Huge loads travel south by road

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 12

Huge loads travel south by road

Two complete houses and a huge metal cylinder for the Bluff aluminium smelter were transported by road through Ashburton yesterday.

Escorted by Ministry of Transport cars, the loads, carted by large articulated trucks, passed through the borough at about 20 miles an hour.

The first load to pass through was a house, about 27ft wide, bound for the new village at Twizel. It had been built at Christchufch and was escorted to Rakaia by city traffic officers. There it was met by an officer from Timaru, who took It all the way through to Twizel. Later in the day, the cylinder bound for Te Wai Point passed through. The cylinder—l6ft wide—had made slow progress and by the time it reached Ashburton was running one hour and a half late.

In the afternoon another house was transported through Ashburton. This, however, was only shifting

from one borough site to another. It was taken from Mona Square to the Scout grounds in South Street where it was re-sited. The house, which is 40ft wide, took up the entire street as it was moved. The transport of these loads, however, was not without its problems. The senior traffic officer at Ashburton (Mr A P. Dugdale) said that traffic congestion always occurred on narrow roads, and traffic coming from both ways was often blocked. He said traffic officers had to find sections of the road where they could pull over to let the flow of traffic past.