Fleetwood Tram Sunday 1992

It's July 1992, it's a Sunday and it's another glorious day for the annual Fleetwood Tram Sunday transport fun-fest.

With such a sunny day I loaded the camera with colour film, not something people would normally have to think about choosing these days I suppose, but... This is a mid to late 1950s Wolseley 15/50 with a contemporary touring caravan. The 15/50 was built from 1956 to 1958 and looked somewhat like the MG Magnette, though the rear panels and boot were different. A heater came as standard fitting - usually an option in cars of this date.

There were other things to look at and listen to than just transport. And before you email me with complaints, this is a Dutch organ so the word carousel is spelt in Dutch and is therefore spelt correctly! Hooghuy is the name of the famous family of organ builders in the Netherlands that go back at least as far as 1754 when Gerrit or Gerardus Hooghuy was born. He moved to Bruges in Belgium in 1806 and advertised his services as an organ builder and repairer.

The Mark-I Ford Cortina was introduced in 1962 as a replacement for the Ford Consul. Indeed, the first models (Mark-1a) were badged as a Consul on the front of the bonnet, then a few tweaks were made and the Mark-1b dropped the Consul name which would only be revived years later for a very limited time as the cheaper version of the first Granada.

An Aveling and Porter traction engine named Patience. It was Thomas Aveling who invented the traction engine in 1859 (and steam rollers in 1867). Following his success he became mayor of Rochester in Kent. Patience was manufactured in 1903 and given the factory number 5293. Her vehicle registration number is MN 9033.

The horse-drawn fire engine of Fulwood, a district of Preston, situated to Preston's north between the town centre and just south of where the M6/M55/A6 junction is currently situated. Water pressure was provided by a steam boiler.

Humber Hawk estate. Humber were a member of the Rootes family of car manufacturers and the first Humber Hawk was launched in 1945 after the end of World War II. Designed in 1938 (pretty much a Hillman 14 with a longer boot and without running boards) the Series 1 Hawk went from Mark-1 to Mark-6. The Mark-6 for the first time included an estate car version. and then in 1960 a new body shape came out as the Series II. There would be a series III, series IV and and IVA before production of the Humber Hawk ceased in 1967. This car was not displaying any information and neither does Google so I presume it is off the road and possibly scrapped. It has not been taxed since 2002.

A Mark-2 Ford Zodiac. Three cars had the body shape from basic model (Ford Consul) through the mid-range Zephyr with the Zodiac being the luxury model. Together they earned the nickname The Three Graces and were the dream car of many a young lad and indeed their fathers! They were built from 1956 to 1962.

Staying with the Fords, here's a Ford Popular 100E. For some reason when the Ford Anglia was upgraded to a new body shape, the old style remained in production but renamed as the Ford Popular. This was the second such model to be continued under the Popular name. As weird as this concept might sound, my Dad bought a brand new one... The Ford Anglia 100E was produced from 1953-1959 and the Ford Popular 100E from 1959-1962. Ironically its replacement was the new 1962 upgrade to the Ford Anglia 105E.

A Reliant Scimitar GTE SE5 from 1968. That a company known for its cheap and sometimes even stretching towards cheerful 3-wheeled cars, the Scimitar was something of an anomaly. They were made with a fibreglass body (as were the 3-wheelers) on a steel box chassis and were ftted with Ford engines from the Zephyr and Zodiac models. This gave them quite a bit of Oomph when the accelerator pedal was pressed and this could top 120 miles per hour.

Other components of the car came from various competitors' models too - a touch of the collect ten different cars and use the bits to make a new one... One model apparently knocked the rear view mirror out of alignment when the sun visor was folded down. But hey - they didn't rust! And they were fairly popular. Princess Anne was given one as a 20th Birthday/Christmas present and liked it enough to own several more. Production ceased in 1986.

The beautiful Vauxhall Cresta PA. Built from 1957 to 1962 this is the second model of the Cresta, which was the luxury version of Vauxhall's series of cars with the basic Wyvern and mid-range Velox models. It was heavily influenced by American cars of the 1950s with it's rear fins, moulded front and rear screen windows and sleek styling, undoubtedly making it one of the better looking cars on British roads at the time. It had a front bench seat and the handbrake was pulled from under the dashboard with a column gear change under the steering wheel to allow three people to ride on the front seat. It had only three forward gears, though an overdrive was optional.

Fleetwood Tram Sundays Index

Blackpool Steam and Transport Day, 1992

It was possibly a full weekend event, but my records show that we visited Blackpool Airport on Sunday 13 September 1992 for that year's Steam and Transport Spectacular.

Whatever the truth (and someone might remember better than I) we found the airport field full of old cars, lorries, traction engines and steam rollers and the odd one or two steam fairground organs. I had the pleasure of driving one of these old Bentleys for a while as a young lad, working in a photographic studio in Oldham. It sucked in petrol at an alarming rate...

Even more personal to me was this Mark III Ford Zephyr 4 as I had one of these cars myself way back in the 1970s. This car pre-dates the number plate year identifier which places it as dating from before February 1962, but mine was a C reg, so it was a 1965 model. A lovely car with full bench seat in the front and gear lever on the steering column.

The apparent favourite of most people who remember the Zephyr/Zodiac models was the Mark II of which this is the Zodiac and a convertible open-top as a bonus.

Blackpool Airport at this time was not as fully developed as it was to become and there was plenty of land available for events like these. Health and safety wasn't quite as stringent as modern times either. It has gotten ridiculous now due to the willingness of people to sue for damages for any incidents which are really their own fault and the bewildering way judges are reluctant to say "Well you shouldn't have been so stupid...". Here I am standing behind the barriers (a length of red and white striped tape) at the end of the runway to take this photo of a Pitts Special stunt biplane taking off to give a show.

One of the strips of tarmac was occupied by steam traction engines. The forerunners of petrol or diesel-fuelled machinery tractors they were, even within my memory, once a regular sight working as road rollers although by the 1950s the much lighter diesel-powered tractors had taken over most duties on farmland. The showmen's engines worked generators to power fairground rides and lighting.

In addition to the full-sized machines was a collection of working scale models. Mostly, if not all, built from scratch they must have represented hours of painstaking work by enthusiasts.

The showmen's engines were usually covered with a roof which not only protected the driver but the generator that was mounted in front and above of the boiler. Water and electricity not generally being the safest of combinations, this was a safety feature rather than an acknowledgement that farmers were a hardier breed, not minding the weather!

A feature of any steam engine is smoke. Generally of the thick, black and choking sort. Showmen's engines, usually parked next to the ride they were powering had tall chimneys that carried the smoke upwards rather than release it just over people's heads. These chimneys were detached and stored horizontally on the roof when the engines were not in use at the fairground.

I used to take a small cassette recorder with me to some of these events to capture "atmosphere", the sound of engines and background noise and announcements from Tannoy systems etc. I still have a couple of tapes somewhere with music from these wonderful old fairground and street organs. I ought to look them out and see if they will still play and if so get them digitised onto the computer. One day...

A row of classic lorries. So many of them were open-sided. Just a flat deck on which goods were stacked, I remember being bowled over once in my teens by a coalman's lorry, being hit on the back of the shoulder by a bag of coal that was sticking out a bit too far and caught me as I was walking over a narrow hump-back bridge where the pavement had petered out. I suppose the lorry should have waited until I was across - I was facing away from it and already more than halfway along the bridge before the wagon came up behind me. I was lucky not to end up with my legs under the lorry's back wheel. He didn't stop of course...

Bringing this article to a close is this photo of a beautiful luxury Pullman motor coach. Complete with curtains, tables and shaded lamps, this 1934 coach would have been the pinnacle of coach travel of its time.

Return to the Blackpool Attractions Index Page.

Blackpool Steam and Transport Day, 1982

Sunday, 6 June 1982. We walked down to Blackpool Airport to the Steam and Transport day. Stand by for traction engines and fairground organs galore!

It wasn't the best of days as far as the weather was concerned, but the weather is never all that predictable in Blackpool anyway and can change ten times in as many minutes. The scene as we walked in alongside the steady stream of cars heading for the car parks.

Visiting the site today, you could be forgiven for wondering where all these fields were, but at the time the terminal building was a lot smaller and the hotel and pub restaurant were not even thought of, so there was a lot more space than there would be in later years.

Prospector up close and personal. This is the last surviving showman's engine built by Foden. Dating from 1910 it was built for W Shaw & Sons of Sheffield and toured all over Yorkshire, hauling fairground rides and providing their power until 1939 when it was sold to someone for preservation.

I can just about remember the last days of steam rollers, puffing away in the 1950s as hot tarmac was poured onto a road, followed by shovelfuls of grit, the resulting mixture then compressed by these leviathans to thin layers on top of previous layers to form a road. Feeling the earth shake as they went by and watching the hot steam rise from the newly-made surface. The clanking of chains and rollers as the steam roller was steered by the simple method of the steering wheel causing the chains at either side of the front roller to pull on one side of the axle whilst going slack on the other to allow it to swing. This is Cinderella - all these steam engines seemed to have a name as well as the registration (MB 5846) and a serial number (10906). It was made in 1924 by Aveling & Porter.

DH 2482 Goliath was a traction engine commissioned by the War Department in 1917 and delivered the year after to pull artillery guns to the front in World War I. Made by J & H McLaren with 3 gears, serial no. 1623. Used after the war as a showman's engine.

FA 2316 Dolphin the last showman's engine to be built by Charles Burrell & Sons Ltd at their Thetford factory in 1925. Serial no.4030, she had 3 gears and passed through several owners before becoming bogged down in a field and finally rescued for preservation.

A display of vintage motorcycles standing in a row.

An early (1920s?) Indian motorcycle from the famous American manufacturer. Unfortunately I've been unable to ascertain the exact model. Usually if a vehicle of this age is still in existence you can google the make and registration number and find out the required details, but in this case I drew a blank. If anyone knows more, please leave a comment.

An early motor scooter. I fared just as well with this as I did with the Indian above. There is a Mrs W.R. something or other that lives at No. 4820 of her road in Maine USA...

The other big draw to the day for me was the reason for this gathering of folks whose attention has been gathered so fully...

There was a good collection of fairground organs at the show!

Large ones, small ones, some with wooden flutes, some with metal pipes.

Almost all with animated figures. Some with percussive instruments like castanets all the way up to sets of drums and glockenspiels.

The largest of them had all of these things; full sets of both wooden and metal pipes and auxiliary instruments too.

I had taken a tape cassette recorder with me and still have a set of recordings made on this day of the different organs. Plus some of the sounds of the steam engines and noises of the fair. It was the start of an ongoing family joke, where I used to take a small cassette recorder on holiday and capture sounds of sea and events and family. I christened it Captain Slog from the Star Trek phrase: "Captain's Log..."

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Blackpool Steam and Transport Day 1991

In October 1991 Blackpool put on a steam and transport rally and rounded off the experience with an old-fashioned fairground, with the rides being powered by steam showmen's engines.

Blackpool Airport was the venue. It hosted a number of this type of events during the 1980s and very early nineties - though I think this may have been the penultimate one with 1992 being the last one before the airport started to expand its operations.

I'm just old enough to remember steam rollers being used to compact and smooth tarmac on the roads. Real tar too - on hot days you would find the road melting and sticky lumps of tar stuck to the bottom of your shoes. On such days you had to take your shoes off at the back door when you came in the house or risk your mother's wrath as you ruined the carpet! Small boys of course couldn't resist it... We used to poke at tar by the kerbside with a pencil until we could work a lump free and then it went - along with bits of string, a penknife and perhaps a white mouse - in the pocket!

Penknives, I hasten to add, were used for sharpening pencils in the innocent days of my boyhood. Using a knife you could sharpen a pencil lead into either a point or a squared-off oblong. Lost skills...

A Foden steam lorry. These were often dangerously quiet. Once the lorry had accelerated and the steam was shut off, the only sound they gave was the occasional clanking of the chain drive.

A final look at the fairground. In the background to the right is an old-fashioned "haunted swing" sideshow where people sit on a "swing" which is fixed and then the "room" about them rotates throught 360 degrees to make you feel as though you are tipping out of the seat. The room in this case was rotated by hand, the chap who took the money, once he had enough customers, shut the door, went to the back of the set and heaved to turn the wooden room.

There were a number of cars on display too and the British Leyland-built Pope-Mobile that had been built for the Pope's visit in 1982.

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Heskin Hall Steam Fair Gig

Last night Creeping Bentgrass played the Steam Fair at Heskin Hall, Chorley - our 5th year at this event.

This year Jack, the organiser, had wanted to try something a bit different to keep people on the grounds longer and we started playing around 5:30pm, finishing at 8:00pm to be followed by another band.

With another gig today at Myerscough College's Open Day this fitted well with us as we were home by 11:00pm instead of the usual 2:00am. Particularly good as have to be onsite at Myerscough before 9:00am this morning! If you're in the north Preston area, come for a listen - we will be playing from 11:00am through until 4:00pm unless my finger ends drop off!

But bright-eyed and bushy-tailed of course with only a slightly sore throat - I think I've been swallowing my tonsils all night from the feel of it!

Oh yes, for all you steam fans out there, here's Little Dorothy. A picture of Big Dorothy some other day for all you fans of big dorothy's...

Large versions of the photos: Creeping Bentgrass, traction engine