Fleetwood Tram Sunday 2009

Sunday 19 July 2009. Last Sunday we went up to Fleetwood to have a look at the cars, buses and trams at the annual transport event that is Fleetwood Tram Sunday.

Despite the name, trams take a back seat these days, if you'll forgive the pun! However one of the stars of the show was undoubtedly this - the newly restored Wild West Loco tram with trailer caboose, still in the original ABC Weekend Television livery. It had been a favourite sight during the Illuminations since the 1960s and has been sadly missed since it was withdrawn from service, badly in need of restoration. Now it's back and it looks just wonderful!

It was nice to stand watching the parade at 11:30 and take part in the huge round of applause that was given to the RNLI Lifeboat crew, who were pulling the lifeboat along Lord Street. Fleetwood, as a fishing town, has a deep respect for the sea and has lost too many sons to it over the years.

Congratulations too to the local Chinese community whose 2-man Chinese dragon made a colourful addition to the parade!

There was also a funeral jazz band with a leader inspired by the James Bond film Live and Let Die!

And so to the displays of vehicles. The first was a little unusual - a horse-drawn fire engine from the district of Fulwood in nearby Preston. It had a steam-powered pump and pressure mechanism.

The cab of a Leyland Atlantean double-decker bus. When first introduced in the late 1950s they were quite a novelty with the engine at the rear allowing the driver to occupy the same internal space as passengers. It was quickly realised that this would also allow for one-man-operation and was the start of the end of bus conductors.

The owner saw me taking the picture through the window and invited me onboard to get a better shot. Those tiny gear levers had a very distinctive clicking noise as gears were selected. Atlanteans remained in production from 1958 to 1986. Some would have stayed in operation for many years after that.

A classic Bedford lorry. The model was used for almost every conceivable body type from flatbeds to petrol tankers. I had thought this was the usual lorry that we are used to seeing at Fleetwood but a check back at last year's photos made me realise it was a different firm and registration.

A 1960s Hotchkiss lorry. The F registration denotes August 1967 to July 1968

This undeniable brute of a machine is a 1939 Scammell Pioneer. They were used extensively by the army during World War II, hauling gun and howitzer carriages and pulling tank transporters. Many of them were lost, left behind when the British Expeditionary Force converged on Dunkirk for evacuation. With a top speed of 24 miles per hour, the row of fuel cans suggests that they were a trifle thirsty when in use! Standard equipment included tracks that could be fitted over the two rear axles, turning the vehicle into a half track. They continued to be used by the army until the 1980s.

An old Austin London taxi cab. Taxicabs log up an incredible amount of miles during their working lives, so any that survive have only done so with a lot of love, sweat and maintenance!

Mind you, this particular one had travelled a few thousand miles just to get here!

An Albion Claymore lorry. They were built from 1954 to 1966, the original Abion company having been bought out by Leyland Motors in 1951. Albion had started out in Glasgow making cars from 1900 to 1915. From 1909 they concentrated on commercial vehicles, supplying many 3-ton trucks to the army during World War I, many of the surviving machines being converted to charabancs after the war. Albion also made several models of buses.

At the front is a Raleigh Runabout moped - dubbed by us when my brother, Frank, had one as a Raleigh "Whiz"! I had a go on it once and for several years afterwards sported a nice white scar on the palm of my hand after hitting a half brick that someone had left in the middle of the road...

A 1952 Triumph Renown. Made from 1949 to 1954, they were the last of the large Triumph saloons for a while, their place being taken by the Standard Vanguard as the Standard Motor Company had bought out the Triumph name and decided to use it only on sports cars such as the TR series. These were so successful that the Triumph name was brought back in 1959 for saloon cars with the launch of the Triumph Herald and it was the Standard name that was to die out first.

A Bullnose Morris Oxford. Built from 1913 to 1926 and named for the home city of William Morris, the Bullnose referred to the distinctive domed radiator. It doesn't look much like I would picture a bull's nose, but it had originally been decribed as a Bulletnose and you can see a bullet shape much easier than you can see the snotty bit of a male bovine...

So here are a couple of interiors... This is the 1950s Ford Prefect. The horn is in the centre of the steering wheel and the little white stub on top can be moved sideways either way to turn on the indicators which were ultra modern flashing lights rather than a semaphore arm coming out of the side of the car which had been common up until that time. The pull switch marked S is the starter. The ignition key (in the dashboard rather than the steering column) did not operate the starter motor until later and had only two positions - on and off. In winter it was still common to have a starter handle to manually stick it through the bumper into the engine and hand crank it to turn the engine to help it start.

The door handle is above the window winder - no electrically operated windows in those days - and the door handle is dangerously easy to catch by mistake, but at least the doors open outwards hinged at the front, not like the older stagecoach doors that opened at the front so that if opened by mistake the wind would catch them and depending on how fast you were going would either crease the metal involving costly repair, or snap the hinges so the door fell off altogether leading to a draughty ride and an even more costly repair! Note the separate handle to close the door which is a simple leather fob.

This is the early 1960s Wolseley 16/60 which was the first car certainly that I remember with an indicator stalk coming from the steering column. It had a neat little lamp with a green cover on the end of the stalk too, which flashed with the indicators as a reminder that they were on. The dashboard has a nice bit of (real!) walnut wood and the glove box has room for not only a pair of gloves (you'd be lucky to get those in some modern cars - why would you need shelves in a glove box for Heaven's sake???) but also a bottle of slightly soapy liquid and cloth, which was used frequently to wipe the inside of the windows to demist them. Heaters were not very strong as yet!

My Grandad had swapped his Ford Prefect for a Wolseley 15/50 and that in turn for the 16/60 like this. In fact apart from the engine size the only difference that I could see at my tender years (8 or 9 at the time) was that the 15/50 had been two-tone green and black whilst the later one was all black in colour! Happy memories of "helping" Grandad deliver the groceries from his shop. Before long the supermarkets would start to open and they had a devastating effect on his little shop, spelling also the end of personal service and forcing everyone to pick up and carry their own goods to the till! Now we have to operate the tills ourselves without discount, training or wages. I'm not sure how companies expect people to be able to pay for shopping once no one has a job because of automation...

This line-up of Rover cars from the P4 series brings this entry to an end. A 75, 95 and 110, these models were ridiculed in the early days for their short bonnets and long extended boot at the rear. The design would later become the norm for family saloon cars. They were undoubtedly high quality though, one magazine review considering that only Rolls Royce made finer cars. Whilst different models came and went during the 1949-1964 production run, these were more akin to the Mark-I, Mark-II designations of other manufacturers and the basic body design didn't change much.

Some experiments were undertaken with different power plants. A prototype was produced with a gas turbine engine in an open top P4 tourer body and can still be seen, designated JET 1, at the Science Museum in London.

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