicting the landin" of Captain Cook, will be prominent. Thirty-two bands will march in the procession, and these will include a moutliband manned by the New South Wales Harmonica Club, and a gum-leal band provided by pure-blooded aborigines.