EVEN THE THEI
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ETER GAVE UP!
Taking a load of furniture to
I-winter by NORMAN H. TILSLEY IDID not appreciate just what I was letting myself in for when I suggested to the managing director of a Newhaven (Sussex) factory that, having recently completed a journey in an A-licensed tanker to Northern Germany, it might. be a good idea if I could accompany one of his C-licensed pantechnicons to Italy, via the Brenner Pass, for the purpose of writing a similar article on driving conditions, Customs and language difficulties as they are experienced by the crew of a British vehicle working on the Continent. True, in England, we were going through a patch of severe winter weather at the time, but I felt sure that by the time the arrangements were completed the thaw would have set in and the snow and
ice gone.
It did not turn out that way at all. With reports coming in of near-impossible conditions being experienced by MonteCarlo rally drivers along part of the route we were to take, I hardly expected to be told two days later over the phone that the trip was " on " for the following Monday, and it was with some misgivings that I set out through the snow and ic for Tilbury to rendezvous with vehicle and driver at the gant way of the m.v. " Cerdic Ferry ", preparatory to embarkin for Antwerp.
The vehicle was a standard Dodge rigid four-wheeler, powere by a Leyland diesel engine, with a body specially built t meet T.I.R. carnet requirements by B. Walker and Son Ltd
of Watford. It is one of three vehicles belonging to Beva Funnell Ltd., manufacturer of reproduction furniture, whic are permanently employed carrying furniture to Italy, Franco Germany, Scandinavia and Switzerland. Other than specir passing mirrors to assist the driver when overtaking on tt " wrong " side of the road, and certain additional fore and a body lighting, the four-month old Dodge in which I was 1 travel had had no major adaptations made to it for Continent; operating.
The driver—Ronald O'Neill ("Ronnie" to his friends)—wa I soon discovered, ideally cast for the role of driving abroal
This ex-regular Fleet Air Arm petty officer has been employe
driving solely on the Continent for the past 18 months. Tt trip we were about to make was his third to Milan, and it w;
typical of the man that his first words to me, when we me were an assurance that, with the help of the snow chains ar all the spares he was carrying, we would get over the Brennt come what may.
The spares that O'Neill carried included a variety of engir gaskets, a set of water hoses, a complete replacement of bulb
a set of rings and a fairly comprehensive tool kit, not I mention an injector repair kit, two gallons of water in a plast container, and a puncture repair kit.
O'Neill had left Newhaven at 11 a.m., on the Monday, ar his vehicle was the last to be backed through the huge doo of the " Cerdic " before she sailed promptly at 5 p.m.
Any premonition that we were in for a rough time w dispelled as soon as we had settled aboard. A message fro one of O'Neill's driver colleagues who had come across the "Cerdic" the previous evening was passed to us by oi of the stewards—" Brenner is O.K." We plotted our rou in the drivers' "club room" after dinner, surrounded by mar and varied maps. From Antwerp, where we were due arrive first thing the next morning (Tuesday), we were to cro
into Germany at Aachen and take the Autobahn southeastwards to Cologne, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Munich, and across the Austrian border at Kufstein. Then, after passing through Innsbruck, we would climb the Brenner Pass and enter Italy at Brenner, and then would drop steadily down through Bolzano and Trento, and join the Autostrade (Italy's equivalent to the Autobahn) at Verona for the run through Brescia to Milan. "If all goes well, we should get there by Thursday," O'Neill remarked as we made our way to the bar.
But all did not go well, After a peaceful night at sea, we were awakened by the noise of the " Cerdic " ploughing through almost solid pack-ice in the Scheldt estuary. Because ice had displaced or sunk many of the marker buoys, navigation into Antwerp was only possible in daylight, and we were not, in
fact, able to disembark until 6 p.m. on the Tuesday—too late, we decided, to reach the German frontier at Aachen before the Customs dosed for the night.
We booked into the Antwerp Docks Hotel for the night— first-class accommodation with central heating and telephones in every room. The cost without breakfast was just over £1.
A fairly early start was made the next morning (Wednesday). While O'Neill went to the Customs office to collect his carnets. tax books, etc., I fitted a "Moto Meter" temporarily to the bumper of the vehicle, partly to test the instrument, and partly to give us some indication of outside temperatures. I carried an ordinary mercury thermometer with me as well, but this disintegrated in the extreme cold soon after we got under way. The temperature when we left Antwerp was minus 8-5°C about 15 degrees of frost Fahrenheit. The cab temperature was zero.
As we reached the motorway just outside Antwerp. the snow started, but the roads were clear and visibility was good. Traffic was fairly heavy and consisted mainly of goods vehicles mounting tanks of every size and description. Because of an almost complete freeze-up of canals, fuel normally carried by barge was having to be moved by road, special dispensation being given to hauliers by the Belgian authorities to meet this emergency. We reached HasseIt about two hours after our initial start from Antwerp, and came off the motorway on to what appeared to be minor roads. These were snow-covered and somewhat " tricky", especially through the towns of Tongeren and Vise. As we were approaching the Aachen border 1 noticed that the temperature outside had dropped to minus 10°, but inside the cab—thanks to the heater—it was plus 10°C,
We joined a long queue of vehicles from every European country, waiting to pass through the Belgian Customs at Hanset. Here we sought out our agent, who prepared the necessary tax forms and saw us through. Running sealed under a T.I.R. carnet, we were not, of course, required to open the vehicle for inspection, and the whole crossing, through both Belgian and German Customs, took a mere 40 minutes. There was a very slight difficulty on the German side because of language. It took us a few minutes to realize that one of the officials wanted to know the number of days we were going to be running in Germany, the address of the owner of the vehicle, and its registration number. We changed some of our travellers' cheques at the exchange bank situated on the border and were soon passing through Aachen, and on into Germany.
This was my first experience of driving along the Autobahn. The dual carriageways were completely clear of snow, as indeed were the lay-bys which are provided' at short regular intervals. The snow was deep on both sides of the roadway; at places where drifting was likely, special snow fences had been erected and had proved very effective.
The vehicle at this stage was behaving beautifully. O'Neill kept her travelling at an average of 45 m.p.h. The cab was warm, the engine noise not excessive. After 50 minutes of Autobahn running, O'Neill was forced to change feet on the accelerator, He had "pins and needles ", apparently—" The spring is too strong under the accelerator," he told me. I tried the accelerator, at a later stage, and could only agree.
It took us just over an hour and a quarter to reach Cologne, where the Autobahn skirts the city to the south and passes over the River Rhine, which was frozen from bank to bank in places. After Cologne the road became rather rough and single line traffic was in operation.
At regular intervals along the Autobahn are petrol stations and restaurants, known as " Tanken und Rasten ", and we made use of these facilities all the way through Germany, The first that we stopped at was at Heiligenroth, near Limburg. where we had soup, rump steak with chips, fried onions and peas, and fruit salad and tea. This really excellent meal cost us Dm, 9 (15s. 4d.) which included a 10 per cent service charge. On returning to the vehicle, I discovered the outside and cab temperatures to be, respectively, minus 14 and minus
0-5°C. The snow, off the Autobahn, was deep, crisp and even.
Giant army tankers and large, sleek Plymouths, Oldsmobiles, etc., driven by rimless-spectacled, cigar-smoking service personnel, indicated to us. near Frankfurt, that we were in the heart of the U.S. Army zone. On hills we could leave the giants behind but on the level they would come thundering past with exhausts growling.
We stayed the night at an excellent motel at BruchsaI, just short of Karlsruhe—somewhat weary, and a little eyesore from the snow. We had covered just 324 miles from Antwerp. Here, our room was really luxurious—central heating, telephones, beautiful furnishing, all for Din. I 1-40 (just over £1).
It was at Bruchsal on Thursday morning that our first major setback with the vehicle occurred. The temperature was minus 20°C (about 36' of frost, Fahrenheit). Putting it mildly, we had difficulty in starting the engine. The cold starter was not functioning—" It's always been useless," O'Neill told me. But with the aid of an Aerostart sprayer which I directed into the air intake, the engine grudgingly turned over, and started, giving off a cloud of black smoke of such density that we would have been ordered off the road if observed in England! So far so good. Having cleared the ice off the windscreen and packed our cases into the very confined cab—the cab seemed to me to be too small for two people and their kit and documents on a Continental run—we pulled slowly out on to the Autobahn heading in the direction of Stuttgart and Munich.
After only 10 minutes' running, the radiator temperature gauge indicated that something was very wrong. The needle was giving an abnormally hot reading. We pulled in to the next lay-by and as soon as the engine was stopped we could hear the radiator boiling. We removed the grille in a cloud of steam to see if there were any leaks, but discovered none—only solid icicles clinging to the rear of the radiator. After lett:ng things cool off, O'Neill removed the cap to discover that most of the water and antifreeze had gone. We next discovered that the water in a two-gallon container, carried in the cab
to meet such an emergency as this, was frozen solid, We decided to push on slowly to the next garage and hope for the best. As soon as we were under way the same thing happened again, and we had to crawl into another lay-by to cool the radiator off. by now, with no heating whatsoever in the cab, we were beginning to feel the cold. Our breath was now freezing on the inside of the cab windows which hindered visibility somewhat.
We eventually limped into a garage just outside Karlsruhe; obtained two tins of German antifreeze (costing Din. 15.60 (a. 8s.) for three litres) and poured one of them into the radiator, We could literally hear the ice cracking up. The attendant gave us a can of warm water to top up with. It was getting on for noon before we eventually got started again, with the temperature gauge back to "normal ". The heater started to function almost immediately—it was this. we decided, that had frozen solid and caused the blockage of the system —and we thankfully proceeded.
The snow started just after we had crossed over the frozen River Danube (far from blue) near Gunzburg. Fine crisp snow it was at first, but then it turned into a blizzard with visibility down to a minimum and a howling wind. Vehicles overtaking us caused the snow, which was now settling on the Autobahn, to swirl and sweep across the windscreen, making driving difficult and dangerous. We ploughed on and on, and by now only one of the carriageways was clear of thick snow.
We reached Munich at 4.40 p.m. during the evening rush. Icy cobblestones and tramlines, pedestrians rushing through the snow, and signposts, including Autobahn direction indicators, covered with snow, made driving a little dodgy, as O'Neill described it, in one of his many understatements. We eventually got clear of the city and on to the Salzburg road. A few miles short of Rosenheim, with a blizzard raging and the Moto Meter showing a minus 24°C reading outside, we came across the resthouse at Irschenberg and decided we had had enough. Our day's run was 219 miles, which I considered not to be at all bad, considering the delays and the weather.
The accommodation at Irschenberg was first-class—plenty of heat, good food and, again, luxurious rooms With telephones. etc. We had a dinner of soup, steak, mushrooms, peas, chips. fruit and coffee for Dm. 22.60 (£2) for the two of us and our beds for the night cost a further Dm. 6.25 (11s. 2d.) each.
It snowed most of that night, and when we awoke on the Friday morning, the outlook did not seem too promising. The vehicle, when we reached it, was very frozen. It was white all over, with great icicles hanging down beneath it. It was difficult to say what temperature it was outside. The meter only registered down to minus 25°C, and the needle was indeed on the minus 25 mark. It wasn't much warmer inside the cab, minus 18°C. This time she would not start even with the help of Aerostart. A few minutes later O'Neill reported that the dery had waxed. The hand primer was obviously not working, and we discovered that the fuel in our half-filled tank had waxed too. We were both beginning to feel somewhat cold and rather downhearted. We lit cigarettes and stamped about in the crisp snow to keep warm. And then—a brainwave O'Neill always carries a small camping bottled-gas heater in his suitcase, on which he boils a small kettle for brewing tea.
Within seconds we had the gas lit, and while I lay beneath the engine priming with the handpump, O'Neill ran the gas jet along the feedpipe and underneath the pump. After 25 minutes the fuel started to flow, and within seconds the engine (belching even more black smoke than before) was ticking over.
We topped up with dery and were told by the attendant that German fuel contained an antifreeze additive. We took on 174 litres (38i gallons) which cost Dm. 99-20 (£8 16s.).
Just 25 minutes after we had left Irschenberg we noticed the temperature gauge swinging slowly upwards to the boiling position once more and decided we would have to stop again. In the next lay-by we repeated the performance of the preyious morning and poured the remaining tin of antifreeze into the radiator. Again it was the heater that had frozen up.
We eventually got going and arrived at the German/Austrian border at Kufstein at 10,45 a.m. Our agent took us through the Customs and we paid about £2 to the Austrian officials for running through their country, and passed through the barrier at 11.10 a.m. Here the roads were not so good, and we had to watch out for shop signs and upper storeys of houses which were overhanging the roadway just above us. At Innsbruck we had to stop to chip the ice and snow away from the wheelboxes. O'Neill told me that on a previous trip the weight of the snow had pulled away exposed wiring and left him without rear lights.
As soon as we left Innsbruck we started steadily climbing towards. the Brenner Pass, some 30 miles ahead. We had decided earlier to chance it without our wheel chains, although we noticed several vehicles—mainly large Italian tankers with drawbar trailers—with them on. The vehicle took the climb in good stride. We kept in fifth gear for most of the way, changing down only when forced to, behind a slow moving vehicle ahead. Overtaking was particularly dangerous, and overhanging rocks forced O'Neill to pull into the -centre of the road several times, which caused some anxious moments, especially when this happened on a bend.
As we got higher, so it got colder, until, when we finally reached Brenner, the Moto Meter ceased registering again and, on -asking a Customs official, I was told that the temperature was, in fact, minus 29°C.
Here we had a long Customs delay. It being our destination country, the T 1.R. seals were broken and the load inspected. We were 2 hr. 25 min. at Brenner altogether, utilizing the time having a meal and changing our money, etc.
The rest of the journey tb Milan was uneventful. As we slowly dropped down from the height of Brenner, so the snow cleared from the road surfaces. The roads themselves were not so good--they were narrow and rough, and the camber was such that O'Neill was constantly having to pull the wheel over to bring the vehicle to the right side of the road again. Negotiating some of the villages between Bolzano and Verona was difficult—one of them being so narrow that only one vehicle can pass through at a time.
When darkness came we ran into an added difficulty—our lights were dipping the wrong way. We were frequently blinded by the undipped lights of angry oncoming drivers.
At Verona we entered the autostrade and paid a 450 lire (5s.) toll. This autostrade, I thought, was nowhere near the standard of the Autobahn. There were very few lay-bys, and signposts were not illuminated as well as they might have been. We ran into patches of fog, but were gratified to find that the temperature outside the cab was back to a modest minus five. We paid another toll at Brescia and found accommodation on the outskirts of Milan late at night..
The next morning. Saturday, we drove to our final destination, a few miles from the centre of Milan—the total mileage for the whole journey from Newhaven, 1 calculated, was 1,073.
Being Saturday, there was no labour available to unload the vehicle. It took about two hours for the two of us to offload the 1 l 1 pieces of furniture—but at least we were warm again.
Because of the delays I had to return home by rail. For O'Neill, the story did not end at Milan. He had to re-deliver half of the furniture to Padova, near Venice, and spend the week-end there. After a lonely journey on which, among other things, he had a complete brake failure and further freeze-ups, he caught Thursday's ferry from Antwerp and arrived home late on Friday.
It was just a routine run for him.