Let Loose at O ly m p i a !
Page 73
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Our Bodywork Expert Allows His Imaginations to Have Free Play at the Show and Suggests a Few Methods of
Brightening It
(=:LYMPIA provides a wonderful show for is. There is much food 11 "for thought as one passes around the stands, and not infrequently thoughts of food arises as one admires the sturdy construction of a banana lorry, or notes that the van which takes the biscuits is appropriately side by side with the judiciously ventilated cheese van. Surely beer can never dull the senses when it is carried in Staybrite tanks !
To what cathedral-like proportions has the furniture van grown! Much energy is spent in grumbling at legislation and its regulations, but far more is expended in devising means for making the best of the situation. It is to be hoped that the Ministry of Transport will not reduce the weight limit for express deliveries, otherwise bodywork will have to be designed like that of the dirigible, or our Lares and Penates will henceforth be piled on platform lorries and covered with sheets of gossamer.
Why Not Demonstrate Horseboxes?
The exhibitor of buses and coaches may demonstrate the comfort of the seating'by inviting visitors to become real passengers, but similar advantages are denied to the constructor of livestock wagons and horseboxes. Yet one remembers at a former show that a patient-eyed Tishy unwound its legs in luxuriously padded surroundings, hut no effigy of Windsor Lad is present this year to prove that he has been backed into the right place.
Perhaps when commercial road transport parades its next biennial stage of development at Earls Court there will be a retinue of stuffed thoroughbreds, cows and other farmyard friends mounted on light-alloy, unclerfrathes, ball-bearing turntables and pneumatic tyres to demonstrate the ingenuities Of loading and unloading.
Those Ample Passengers!
The specialist in horsebox construction WilItell you that a horse should fit just comfortably the width of his padded stall, otherwise the animal makes the journey with an air of nonchalance, leaning to one side. Partitions are arranged to suit the racehorse and hunter, but if the ampler proportions of a farmhorse have to be accommodated, then, with a three-horse box, one partition is removed and the remaining one is placed in the centre. Passengers by coach who may be classified as " not so slender" should, on giving sufficient notice of their intentions to travel, be able to arrange for similar facilities.
What a crowd there would be
around the stand if it had attendant. Rocks of rubber-tyred cows ,and sheep to prove the adaptability of the modern general-purpose lorry. According to the size, number and position of its tenants. so this assembly of model
dwellings may be transformed into large or small flats with low or high ceilings. There are quite half a dozen ways of varying the load and, as all gates, ramps and floors are carried with the vehicle, the return load may be differently arranged from that of the outward journey.
Passing, for a while, to loads inanimate, let us consider the modern refuse collector. Here, with moving floor, the load rides with effortless ease, but when expansively inclined it is frustrated by the gentle violence of a compressing partition. But this compressor is trained only to deal with the normal contents of the domestic dustbin and does not aspire to flatten out discarded bedsteads, or other bulky metal trophies.
Why should the luxury of a moving floor he restricted to shifting unemotional heaps and sacks of stuff, when tired husbands, weary with long hours at the office, would welcome this mode of travel from door to stairs, if only the stairs were similarly furnished. The traveller, called to the bar, but indifferent as to the passage of time, could he assisted to make his exit with mechanical precision.
Every boy Will want to be a fireman, and not an engine-driver, now that one
drives to the conflagration in a sports saloon, and there is in attendance a gleaming refreshment stall, but the youthful aspirant to a chromium-plated hat may be disappointed when he learns that sausage and mashed may not be ordered from a third-floor window.
Such tremendous trifles as engines do not seem to hamper much the intentions of the bodybuilder. Ile has found that one may build the cab right over the engine, with seats to the right of it, seats to the left of it, and so on, with Balaclava thoroughness, and still the mechanism never complains, even when it is stowed away at the rear.
A Way with Wheel-arches.
Then there are wheel-arches which, like M.o.T, regulations, are sent to test Our ingenuity, A slippery hemisphere is transformed into a handy side platform in a van, or, in a small has, a lengthwise seat laughs at it, or it is engulfed by the raised floor of a coach. "Ala! but you can't push a sliding door over me," says the wheel-arch. " Who wants to?" says the bodybuilder, "because I can make a door which travels neatly around you, without obstructing the footpath."
The contribution which transport makes to almost eve:y aspect of the well-ordered social and economic life of the community is represented at Olympia. No one wants to be a passenger in an ambulance, but should the emergency arise there is no more comfortable vehicle at one's disposal than the modern ambulance.
Double-Deckers Pour is Sport.
Everyone will surely travel more intensively now that even the doubledecker makes its appeal with 'rakish outline and embellishments. But is it impossible to tempt the pence and shillings from the travelling public without recourse to modernistic moulding displays and bright colourings? What are the relative merits of depicting the path of a comet across the panels, as compared with a surging display of pigmented billows? Or is any departure front traditional sobriety sufficient to maintain traffic receipts?
Probably this attempt to keep, the vehicle moving, even when it is at rest, will in due course exhaust itself by its very extravagance.
The service bus usually has a more Spartan-like exterior, whether for this country or overseas. The bus, which now operates in all parts of the Empire, in some instances, carries warnings and information in strange languages. The native passenger may read over the open doorway, " Nigojea hata bas itakapo simama." Probably a very free -translation is to the effect that, "even if you hate your mother-in-law, never push her off the bus, especially when it is moving."