inions and Queries
Page 49
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Prevent Another Fuel Famine
1E recent strike of fuel-tanker drivers has exposed glaring weakness in the general set-UP of this id, highly geared as it now is to mechanization', and :h will become increasingly more ,sa. as the years vess.
et it be said that the particUlar dispute between iloyers and men is. not the point of this letter, but practical demonstration resulting from the strike is ital concern to every member of the public. That fuel supplies of London should start to dry up in e days is appalling, for a similar situation could arise other methods than strikes.
.pplied to the whole country the entire means fce ribution, including all the essential services, could immobilized within a week. What is worse, there is alternative to fall back on, as the horse population fallen in an alarming degree and the farms are hanized to the tune of over 300,000 tractors. The te of battery-electric vehicles is not overlooked, but r numbers are not large enough to feed and clear railheads, and the railways would automatically ke. •
he hard facts, unpalatable as they might be, are that country's existence is .hitched to the internal'
ibustion engine and road transport.
he Government realized the gravity of the situation icting promptly. The Minister of Transport should 7 give thought to any factor which will lessen the act of a recurrence, from whatever quarter any. tre emergency may arise. -Storage installations and stocks should be such that there is a minimum of 'e weeks' supply where it is wanted,at.the.roadside ips and in the hands of bulk consumers.
he oil companies themselves appear to be perturbed 'eating a growing percentage of their own fat "I in Ting out fuel distribution. Consideration should. .efore, be given to the practicability or otherwise of ping" fuel from the refineries and ports to depots he vicinity of inland towns and other points of high sumption, instead of feeding them with an evereasing fleet of road tankers.
ARTHUR R. WILSON, M.I.R.T.E. ilasgow, W.4.
Help the P.S.V. Driver
IE/driver's task of controlling the bus he has to drive is being made harder as more and more ides come on to the over-burdened road system of country. One would think then that the designers 'uses and coaches would do their best to help the Drturiate driver by providing him with a type of icle which is easy to handle, which affords him a d view of the road and which, by its design, affords a measure of seclusion from the passengers.
low let us see what has been produced since the war. The most noticeable change has been the oval of the engine to its new place under the floor. ood idea this, but it has caused an increase in weight, by setting back the front wheels, a much greater 1 has been placed on the front axle, which has made steering noticeably heavier, also it can Cause trouble negotiating narrow roads.
k full-front has been built on to these chassis and a
front exit on a lot of buses; as a result the passengers crowd round the driver when approaching a stop, and they effectively obstruct his view. The bulkhead behind the driver has gone and with a centralor rear-entrance coach he has the passengers sitting around him, with all the consequent noise and distraction that a lot of people, particularly children, can cause.
Two other troubles arise from the removal of the privacy of the driver. The first is misting-up of the windows and not all* operators are so particular about maintenance that a broken de-mister is repaired immediately. Some of the windows affected are out of the driver's reach, so that he cannot even wipe the mist off them. The second problem is the reflection of internal lights on the windscreen; this can be mitigated by inclining the windscreen, but in wet weather this is not highly effective. •
The answer appears to be a vehicle with a longer wheelbase and a full-height partition behind and to the side of the driver. Northern General manage to fulfil this specification with their model, 'S.E.6. They also built a 44-seater with the entrance beside the driver, but it was difficult for a passenger to step beside the driver. if a door had been fitted so as to slide into the partition at the back of the driver when open and to extend the whole width of the vehicle when shut, and had this been controlled by the driver, then the body could have been a good model for other coachbuilders to follow. Other advantages would be seclusion of the driver from the passengers and no glare problem. The appearance was not very nice but "handsome is as handsome, does" as far as a service bus goes.
In order to adapt the design to a coach, a door fitted to the platform could have made the vehicle look much smarter, but this, doubtless, would not have been allowed by the regulations, as it would have placed two doors between the passengers and the outside of th vehicle.
Such a design would not increase the wheelbase unless the rear axle is moved back. To have a long wheelbase one has to revert to a central or rear entrance, and the only vehicle which has that wheelbase, plus a secluded driver, is of course the Leyland-London Transport type T. F. This vehicle combines almost every virtue, except that the operator loses two seats, as a 30-ft. version of the T.F., with an emergency exit on the off side instead of the rear will, I have calculated, seat only 39 people, whereas the present maximum for most operators is 41.
Whitley Bay. TERENCE A. THORPE-BEALE.
Double-deckers on Steep Hills
SOME time ago a group of passenger transport "enthusiasts were discussing with me the hilliest areas in which double-deck buses operate.
We know of a gradient of 1 in $ at.Dyserth, in North Wales, which is served by the standard Lowbridge and Hybridge Leyland P.D.2s, but we would be grateful if any reader could inform us of steeper gradients than the one mentioned, which are operated by double-deck vehicles.
Stockton Heath, D. BAILEY. Warrington, Lancs.