£3m. Order for Bedfords and Hands
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riA CONTRACT has been signed between Vauxhall Motors, Ltd., 3 nd the Belgian Government for the supply of Bedford four-wheel-drive vehicles to the value of over £2.5m, for the Belgian Army. The vehicles will be similar to the four-wheel-drive 3-ton load carriers being supplied to the British Army and the R.A.F. Bodies will be built in Belgium. Deliveries will start almost at once and will be completed later this year.
The Belgian Government have also placed an order valued at about £330,000 with Hands (Letchworth), Ltd., for a large number of military 20-25-ton trailers, equipment and spare parts. The vehicles are similar to those built for the Ministry of Supply and production will start soon.
The traders are 30 ft. long and 8 ft. 6 in. wide, and the load-carrying space is 17 ft. long. Both front and rear four-wheeled bogies are detachable. The floor is of 3-in. hardwood.
SAILORS UNABLE TO GO NORTH BY COACH
SAILORS wishing to go home on week-end leave from H.M.S. Arid, Worthy Down, Winchester, to Birmingham, Manchester. Liverpool and other northern centres had suffered because of the lack of coach facilities.
Mr. H. G. Williams, for Graceline Coaches. made this statement before Sir Oswald Allen, Ministry of Transport inspector, at Winchester on Monday during an appeal by the firm against the refusal of the South Eastern Licensing Authority RI grant a licence for an express service from H.M.S. Arid l to Manchester and Liverpool. There was also an appeal against the grant to Empress Coaches (Stockbridge), Ltd., of a licence to operate excursions and tours from the station.
There were nearly 1,000 men at H.M.S. Ariel, Mr. Williams said. The station was moved from Warrington last year and many of the ratings lived in the north.
Mr. G. A. MacDonald, for Empress Coaches, said that the Authority acted on the evidence before him. If there were a need for transport, it was small and irregular.
Cdr. (L) Frederick Minns, of H.M.S. Arid, told the inspector that the station had benefited from its eight-year link with Lancashire and at the moment had many personnel from the north.
BIG NEW BUS GARAGE
ANEW garage in Ayr to accommodate 125 buses was opened by the Scottish Licensing Authority, Mr. W. Quin, last week. There is parking space around the building for another 100 vehicles. The garage will replace two depots in Ayr used by the Western S.M.T. Co., Ltd. It covers more than 70,000 sq. ft. and cost about £82,000.
Referring to one of the problems involved in increasing tourist traffic, a6 Mr. Quin said that he had drawn operators' attention to the amount of litter scattered about the country by passengers travelling, for the most part, in private-hire coaches.
SLACK FROM WRONG SOURCE
BECAUSE their vehicles carried slack from a deep mine instead of from an opencast working, Mullan Bros., Ltd., Thompson Street, Chesterfield, were fined £15, plus £2 2s. advocate's fee, at Chesterfield, last week.
Prosecuting, Mr. E. Wurzal said that when the company applied for a licence they undertook to carry material only from opencast sites, but their vehicles had been used to haul deep-mined slack to Manchester. It was not until afterwards that they discovered that deepmined, and not opencast, slack had been tarried.
Mr. M. Mather, defending, asked the magistrates to treat the case as a technical offence.