BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 60
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BY THE HAWK
• A monster tractor is threatening to debut at next year's Commercial Motor Truckfest at Peterborough, during the May bank holiday.
Owner, designer and builder George Hooker, plans to put the White Dragon into battle for the world's wheelying record at Truckfest.
He also plans to use the 10tonner to crush a bus, in a tug of war with the other monster, White Thunder, and to help rip up a police car. Hooker does not expect to beat White Thunder's record of crushing 48 cars in 54 seconds — despite Dragon's two vee-10 air-cooled diesels which pump a cool 1,000hp through a 39-speed box.
• A 1957 Bristol Lodekka has just driven around the world, non-stop for 384 days for the charities Save the Children and Intermediate Technology (see below). The three-man crew, retail manager Richard Steel, shopfitter John Weston and bus driver Hughie Thompson, left London on 5 November 1988 and have been travelling ever since through 18 countries, covering 87,000Icm (54,000 miles) to earn a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
The Bristol Lodekka, complete with nine-litre Gardner 6LW diesel engine, was chosen for the journey on advice from Top Deck Travel because of the vehicle's "simplicity of design and durability".
The bottom deck was used as a kitchen and store and the top deck was fitted out with bunks, a bathroom with manual-pump shower, gas fires, sun-roof and water tank.
Tropical radiators and air coolers were added, and a long-range fuel tank — which didn't help when a voodoo curse was slapped on the bus in Rio . . . • Cave Wood recently transported the very latest cupola style canvas and metal frame big top across Europe from Italy direct to the Chipperfield Circus headquarters at Chipping Norton. There it was greeted by a trio of circus elephants who wanted to inspect the goods before they were unloaded. This is not unusual apparently — the photograph shows an elephant called Sally inspecting a similar load some years ago. Elephants obviously take their trunking services very seriously.
• Last week Sheffield Council road safety officer Steve Kenny drank a bottle of wine, jumped into his car and went for a drive, with the local police recording his every move. It was all part of the city's Christmas 'Don't drink and drive' campaign; Kenny was out to stress the point that driving control is ruined by drinking.
He drove round a driving skills course marked out with bollards at Lightwood Driver Training Centre, once when sober, and once after his tipple. On the first occasion, Kenny successfully completed the course in a car he had never driven before. With a skin full he drove straight into a bollard, which wedged itself beneath the centre of the rear bumper, and stayed there for the rest of the course.
Both Kenny's attempts were recorded on video by the local police for broadcast on the local television stations as a warning against drink driving.
Sheffield council's principal road safety officer assured the Hawk: "Stuart will be driven home. He will not be allowed to drive on the public road."
• The greater crested newt appreciation society must be working overtime. In Lincolnshire a proposed new route for the A46 across Claxton Moor has been re-aligned to avoid cutting through the newts' habitat.
And in Clwyd, North Wales, road planners have assured the Nature Conservancy Council that they would re-house the geater crested newts — which breed in a pond on the proposed route for improvements to the Penyffordd station to • Operations staff at the recently opened Leon House, Croydon, base for Mondial Assistance (UK) meet some odd requests during their routine shifts.
"Only the other day," says marketing manager Geoff Tyler, "we had a call from a drive saying he was having trouble changing his front wheel. Whei our emergency breakdown vehicle reached the scene the crew found the car on its roof in a field!"
Then there was the man who phoned from his car in a traffic jam complaining he couk not get the Radio 2 road reports. He wanted a breakdown van to be sent to rectify the fault . . .
• Perry the parrot (see below`, doesn't like to go anywhere without his owner, Lord David Strathcarron, (left), who is president of the Vehicle Builders and Repairers Association. He even took him along to the official opening of the new Mill House Group factory in November. How tweet. Alm pictured is Jim Greenhalgh, MHG managing director, in front of a new Locomotorsbuilt demountable mobile command unit for the London Fire Brigade.
• A Wiltshire haulier suffered a slight hiccup in operations last week when his lorry containing £300,000 worth of champagne and wine was stolen.