From Bombay to Burmah and Simla to Ceylon.
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Subsidy Models for India. Pushing the Trolleybus. Dennis Enterprise.
From Our Indian Correspondent.
The Supply and Transport Corps of the Indian Army is still talking about more heavy commercial vehicles for the conveyance of stores of sorts in places where the railway is not handy, and there are many such places. Like the mills of the gods, official India moves slowly ; but when a start is made, the business to be done and the orders to be placed are unquestionably worth having. Keep your eye on India. The order to quick march in connection with commercial motors may come at any moment, but must come sooner or later. Even the sleepy East has to move.
Another Attempt to Establish the Trolleybus.
It is, I think, a generally-admitted fact that tramlines in crowded streets are an unmitigated nuisance, more particularly so in wet weather. Of course, from the point of view of the pedestrian on the look-out for a conveyance to take him home, the train service is a genuine blessing ; but from the standpoint of the driver of a motor, wet tram rails and standing tramcars are the invention of the Evil One, for they cause more sideslip, damage, and worry than most other road troubles combined. Anyhow, this is the sort of lecture Sir Salter Pyne is preaching at the moment in the highways and by-ways of the Indian Empire. To be sure, all lecturers have some ulterior object— either to give publicity to some noteworthy information, or to gain some point. The point that Sir salter hopes to gain is the introduction of railless traction into various parts of India, Burma, and Ceylon.
If I mistake not, Sir Salter Pyne was one of the first Europeans to make a name for himself in the almost forbidden land of Afghanistan, which is situated on the north-west frontier of India, and contains a restless population in about the same stage of civilization as the Russians of two or three thousand years ago. This wild territory is governed by the Amir, and it was owing to the friendly connection of these two that Salter Pyne was able to prefix the magic word " Sir " to his name. His connection with Afghanistan was highly creditable and wholly business-like, as I am sure it will be in connection with the trolleybus.
Sir Salter is working his propaganda by means of biograph films illustrating the performances of trackless ears in various English cities. These pictures are intended to prove how much superior trackless cars are in safely and quickly negotiating crowded streets and roads, not exactly in the best possible condition. In towns such cars would be of service along routes not yet tapped by regular tramways. If anybody can make headway with this sort of propaganda out this way, that person is Sir Salter pyrie, and his progress will be watched with interest. I may add that in Rangoon—the place where the oil comes from--railless traction has been solved by the introduction of large motorbuses, as used in London. [And the only practicable way too.—Eu.] These have been introduced by the Rangoon Tramway and Electric Supply Co., Ltd., and are primarily intended to serve those streets and suburbs to which the electric tram is still a stranger. This service has /ecently started, and, so far as I can judge by the number of passengers (nearly all natives) I see on each passing bus, it is likely to pay. But when one comes to think that the managing agents of the Rangoon Tramway Co. are Messrs. J. W. Darwood and Co., Merchant Street, Rangoon, it would be Lather wonderful if anything they introduced did not.
c2 About the Calcutta Motor Transport Co., Ltd.
As I have frequently told you, the day of the commercial vehicle in India had to come. The slowmoving but cheap bullock cart has had its day—a very long day—in the transport of Indian merchandise, but it has now to make way, at all events in the Presidency towns of India and Burma, for the more efficient motor lorry.
Notwithstanding the greater trade of Calcutta and the various attempts that were there made from time to time to forge ahead with motor haulage, Bombay was the first to make a real start. To me, one of the most surprising sights of Bombay was to sec Frere Road almost constantly blocked to other traffic by a constant stream of bullock carts, a mile or so long, slowly wending its way from the docks to various parts of the town. And the appalling cruelty practised on helpless .bullocks by an army of human brutes employed as drivers was another of the sights of "the first city in India" that one fervently hoped to miss, but could not always do so. I am perfectly certain, however, that the advent of the lorry will he considered a regular godsend by Boinbayites, and particularly by that section of them who live near or have business at the docks, for it will sound the death-knell of the bile ultarry, as they call it in Hindustani.
The bullock cart failed to keep pace with the times, so it has dropped out of the race, illustrating, once more, that, in the long run, the fittest survives. But I hasten to add that Bombay is not the only place in which the bullock cart is to be seen at its worst. Strand Road, Calcutta, would take a lot of beating ; while the Howrah bridge, in the same city, with its narrow approaches and wholly unprincipled native policemen, ever on the prowl to extort bribes frcnn bullock-cart drivers, or to harass or arrest them in default, cannot be beaten at all.
But the commercial motor is coming in the immediate future to sweep away all these relics ofthe past and the connected bribery and corruption whichSir F. Halliday, the Calcutta police chief, was admittedly powerless to control. In other words, the prospectus of the Calcutta Motor Transport Co. Ltd., has been issued. The capital is fixed at 2100,000, divided into ,21 shares, of which 80,000 are to be issued at once. I am informed that Messrs. Dennis Bros., Ltd., manufacturers, Guildford, have taken up 11,375 of the shares on offer, the balance being available to the public.
The managing agents are the Planters' Stores and Agency, Ltd., Mission Row, Calcutta, who have gamed experience by running a motor lorry service between Gauhati and Shillong, in the Province of Assam. Better still, the new company has managed to secure a really strong board of directors. These include : Mr. Shirley Tremearne, who is director of numerous successful Calcutta concerns and the proprietor of a leading weekly commercial newspaper ; Mr. Victor Murray, the head of the South British Insurance Co. and interested financially in many companies; Mr. W. H. Phelps, a leading municipal commissioner and a prominent man of business ; Mr. A. Clifford Earp, the general manager of the GauhatiShillong Motor Transport Co., Ltd. ; and several other gentlemen, native and European, who are not so well known to me. 1 wish this venture every success, and trust that in my next letter I shall be able to record that the required share capital has been fully subscribed. A. or C.