Ashridge Again
Page 47
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I AST week-end 150 students attended the course on problems of manage ment in transport, held at Ashridge, in conjunction with the Institute of Transport. A post-war innovation, this popular course has been held annually since 1950, and everyone I met spoke in high praise of its organization. Efficiency and informality are a rare but satisfying combination. It is a course to which private hauliers should give greater support. The word " student " is used in its widest sense, as it includes that doyen of international transport, Brig.-Gen. Sir H. Osborne Mance, a regular attender at Ashridge.
Looking Ahead
ATHOUGHTFUL bus company always maintains good relations with the public, however junior. Trent Motor Traction Co. Ltd., recently received a complaint from a distraught mother of twins that the arri-val of half-hourly buses at a stopping point near her house was keeping her 21-month-old babes from their beauty sleep. Furthermore, the twins took a dim view of the conversation of the passengers. So the stop was moved. It is to be hoped that when the twins grow up to be healthy well-rested schoolchildren, they will cheerfully proffer their fares to the bus conductors who left their early years undisturbed.
First—and Last-60
T°mark the final abandonment last Saturday of Liverpool Corporation's trams, the transport department has produced an excellent pictorial record of 60 years' tram operation. In fact, horsedrawn buses were running in the city in 1830. A tram venture was started in 1861, but failed. Trams came back in 1869 and were finally taken over by the corporation in 1897.
The booklet is entitled "The First Sixty Years," but, so far as the trams are concerned, it is the last 60, and few people will regret their passing, picturesque as some of them have been in days gone by.
Hollywood Aspirants.
NOT satisfied with the publicity that they received in "The Lona Haul," Leyland Motors: Ltd., are now having a semi-documentary film made by Film Workshops Ltd. It is entitled " Wheels of the World," and depicts the use of Leylands in various parts of the world. In the Netherlands the camera unit was installed in a bus in service in Amsterdam, so that there will be nothing artificial about the shots.
I imagine that a special wide screen will be needed to accommodate the name, Royal Tiger Worldmaster."
Summary Justice
DRIVERS who receive a metaphorical rap over the knuckles from • the police should thank their lucky stars that they do not live in Portuguese territory in Africa. There, a particularly nasty variety -of the cane is used for beating African lorry drivers for driving offences. The weapon is paddle-shaped, with a thick body and 18 in. long, with two holes in the end to draw up the skin from the hands. In a recent instance, it was alleged that two African drivers received 15 strokes on the hands, which became "like bunches of bananas," for failing to allow an official car to pass them.
Radar may be controversial, but it is painless.
Giving Themselves Up
TN 1948, hauliers complained bitterly of nationalization. Now some 01 I them are offering to surrender. A district manager of British Road Services has recently received three inquiries from hauliers—one of them owning 10 vehicles—who wished to sell their businesses. If this trend continues, the Socialists will have nothing to do.
On Top
OAD transport is definitely on top in rates for brewery traffic. -1.‘ declares Mr. Douglas Nicholson, chairman of the £8m Vaux and Associated Breweries combine, in his annual report to shareholders. "We have a private loading dock in one of our Edinburgh breweries and a direct line to our Berwick brewery and yet the rail charge is 31 times the cost by road," he states.
British Railways, he adds, failed to treat the fuel shortage earlier this year as a golden opportunity to gain freight.