From steam to to Paccar
Page 16
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WHILE several manufacturers of commercial vehicles were associated in their early years with steam, few carried on with it into the Thirties, as Fodens did. So it is appropriate that a section on this aspect opens Trucks in Camera: Fodens (Ian Allan £4.95) by E. L. Cornwall.
The final manifestation of the road steamer, says Mr Cornwall, was generally more handsome and always considerably quieter and sweeter smelling that the diesel and petrol-engined goods vehicles that succeeded it. However, this is a 96-page book, with more than 190 better than usual photographs, and steam is finished by page 17, photogenic as those steamers are.
The other chapters are into the Diesel era; The 1950s and 1960s; and Into the 1980s. "Alas!" comments the
author, "efficient design and engineering integrity were not enough to ride the slump in sales brought about by the current world-wide depression; 1980 saw the calling-in by the company of a receiver and its eventual sale to the American transport engineering group Paccar. "The Elsworth business, renamed Sandbach Engineering, continues to produce and service Foden vehicles and is planning to broaden its output with a range of other engineering products. "The pictures in this section illustrate the very wide range of heavy-duty vehicles in the Foden programme when the final blow fell and cover a fair cross-section of the industries and services that use them."
Ian Allan, Terminal House, Shepperton, Middlesex TW17 8AS.