LOOSE LEAVES
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...NI information continues H misleading to find its way Into the columns of the
daily Press regarding oil engines and their possibilities. A few days ago a well-known paper said that a certain municipal corporation, in acquiring a fleet of oil-engined buses, would have the first oil-driven bus service in the world. Considering the growing number of municipalities, in this country alone, that is using oil engines in its passenger vehicles and has been doing so for a year or more, it is astonishing that such absurdly sweeping statements should be foisted upon the public.
WE recently published particulars of a National Physical Laboratory report concerning tests of a set of worm gears made by John Holroyd and Co., Ltd. It is interesting to note that the record shown by this report has now been broken in another series of tests, also on a set of Holroyd-Walker gears. Efficiencies as high as 98.2 per cent. were observed, and, carrying 43 b.h.p. at 1,000 r.p.m., the efficiency was 98 per cent. An important feature is that the efficiency tends to increase with the load, whereas, with previous types, the reverse effect was experienced.
B2 REALLY unbiased opinion of the horse as a means for transport to-day emerged in the course of a discussion with the oldestestablished haulage contractor in London. He had 20 horses. They were there because they were essential to certain contracts which were lapsing. When it was suggested that he would not be without a few horses he promptly replied that he was open to-day to any offer for those animals.
WELSHMEN are proverbially businesslike, but
when travelling in their country recently we came across the nonpareil of opportunists. Having passed a warning "Dangerous Bends," we negotiated the first of them and immediately found ourselves confronted with a notice board, "—, Undertaker. Funeral arrangements efficiently carried out." Thanks to careful driving we did not require his services.
ONE of the unkindest things ever said about com
mercial motor vehicles transpired in conversation with a leading haulier the other day when he said that he thought a commercial motor vehicle became a liability, and not an asset, as soon as you bought it. This compares most unfavourably with Mr. Gosling's view that a heavy vehicle, so long as it remains in the works of the manufacturer, is hardly worth the materials of which it is constructed, and that it begins to be an asset only when it is out on the road earning money.
STRONG protests against the hardships experi enced by exsService men and the general public as a result of some rulings of the Traffic Commissioners reducing services, were recently made at a conference of the Berkshire British Legion. The Commissioners were alluded to as arrogant dictators, who told the public how they should travel, when they should travel, and what they should pay. The Commissioners, it was stated, were injuring exService men who had nut their all into running one or two buses. THE Eastern Traffic Commissioners have had to consider whether coaches used for the conveyance of unemployed persons going to collect unemployment pay are being used strictly as contract carriages. The point is that, whilst the Commissioners are not concerned with how motor-coach parties are constituted, or for what purposes journeys are made, it is their duty to see that, on a vehicle that is used ostensibly as a contract carriage, individual fares are not collected.
Considerable difficulty would, of course, be experienced in such a case in deciding whether a journey performed for this particular purpose constitutes a pleasure excursion or a regular service, but it is understood that if individual fares were collected it could be taken for granted that they were received on the return journey.