Bird's Eye View
Page 45
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TIME changes all things, I know, but it doesn't stop me feeling rather sorry that the British Railways Board has decided to discontinue (with the dissolution of the British Transport Commission) the four-weekly publication Transport Statistics, which the B.T.C. used to publish.
This statistical mammoth (it runs to almost 100 pages per issue) contained the most detailed information concerning railways, buses and B.R.S. about receipts, staff, rolling stock and operations that one could possibly imagine. Apart from its obvious use for comparison purposes, I could usually delve in and, with a little back-checking, come up with some useless but interesting little snippet of information. The B.R.B. says it is considering issuing, each 12 weeks, a booklet containing "certain of the more important railway statistics ". I hope it carries out its idea, and I hope its thoughts on "important "_ coincide with mine.
Meantime, I shall quietly (and perhaps on my own) mourn the passing of a tried and true acquaintance. . .
Road Statistics ?
T WONDER whether the Transport Holding Company will -Iconsider filling the gap, so far as the B.R.S. and Tilling, London and Scottish bus fleets are concerned. There is now, presumably, no medium for publishing their figures.
Quick Off the Mark !
NTOTHING warms this old bird's heart more than a spot of real enterprise and initiative. Hardly had the news of the railways' curtailment of livestock transport services been noised abroad before there dropped on my desk a novel leaflet with the cover seen here. Containing brief details of cattle transporter bodies and of the services available to intending customers, it has been distributed to West. Country livestock hauliers by W. Mumford Ltd., the Plymouth motor engineers and bodybuilders. If everyone in road goods transport is as quick off the mark as this, most people deprived of railway lines will be wondering what all the fuss was about.
Who Pays ?
T HAVE often wondered whether there is any recompense -Ifor people who get injured or suffer damages in helping the police. It seems there is. Last November a lorry driver—Michael Hancock, of Little Wighton, near Hull, was asked by the police to drive into the path of a stolen car heading his way. They thought the car would stop, but it didn't, and in the crash Hancock was injured; a broken finger kept him off work for some six weeks, His employers paid his basic wages white he was away, but he reckoned he was nevertheless £32 out of pocket. This has been put to rights by an ex gratia payment of £50 from the Lindsey standing joint committee, with Home Office approval. It seems that payments of this sort are a national practice. I suppose I should have known this, but didn't.
The question of damage to the lorry (which Hancock does not own) is still being sorted out.
Underpowered
FOLLOWING—despairingly—a fully laden eight-wheeled artic. through the streets of North London recently, I thought the driver was making particularly heavy going of it. An attempt at overtaking gave me a chance to see the cab outline, which identified the 'tractor as an E.R.F. of about 1950 vintage. "Should be enough power there ", I thought. When I finally got round the obstruction I saw how wrong I was: the tractor was a B.M.C. model, of the type which had a similar cab to that once used by E.R.F. Manufacturer's gross rating? 15 -tons!