The Start of the Steam Wagon Demonstration.

15th November 1927, Page 152

15th November 1927

Page 152

Page 152, 15th November 1927 — The Start of the Steam Wagon Demonstration.

Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

BRINGING steam wagons to LiverJD pool is like bringing coals to Newcastle. The streets seem full of steam wagons—steam, wagons with trailers and steam wagons without, but all heavily loaded. Sky-high most of the, loads seem, bags of flour, stacks of timber and other loads. They have both bulk and weight in every load. And a load in Liverpool is a load. They are used to heavy loads in Liverpool, where the great ocean-going steamers are discharging or taking aboard their huge cargoes every day, each day and all the day. Timber from Canada, wheat from the U.S.A. cold meat from the Argentine—produce of every kind from every clime. Liverpool receives it all, and sends out in return machinery, cotton goods, coal and all the other exports for which this country is famous. And for these heavy loads Liverpool uses steam wagons. In Liverpool they know that the steamer is the lorry for the big stuff—the steamer is the vehicle which is unsurpassed when weight has to be shifted, and .that, no doubt is why every other vehicle in this city is steam-driven.

E46

But even Liverpool is going to be surprised to-morrow when it sees the brave show made by the 12 wagons which comprise this demonstration. The very latest . in steam-wagon construction, carrying bodies equally excellent in design as attractive, in appearance are exemplified in the twelve. Massive in their contours, colourful, but as grace-' ful in their strength as their prototypes in the animal world,the shire horses, these wagons will demonstrate to Liverpudlians how strenuously the manufacturers of steam wagons are working so that their: vehicles may always be not merely abreast of, but ahead of, the times in respect of all those things which are so desirable in a modern transport unit.

As I write 11 of the 12 are present in their garage in the Vauxhall Road all spruce, neat and tidy, ready for the morrow. The Eautinel, I believe, came first, resplendent .1 cream and gold—, there's colouring iar a coal-burning wagon! Garrett's Cf ne next, in a more sedate blue, but also gold -lettered.. Burrell, too, is in blue. Foden arrived, one of each, an undertype and one of the new rigid-type .six-wheelers. Clayton's, too, have sent one of each type, an undertype and an overtype, and they are also defying both the conventions and the claim that steamers are dirty in their colour of blue almost as light as that of the sky itself. Yorkshire, a long wheelbase wagon with the new design of front, is scarlet. Fowler and Mann have sent their lipping wagon, and the eleventh, the Leyland, is the veteran owned by Vineys.

It had been ordained that the order of the procession. should be determined by ballot, and for that purpose the names 'of the nine makers were written down on slips 'of'' paper, which were then folded and thrown into a hat.. The draw was made in the presence of several of the drivers, and resulted aa follows :—Sentinel, Yorkshire, Garrett, Burrell, Fowler, Foden, Mann, Clayton, and Atkinson. That is the order in which the wagons will travel dering the first day. On the second day the first shall be last—that ii to say, the 'Sentinel will move to.the rear of the prooession, leaving Yorkshire to lead, and so on, a change being niade each day.

The Start of the Steam Wagon Demonstration.

Page 152

Tags