Lancing, Sussex
Page 29
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by Paul Moody • Everything was fresh. Not a spot of grease soiled the floor of the testing station on the new Churchill Industrial Estate, Lancing. Everything was of the future. A button was pressed, the bright-blue painted roller shutter door made its welloiled ascent and the doorway was filled with soft autumn sunlight and, at last, that historic vehicle, the first to undergo compulsory testing at Lancing. Historic indeed, for there stood a mud-spattered 1947 Dennis with hand-operated tipping gear!
"You mustn't think this is typical of the state of vehicles we hope to test," said the station manager, Mr. H. C. Taplin.
There was a resigned grin—of disbelief? —on Mr. Taplin's face as the second vehicle, a 1949 Dennis belonging as did the first to a nearby Urban District Council and destined as was the first to be failed, drove over the inspection pit to have its corroded back suspension quickly noted: at one point only half a leaf had escaped the effects of 19 years' rusting.
"We could have refused to test these vehicles," said Mr. Taplin. "I told hauliers who brought their vehicles for voluntary testing that I don't want to eat my dinner off the vehicle, I just want to be able to inspect it visually."
It was very important, Mr. Taplin thought, that vehicles should be presented for the test in as clean a state as possible: cracked metal could easily be overlooked if it were covered by a layer of grease and mud. But this would not mean, he said, that all vehicles which were not • as clean as they should be would be automatically refused a test. If a vehicle was inspectable, it would be inspected. Only if no effort had been made to present the vehicle in a decent condition would it be refused, for this, he thought, reflected the operator's attitude towards maintenance in general.
The four vehicles which completed the first morning's quota (two 3-ton Austin coal flats, a 3 ton 4 cwt. Bedford owned by a local bakery and a 3 ton 19 cwt. Karrier belonging to the G.P.O.) were far less spectacular and were all passed.
Cleanliness is . . . .