TRAMWAY EXTENSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20598, 24 June 1930, Page 10

TRAMWAY EXTENSIONS.

START AT MOUNT EDEN,

RAILS TO LANDSCAPE ROAD. WORKS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. Tenders closed yesterday for the excavations required to be carried oiit in connection with the Mount Eden tramway extension. A contract will be let in the next day or two and by the beginning of next week the work will have commenced in earnest. A quantity of material is already on the ground. This is the fourth tramway extension to bo undertaken by the Transport Board in accordance with the £624,000 loan authorisation of May, 1929. It was estimated at that timo to cost £44,860. All the extensions set down for completion in the first two years of the programme, namely, Point Chevalier, Dominion Road and Remuera, have been finished within a single year or in half the schedule time. The Mount Eden extension, now being commenced, was originally intended to bo tho first in the third year's programme. Instead, it is being commenced in the second year.

Work is starting at tho present tram terminus at Pencarrow Avenue and the tracks will bo carried out as far as tho end of tho concrete at Landscape Road, a distance of 62£ chains. Whether tho lines will bo carried further to Mount Albert Road, skirting the Three Kings, is at present problematical. Tho Transport Board has announced its determination not to proceed further than Landscape Road until tho main road is paved in permanent material tho whole distance. This is a work that will have to bo done by the Mount Roskill Road Board. Tho Point Chevalier extension is now practically completed, tho rails having been laid as far Poyit Chevalier Beach. Trams will bo running over it in tho not distant future.

The Transport Board intends to put the Richmond Road extension in hand simultaneously with Mount Eden, at least as far as half tho total length of tho extension is concerned, and work is about to start at the present tram terminus. The plans for the first section have been completed and only a few formalities remain to be attended to. Edt-ndale, apparently, will be the last of the nxtonsions to be carried out.

Of the minor track-laying operations «et down in tho programme being carried out with the 1929 loan, the Stanley Street loop lias been completed and a start was made last week with the new railway station loop. Tho last of these jobs, the duplication of tho line near the Onehunga terminus, has now been practically completed and will bo in use very shortly.