CHARS-A-BANCS AND MIDLAND SPORT.
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Reasonable anticipations which had been entertained in Midland areas of a wide expansion of char-a-basics and other motor. services, threaten to be seriously impaired, as elsewhere, by the recent turn of events. During the summer season there has been abundant enterprise manifested throughout the farreaching territory of which Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, and Sheffield are the main centres, to cater for the wants of travellers by road to the principal race meetings, and in a minor degree to afford facilities to those proceeding to county cricket grounds to witness matches which this year have been invested with more than .ordinary importance.
On all sides there has been evidence of the willingness to pay for services which, in most cases, suffered little by comparison with the time occupied in tortuous railway journeys nor 'upon the score of cost with the rates involved in C/4?
railway trip. The prospect of a continuity of remunerative road work in even fuller volume had been promised with the advent of the football season, in which all the chief Midland centres are engaged. The opening games played, recently at Nottingham brought large contingents by road in well-appointed chars-a-bancs from both the Yorkshire and Potteiies territories, with the certain prospect apparently that, granted a continuation of reasonably profitable prospects to owners of ehars-k-hancs and_ other mechanically-propelled vehicle n, history would repeat itself during the season, seeing that both the Nottingham clubs have still attractive competitors among their provincial rivals, from none of whose centres—except it may be Blackpool—would the journeys, either from the score of expense or distance, have been regarded as impracticable.
Having regard to the prevailing fever for football, and the experience of some previous matches at Nottingham, where notable cup ties were involved, it had been deemed as not beyond the range or probability that some of the enthusiastic supporters of Metropolitan teams might undertake the journey by road, in which case Fulham and West Hans devotees might be expected to be found strongly in evidence at Nottingham as at Leicester.
The prosIlect from the Derby point of view was even more encouraging, by reason of the larger attractibn attaching to encounters in the first. fliaht of the league, but, whilst it is not unreasonable to .assume that purely local journeys, by the ready means afforded by district motorbus and other road facilities, may not be seriously interfered with, it has already become tolerably certain that with the present inordinate advance in the price of petrol, rates may have to be increased to such an extent as to imperil long-distance trips