ESCALATING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19250, 14 August 1924, Page 8

ESCALATING.

NOVELTY IN SYDNEY. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 6. Milson’s Point, known by every New Zealander - who has visited Sydney, as the big terminus for the Vast traffic by., ferry, train, and tram, on the northern side of the harbour—it was known sometimes as “Thril Ison’s” Point because of the ooocasional sensations afforded to train passengers —has ceased to exist. Before long there will rise round .about it the big workshops for the erection of the Sydney Harbour bridge. There has taken the place of Milson’s Point, although the same name is retained, another and bigger terminus a few hundred yards away, in Lavender Bay, to meet the new order of things, consequent upon the building of the bridge. The big change over, which called for something like organising genius, and which was effected without the slightest bother, marks another step in the extraordinary advancement of Sydney. And the switching over of the vast North Shore traffic to Lavender’ Bay, leaving old Milson’s Point a gaunt, empty ghost, a dead shell of beams and a thousand memories, there has come another novelty to Sydney, the escalators, wonderful moving stairways, which whi/.z people, without the necessity for walking, from the boats to the trams and vice versa at the rale of from 81/OO to 10,000 an hour. In the centre there is an ordinary stairway for the few who prefer to walk, and for those who desire it there also an elevator. ... It will be some time before the joy of escalating will have ceased to thrill dwellers on the North Shore. It is a thing of unceasing joy, not only to the small boy, but to their sedate elders, who step on or off the escalators with all the enjoyment that one takes a seat in a scenic railway Some day, when escalating is no longer an enjoyable sensation, men will travel up and down these strange devices, nonchalantly smoking pipes, and burned m newspapers; flappers will cease to express a quivering ecstacy in shy giggles and laughter as they ascend and descend. But that day is a long way off. The moving stairways have evolved a new race on the North ‘Shore—a race of expert escalators.