The Church Bank tram crash of 1907, recalled on this page the other week, was a nasty business with many people injured - but at least there were no fatalities.

That point was made to me in a telephone call from reader Ernest Knowles, whose tram-driver grandfather (of the same name) and his conductor colleague died in another early-morning crash in 1925, this time in Idle.

So to the Telegraph & Argus library I sped, to dig out the Bradford Daily Telegraph of Monday, December 7, of that year and read the graphic account of a tragedy earlier that day which could have been much worse if the landlord of an Idle pub and his family had slept at the front of the building rather than the back and if the tram had been carrying any passengers.

Ernest Knowles was 30 and the conductor, Charles Edward Caudwell was 31 on that foggy morning when, at 5.40am, the tramcar ran away as it was proceeding from the shed at Bolton Road to the terminus at Howgate, Idle, ready to set off ten minutes later on its journey to Bradford.

On the final bend, where the track turned sharply to the right from Thorp Garth into Albion Road, it left the rails.

An eye witness was Mr J Wood, watchman at excavations made on either side of the tram track by Corporation workmen seeking a gas leak. He saw the tramcar approaching through the fog at "unusual speed" and added: "I could see the driver, who seemed to be struggling with the brake. He shouted out to me, but what his words were I cannot say. The impression I gained was that the driver thought it would jump the points at the place where I was and overturn and was shouting a warning, but his voice was lost in the noise of the car. I stepped back, the car dashed past me, and then I heard a crash."

It was the noise of the tramcar demolishing a lamp-post and "with tremendous momentum" embedding itself in the front of the Alexander Hotel at an angle of 45 degrees.

Tons of debris, almost the entire front of the building, came crashing down on to the tram car and the landlord and his family (the Brayshaws) would probably have come crashing down as well if they had occupied the front bedrooms.

As it was, they were in the back rooms and, awakened by the tremendous crash, came rushing outside in their nightwear to see what had happened. It was (one of them said later) as if a bomb had been hurled into the house.

The scene that met them was one of devastation. The tramcar was virtually buried beneath falling masonry, which included 6ft-long coping stones.

The police were soon on the scene, along with Tramways Department officials, and a rescue gang began their work. There was no sign of either the driver or conductor as the team toiled to shift the debris. Eventually, after a considerable amount of masonry had been cleared away, they found the body of Mr Knowles, his hand still clutching the controls, "in a terribly mutilated state on what remained of the front platform. The position of the body indicated that the driver had stuck to his post to the last in a courageous effort to bring his car to a standstill."

It took another two hours to discover the body of Mr Caudwell. The report continues: "His body was lying by the tram standard at the corner of the building, and death had undoubtedly been instantaneous, for he was pinned to the ground by a huge coping stone weighing nearly half a ton which lay across his neck. It is not clear whether he was thrown from the car at the moment of impact or had jumped at the last moment in an effort to save himself."

The whole of the glasswork and the framework of both the upper and lower decks of the tramcar were smashed and the controls were twisted and bent "in a grotesque fashion". Rumour sped around that there had been a passenger, but no other body was found and subsequent inquiries revealed that no ticket had been issued on that trip.

The Bradford DailyTelegraph reported that Ernest Knowles, of Otley Road, left a widow and four children - one of them the father of the Ernest Knowles who contacted me. He had been a tram driver for seven years.

Mr Caudwell, of Eccleshill, left a widowed mother. He had worked for Bradford Corporation Tramways for more than five years, but dreamed of having his own farm.