A FATAL TRAMWAY ACCIDENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3765, 4 May 1907, Page 3

A FATAL TRAMWAY ACCIDENT.

Lady Passenger Killed. Three Persons Injured. Wellington This Day. A serious tramway a :ci lent occurred at 5.30 o’clock last evening, when a palace-car left the rails at a point level with the top of Nairn street, on the Town Belt, ran ten or fifteen yards on, and toppled over with' a crash on to its side. The car had four or six passengers when it left Brooklyn, Mr and Mrs Thomas Bell, of Murchison, Nelson. Mrs Bell was killed outright, her body being found in a badly mangled condition half in and half out of the car. The head was crushed, and one of her legs broken. Mr Bell escaped with a severe bruising, a cut hand, and a bad shock. The other passengers, one of whom was said to have been a boy, could not be traced last evening, but evidently they escaped injury," as they disappeared from the scene soon after the accident. Motorman Reay was bruised and slightly cut, and Conductor Perkins was injured about the head, and is suffering from shock. The heavy car —one that seats 60 passengers—must have gathered “ way ” on the run down the hill—a grade of about one in 12 to one in 13 —and the rails being wet, the brakes failed to check the pace sufficiently to allow the car to turn round the bend at the point where the accident occured. The line here curves to cross the embankment over the gully, some three or four hundred yards from where the track turns in to Nairn street. It is supposed that the conductor was thrown clear of the car, and his injuries are attributable, circumstantially of course, to the violent manner in which he was hurled to the ground. The motorman was in a glassed-in apartment, and must have received a violent shock when the car left the rails and toppled over. Perkins and Reay, both married men, were removed to their homes. Both are in a serious state. An inquest and inquiry are being held. AN EYE-WITNESS. An eye-witness who was walking homewards at the time towards Brooklyn, and who viewed the accident from the prominent points overlooking the scene, says: —“I was suddenly struck, on looking in the direction of the Nairn estate along which the tram-line runs, to see a car coming down at a tremendous pace. It was travelling faster than a steam engine on a level plain. All the brakes must have failed judging by the pace at which the car was going. So rapid were the movements of the car in its descent that for a short moment one had difficulty in following it. Then it toppled over to the right on the downward run, but here the embankment is only a few feet steep. To the left, a few yards further on, there is a fall of at least one hundred feet and viewing the car as it crashed over the small embankment it seemed as though everybody on board would have been killed outright. Had the car swerved to the left on the downward track nothing could have saved those on it from a frightful catastrophe.