MOTOR-VAN AND TRAM

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 226, 18 June 1919, Page 6

MOTOR-VAN AND TRAM

A SERIOLS COLLISION. A smash tliet reduced a motor-van to a heap of ruins occurred in Lambton Quay yesterday. About one o'clock in tiie nfternoon, H. C. Chambers (of Porirua) was driving a light delivery van towards the Government Buildings. A lady >ras liding with him. Just iu front of the A.B.C. Garage, the off-sido front tyre of the van burst. The vav immediately slewed to the right, and crossed tho path of a double-decker tram, driven by Motormau Tonkins, and bound for Tliorndoii. There was a tremendous impact that threw the vah violently against a power-pole, where it was jammed hard and fast by the tramcar, the front bogey of which was forced oft' the line. The steel van cover was badly damaged, the rear wheels were reduced to fragments, and the general framework of the vehicle was fantastically hammered and twisted. The tram did not escape injury, of course. The front glasswork was broken and the metal uprights, tho stop aiid the apron bore eloquent testimony to the violence of the collision. ' Fortunately, the accident caused no one serious injury. The lady passenger in the motor-van was slightly hurt in the hip, and a few tram passengers .were somewhat jarred, but that was all.' As tho from •' , riion of the van. was projecting over i up-car lines, there was a stoppage or tramway traffic 011 llio Quav for about fifteen minutes. The double-decker could not be backed away from the van, so an up-car had to dras the hapless motorvan 1 from its postion. The dragging process completed what the collision had begun; and if the yan had looked a ruin as it nestled between the tram nnd the centre-pole, it did not lose tho appearance as the steel top fame adrift, and general collnpso set in. Tho debris was soon removed, and twenty or thirty trams were able to resume their running. '