Memories of yesterday
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Mhile young Joanne is just starting out, Stockport reader Harry Warburton has been involved with haulage for 65 years and still takes an active interest in the firm he founded in 1947, with £100 of demob money.
I'm grateful to Harry, now 83, for sending these pictures of his early days on the road. The black and white snap was taken in the 1930s when Harry, then 19, worked for CE Kitchen taking regular loads down to Barrow-in-Furness. He recalls being stopped for speeding in his Albion 127 four-potter and accused of doing 40mph in a 30mph limit. It turned out the clock was 10 miles fast. "In one year I did 65,000 miles ■,,44 and never touched it," he recalls fondly, "It was the finest wagon in the world at that time—that and the Leyland." Both were British; made in the days when we still had manufacturing industry worthy of the name.
After the war, in which he fought on several fronts including North Africa and Salerno, Harry went into business in 1947 on his own account delivering groceries to food retailers in Lancashire and Yorkshire. "It was the worst winter ever," says Harry. "The Pennines were white with snow till June." In the late fifties he was running two ERFs, a BMC and a Commer (pictured).
Today the firm, run by his daughter Jane, still has four vehicles on general haulage: a pair of venerable Leyland Clydesdale workhorses and a brace of ERFs. Still British after all these years.
Yellow rag to a bull?
ed fire engines area hazard, according to a New York eye specialist, who says the Big Apple would get its fires put out more quiddy and safely if its fire engines were yellow.
Optometrist Stephen Solomon reckons red is a colour of "emotion and arousal" but not very visible. (try telling that to a bull—Ed). Red vehicles are three times more likely to crash than yellow ones so thousands of accidents could be avoided every year if fire engines were greenish-yellow, Solomon believes. The International Association of Fire Chiefs demurs: "Red is traditional," it says. What about the colour of fire itself? Is it visible enough?
God on his side
Dn elderly clergyman i from West Bromwich driving a tiny electric car had to be escorted off the M5 by police for his own safety and that of other road users. Walking stick propped inside his miniscule vehicle, the cleric was heading for • Birmingham at 5mph, driving on the hard shoulder, against the traffic. The police, bless 'ern, put him on a safer route (bus perhaps? —Ed). Having God on your side is all very well, but there are limits.