There is a God.............

As an emotional pimply schoolboy of 14 ( in 1954 ) I watched as the
last New Plymouth NZ Birney jolted into the Fitzroy "Barn".

To me this was the end of a love affair with these little red and
cream tin trams that I lived with and had ridden in from a time early
in the forties when I had been delivered safely to Earth by a
misdirected Stork which deposited me to the Borough of Hastings in
Hawkes Bay ( On the East Coast of NZ ).

Perhaps his destination was intended to be Napier, where a tram
system unfortunately been destroyed by a disasterous earthquake in
3rd Feb1931.

My ever resourceful mother, bless her, noted that an an early age
(Two weeks) That I was showing a keen interest in trams.... and so to
shut me up the family packed up and moved over to the West Coast
province of Taranaki where there exsisted the town of New Plymouth
with its ten tram fleet.

My earliest recollections are of Westown where we lived and I went to
school ( I did so too !!)..... which was the route on which the
Birneys were built to run in 1921,
This they did until the line closed in 1949, then were used on the
rest of the system, lasting to that fatefull closing night, 23rd
July 1954.

So here we are 48 years down the tracks......and far from being
forgotten in the mists of time, the little Birneys of the world are
alive and well thanks to the mediums of photography, museums and the
PC.

And isn't it wonderful to have an understanding owner / moderator of
this Egroup who lets the boundaries slip, so that we of the antipodes
can see but a sample of the American cars.

WGB

PS.......What about some info on those UGLY early low floor stepless
Perth and Brisbane cars ????














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