WALLACE STREET TRAM

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 67, 19 March 1924, Page 6

WALLACE STREET TRAM

PLANT AND MATERIAL ON HAND.

A very lively morning was spent by the two Corporation employees detailed to pilot tho steam shovel from the Ulvdo quay depot to Wallace street, where" it is shortly to begin biting oil tho top of the dilhoult rise, lor the.navvy is primarily a digger, and nol a traveller. Given sulncient time and a wide enough and straight enough road, the shovel will get anywhere, but corners do not suit it at all. Steering is done by clutching or declutching the caterpillars on one side or the other, and as that clutching must bo done from the road, not from the driver's seat, it is rather a slow business. Certainly tho navvy will take a corner in great style, spinning on her tail, as it were, but if she spins just a trifle far the direction must be corrected by another clutching on one side and "a declutching of the other caterpillar track. Jiven on n straight run of any length the machine will not ' run dead straight in practice, theory notwithstanding In a forty-acre paddock the navvy would get from point to point fairly simply probably by running on long tacks "till the working point was somewhere handy, but a city road certainly presents difficulties. Although two men actually handled the machine, something over two-score freely proffered advice, but even so, the trip occupied about four hours

The actual heavy excavation work -Brill not be commenced until gas, water, and drainage services are attended to, and will probably occupy a considerable time for a great deal of spoil is to be removed from the lull-top. At its deepest point the cut will bs about ten feet, and will tail away to nothing on either side, the length of the excavation over all to be about fourteen chains, only a comparatively short distance, of which, of course, will be a deep cut. The spoil, unless some, more useful purpose can in the meantime bs found for it in the near vicinity, will probably be run down to Uw Hutcheson street tip. All the necessary material for tlio immediate, prosecution of tno tramway extension scheme is available.