Bird's Eye View
Page 53
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IHEAR that a haulier in a well-known North Yorkshire training and stabling area has taken over a fleet of railway road horseboxes, and plans to extend his service throughout England and Scotland. He is Mr. George Wilkinson, of Leyburn, who already owned two horseboxes and has now added five 7-ton horseboxes from Leyburn Station. They are petrol-engined, but he plans to convert them to diesel over the next two years and will also turn the three-stall boxes into four-stall. Mr. Wilkinson believes his overheads are lower than those of British Railways.
He is a driver himself when necessary (he has 22 vehicles in all) and his employees will have to be able to drive other vehicles than horseboxes during the off season. At the end of this year's flat racing he'll keep all the drivers on so long as they're agreeable to going on to the other vehicles and doing maintenance work.
The railways have operated the service for 30 years and I gather there has been some opposition to the take-over.
. and Dogs
I THOUGHT I'd seen just about everything in the way A of normal users, but this B-licence bid from the Yorkshire "As and Ds "opens up an entirely new line of possibilities: Simpson, G. A., Hillcrest, Cumboots Lane, Burniston, Scarborough. IV (it.). Occasional stray dogs for North Riding County Council within a radius of five miles.
Better by Coach
"IT is better by coach" is the cry one hears so much these I days. If the Beeching plan goes through many more people will be obliged to travel this way. Yet the experi ence of some would-be-travellers at Victoria Coach Station, London, is hardly the criterion to encourage coach travel, if what I am told was true.
The other day relatives of a colleague arrived at Victoria to spend the night in London before continuing on their way to Sussex. They wished to book in advance for the Sussex journey, but the queue at the booking office stretched out of sight on to the concourse outside. Clearly the evening would have been spent there and, having travelled 300 miles that day, they naturally wanted to go and rest.
That evening they decided they would like to extend their visit to the south. So the next morning they had.to join two queues at Victoria—one for that day's booking, and one for the advance booking. In the first queue they spent half-an-hour, while the second occupied one and a half hours of their time. Bang went the question of sightseeing, and they hardly had time to get lunch and hurry back for the 1.45 p.m. departure.
All was not over! Another queue, this time at the leftluggage office. Panic rose as the departure time approached. By eventually jumping the queue and holding up the departure of the coach for a few minutes all ended well. Apart, that is, from their memories. . .
Day-out Success TALKING about encouraging travel by coach, or, for that matter, by service bus, the Bristol Omnibus Company Ltd. are claiming success with their " Day-Out " tickets. These are available on any Town or Country bus, and for 10s. (adult) or 5s. (child) customers can travel over 300 miles a day, which would normally cost them 30s.
Advertising this facility the company announce that there are now "smart snack bars or cafeteria" at bus stations at Bath, Gloucester, Stroud, Wells, Weston-superMare and Marlborough. These bus stations also mean under-cover travel all the way should the weather turn wet, which seems a decided possibility these days!