TRAMCARS COLLIDE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 104, 27 January 1938, Page 10

TRAMCARS COLLIDE

Accident On Wadestown Hill PASSENGERS SHAKEN Meeting at the end of a loop on the single-track Wadestown line, two Wellington tramcars collided last night and were partially derailed. The halfdozen passengers in each car were alarmed and shaken but not hurt, although some of the woodwork on each ca r was splintered and windows were •broken. The line was blocked for the remainder of the night’s running, the service being run to the city side of the derailed cars. The accident happened on the incline and near the top of the hill, where the line traverses its own right-of-way between Moorehouse Road and Pitt Street. The tracks are duplicate above the place where it happened, and single below. The 9.50 p.m. ear from Wadestown was descending the hill and about to cross from the double track to the single track about the same time as a car bound for Wadestown was to go from the single-track length to the double-track length. They met in a glancing collision which splintered projecting woodwork along the lengths of both and forced the leading bogie of each ’off the rails, the two cars coming to rest exactly alongside each other. The two bogies, wrenched far out of their normal positions, ploughed into the clay beside the tracks and stopped the cars. The noise of the impact and the cries of the frightened passengers brought people hurrying from houses in the neighbourhood, but they found there was no need for their help. A tramway breakdown gang was soon present with jacks and chains preparing to lift and drag the cars back on to the rails.

At midnight the -line had not been reported clear.