bird's eye
Page 59
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
viewby the Hawk
• Promotion winners
At the end of another football season the promoted clubs are rubbing their hands with glee about their financial prospects, playing one grade up next year. The promotion winners in the SMMT league must be similarly pleased. At the ballot in London on Tuesday for places for the Commercial Motor Show at Earls Court, AtkinsonSeddon found themselves promoted from B division to A division and now share the top place on the right-hand side of the centre aisle with Scammell, Thomycroft, Austin and Morris.
• Authors meet
I wonder if, like me, you get a kick out of arranging reunions. Norman Shortland, who is a marketing consultant with Cartransport Ltd and also a director of Coventry City Football Club, obviously does. He is seen in my picture with Dan Pettit, National Freight Corporation chairman, and Joe Mercer, the Manchester City Football Club manager when he brought them together recently at a Coventry City game.
Some years ago Dan, who was a distinguished amateur footballer until 1937, and Joe (a distinguished professional) were coauthors of a football book, and although their paths have followed widely divergent routes since those days there are many who believe that the mortality rate of football managers is only slightly higher than that of transport managers.
IN Trolley investment
Some people save stamps as an investment, others collect antiques, jewellery and paintings but the Sandtoft Transport Centre near Doncaster is working hard to save trolleybuses.
You may recall that colleague Derek Moses said recently that there was a future for trolleys in this anti-pollution age, and it was an opinion which got quite a bit of support. So when Sandtoft holds its "gathering" on September 3, displaying its present exhibits in an effort to raise funds to build a museum for working trolleybuses, it might very well be casting a profitable eye to the future.
In fact if you have any old trolleybuses lying about in the backyard don't throw them out — they could very well be the "in" thing before the end of the decade.
• Cheap sleep
Among the Sunday newspapers, magazines and other publications found in lorrycabs you might soon be seeing a new AA publication called the Budget Guide. It lists more than 3000 inexpensive hotels, guest houses, inns, farmhouses and restaurants throughout the British Isles where, among other things, you can have a jolly good feed for less than £1.
The guide is principally designed for holidaymakers but with such a sheaf holiday season in Britain the inexpensive hoteliers might well consider accommodating a few knights of the road. At 50p for AA members, it's a good buy.
• Ten-wheeled steamer
Scoop! Reynolds Boughton are building a 10-wheeled rigid of 10 x 4 layout. The man in charge of the production is Charlie Gimson. Unfortunately he has been unable to use line drawings and dimensions and is working from a photograph. The product will not be on show at Earls Court but will be seen locally around Bucks.
The most remarkable thing of all is that it's a steamer. My picture reveals all.