KITE WIRE BREAKS POWER

Evening Star, Issue 23352, 23 August 1939, Page 5

KITE WIRE BREAKS POWER

LYTTELTON RAILWAY SERVICE STOPPED [Per United Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, August 22. This morning someone flew a kite with.* fine copper wire instead of a string attached to it over the 11,000voli feeder which carries electric’power from Addington to Woolston for the Christchnrch-Lyttelton electrified railway. The kite-string came down across this feeder wire and the ljsoo-volt overhead gear of the railway line. The electric power was interrupted, the electric train services delayed l , a railway employee narrowly escaped a fatal electric shock, and members of the public'were exposed to. the same risk. The interruption to the power supply came just about 10 a.m. Patrol officers of the Public Works Department set out to find the cause of the break, and a crossing keeper at Ensor’s road provided the necessary clue when he informed the patrol that he had seen an electric flash some distance down the line. A train which pulled in to Woolston station carried a further clue to the cause of the stoppage, because it was trailing a long length of fine cottoncovered copper wire. Meanwhile, a further length of this wire had been found by the patrols hanging from the overhead railway wires. Because it looked like a piece of string suspended, the length of wire was not at first regarded with suspicion, and a railway surfaceman was about to pull it down. Fortunately—for the hanging wire was then carrying I.SOO volts—an electrical equipment officer warned him not to touch it.