THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

Sorry about the quality. This is the older Harrison 'S' type in the bottle dock at Marton loading the afternoon Bradford load. I never drove this wagon regularly but it's worth including because it is a good example of what was possible in those days. The afternoon load to Davies Dairy, Moorside Bradford was the best paying load Harrisons had because the MMB priced it as more than 25 miles (it was 26 miles door to door) and so it got the 50 mile rate. It had a 35hp GMC petrol engine so it got the higher rate there as well. This large engine had one tiny Zenith carburettor and the miracle was it had perfect mixture always. The exhaust pipe was a deep cherry red colour inside, A sure sign of a perfect mixture. There were too many bottles to get on a normal length wagon so Harrison's had a Bayko Flitch inserted in the chassis. This lengthened the wagon flat by six feet and a full load 6 crates high was enough for the job. When they first did it they loaded it with seven high stacks in the centre three rows but noted that the flat appeared to bend so that idea was dropped. You could never get away with this after the 1968 Transport Act but it was legal. Another way of increasing flat size on the standard Bedford 5 tonner was the Neville Conversion. This Mansfield firm took a bare chassis, fitted a forward control cab and gained about two feet in flat length. Harrisons went one better and made the flat about 9" wider so that 12 gallon kits would fit in rows of six instead of having a staggered row. It was a pig to drive! The wider flat was a big handicap getting through narrow farm gateways and the moving forward of the centre of gravity made the already heavy steering even worse. The first modification to ease the steering problem was to put the biggest steering wheel on that would fit! There was about half an inch between the rim of the wheel and the windscreen and you soon learned to keep your fingers out of the gap as the chassis flexed!



In the late 1960s Associated Dairies at Leeds took over the dairy and at the same time the MMB started to change its policy on milk transport. They gradually took over farm milk pick-up and the dairy took over the first can load as the MMB couldn't get it into the dairy early enough. Harrisons gradually lost work and got rid of wagons. Billy Harrison's brother Jack sold his interest to Billy and left to join in a consortium that bought a dairy at Accrington. The day came when all the work for the dairy dried up. Billy still needed an income and so he kept me on and started to look for work for me and 2929WX. I was now on general haulage, everything was going to change.

[Stanley]

Things got bad very rapidly and were made worse by the fact that just before we finished at the dairy, Billy Harrison, the bloke I worked for was divorced, lost his driving licence and then had an accident that left him with a massive skull fracture from which he never really recovered. For many months I was on the minimum guaranteed wage with both my wagon and Billy's car, a Vauxhall Cresta exactly like this one, parked up at home.



There was the occasional haulage job and if Billy wanted me he had to send a telegram because we hadn't a phone. I used to go over to Thornton in the Cresta, get the instructions and then back to Barlick. The other essential job was driving him to Morecambe every Saturday to see his son John. This was obviously not paying and I got other job offers but stuck by Billy because I knew he needed me. Things were made worse by the fact that he used to have violent epileptic fits and if he was in one someone had to inject him and stay with him until he came to. I was a nurse as well as a driver! It was a strange interlude.
Gradually things started to improve and through local contacts Billy eventually started to get work from a local firm, Kelbrook Metal Products at Sough who made roof flashings for large projects and I started to get regular work from them. The rate for the job was quite good and Billy would have been satisfied had I came back empty and waited for another load but I soon realised that there were places called 'clearing houses' where you could get return loads. These were never highly paid, they were what was left over when bigger firms had creamed off the good stuff but even so, it was far better than running empty. Without actually opting for it, I had joined the ranks of the 'tramp drivers' who lived on their wits and took whatever was offered, always trying to get back home to base. This meant that I was busy but was often away for days at a time, hard on me and hard on Vera. However, it was a wonderful education! Apart from meeting some very interesting blokes, you soon learned every road in Britain and every type of load. Everything from a large ingot or machine to the sort of thing that was almost impossible to keep on the flat! Remember that this was a flat wagon, everything had to be roped and sheeted and that was an art you soon became an expert at!
I could tell lots of old war stories about strange loads and strange places. Many years later a young friend asked me how come I knew so much about so many subjects. I told him it was largely because of all the different trades I had carried for and I was always asking questions. I soon learned about esoteric things like greaves and shooks and got a grounding in steel-making and transport law!
By 1963 I was keeping Billy afloat but was doing ridiculous hours and mileages. The log book was permanently fiddled to get more hours in and keep the family going and I cracked one very rainy night up in the north of Scotland when I was driving from telephone box to telephone box while the operators tried to contact the Greyhound pub and get word of how the birth of my second child was going on at Hey Farm just up the lane. At about 11pm that night I got word from the ladies at the telephone exchange that I had a daughter! They never charged me for all these calls, they had taken me on as a project. When I got the news I put a reverse charge call through to Billy and handed in my notice.
As soon as I was back home I went out to West Marton to the dairy, saw David Peacock who ran it and asked him if he could find me a job. It said something for my reputation because he told me he would always find me work and I started at the dairy the following Monday with a new Ford Trader 4 cylinder wagon delivering school milk early in the morning to a large area North of Marton. I was in my own bed every night with a regular job and log book bending was a thing of the past. Things were looking up!



It was a wagon like this but a 4D . this was the larger 6D.

[Stanley]

I soon settled in at the dairy, home every night and a set job each day. Only problem was that going back to local driving was a big wrench after tramping all over the country. I missed the freedom and fresh country all the time. However, it wasn't long before things changed as West Marton Dairy converted from a bottling dairy to a cheese factory. In the interim during construction I worked in the garage with Wallace Neave and enjoyed being a mechanic and spare driving. We tanked a lot of skim milk and whey out to other dairies and to farms as stock-feed. We had a small Thames 4D tank, an old AEC Monarch and an Old Albion. I liked the old AEC best because it had a bigger engine and was a 'proper' heavy wagon. Same as the one below but with a tank mounted on it.



The dairy was still taking in milk from farms and was buying out small dairies Like Barbon Creamery, Sedbergh cheese factory and J E Hall at Lancaster. As we bought the dairies we got their milk allocation as well and soon had a surplus which we tanked out to other dairies in an area bounded by Sanqhar in the north to Ashby de la Zouch in the south. Long distance work! Halls had two AEC Mercury tankers, about 2000 gallons capacity, JEH 28 and JEH 29. We got hese and I was given JEH 28 and put on tanker work.



Here's the Mercury parked up at Hey Farm, loaded and ready for an early start. Our job was to get the milk to the receiving dairy at a stated time, usually very early in the morning. That meant we were always off down the road very early in the morning, any time from midnight onwards. I'd always been used to early starts so this was no hardship. It was a lovely clean job, no problems with roping and sheeting and always back home at dinner time ready for the next day. We ran seven days a week and at one time Danny Pateman and I went on for I think it was six years without a day off!
One day I got word that Richard Drinkall, the cattle dealer in the village who I did occasional runs for was looking for a driver. He had just bought a new Leyland Comet and I fancied the job. I went round to see him and found he had already set a driver on, he said he hadn't thought I would be interested! A very sad Stanley went home and carried on!

[Stanley]

It's early 1969 and I have a good clean job at the dairy tanking milk with a good wagon, the old AEC Mercury with the 470 cubic inch AEC diesel engine which was noted for being the most powerful engine in a four wheel wagon and also for the fact that when it was in good nick it sounded as rough as a basketful of pots! 42mph on the governor, good simple air brakes, but I was used to it and loved it! One archaic thing about those brakes. They had none of the safety features associated with modern brakes, just a simple compressor, an air tank and diaphragms on all four brakes controlled by an organ pedal valve. During the night the air used to leak out of the system and when you got in in the morning a metal flag was erect in the windscreen in front of you. When you started the engine the pressure built up, overcame the spring on the flag (it was red and had 'stop' cut out of it) and it slowly subsided. If the pressure started to fall for any reason it came back up again hence the stop warning.
There was only one dark cloud in the sky. I was treated regularly to the sight of Richard Drinkall's new Leyland Wagon and noted that it got dirtier and dirtier.... After about a month of this I got a message from Richard, he wanted to see me. I went across to Yew Tree and he asked me if I still wanted to drive for him. His new driver wasn't up to scratch and he was sacking him. I bit his hand off but told him that as they were in the same village, and remembering how good David Peacock had been to me when I needed a job after leaving Harrison's, I would have to get his blessing first. Richard approved and understood so I went straight across to the dairy office and bearded David in his office. When I told him what it was about he asked me if I was sure I wanted to change and I said yes. Then he asked me when Richard wanted me and I told him as soon as possible. He told me I could finish that Saturday and start for Richard on the Monday. As I was going out of the office he told me that if I changed my mind I was to come back and see him as he would always find me a job. Not a bad reference!
That was it, my ten years association with the dairy was finished, I was now a cattle wagon driver and had to learn a new trade. I took the wagon over on Saturday night and the first thing I did was give it a good clean, inside and out! Then I checked all the oils and found they were low so I had a word with Richard. We arranged for me to have supplies of oil etc. at Hey Farm and I would maintain the wagon as well as drive it. Not a bad start!



Mary Drinkall (who had worked at the dairy in the lab) took this picture shortly after I set on for the brothers, I was on the way to Exeter with 16 big milk beasts. The wagon is dirty because I was working hard!



The scenery at Hey Farm changed. I think I'd better lay out what the job was. I was working for E A Drinkall and Sons. There were three brothers, Richard at Yew Tree West Marton who I worked directly to. David at Demesne Farm Newsholme near Gisburn where our local auction market was and Keith who farmed the original Drinkall Farm, Church Farm at Gargrave. The job was to go with David to Lanark market on Monday with a load of calves and bring him and a load of cattle back on Monday night. On Tuesday I met Keith at Demesne and took him and another load of calves up to Ayr and came back on my own, Keith rode back with Richard in his car. Richard was buying all the cattle and also dealing in SW Scotland so during the day I often went off delivering calves and picking up in calf heifers over a wide area from Kelso across to Galloway on the west coast. By the time I got home I had often done 500 miles in the day. The first two days of the week I averaged 40 hours, had a lie in on Wednesday morning and for the rest of the week collected and delivered cattle all over Britain, helping to get ready for our weekly sale at Gisburn every Thursday. I usually had Sunday off but sometimes we were busy and I worked that as well. At that time there was only a short piece of motorway on the M6 which finished at Broughton so all the miles in the early days were on the old roads. I can hear you asking why this was a 'good job' but I loved it. I love cattle and soon got into the swing of riding my ladies in comfort, so much so that Richard stopped paying goods in transit insurance, in all the time I worked for him I only lost one calf. I calved cattle on the way home if it was necessary, my record was three calvings between Kirriemuir and Gisburn.
One thing I remember about the early days. The Comet was a fast wagon and the brothers soon found that I was knocking twenty minutes off the fastest trip back home they had ever done when they were doing the driving themselves. I got on well with David but Richard told me soon after I started that he thought I was driving too hard and would blow the engine up. I told Richard to wait and see.... Diesels are happiest when they are working hard, it's what they are built for!
All went well until late in 1971. The engine in the Comet was always undersized and was heavily stressed and they were prone to cracked cylinder heads. I had been knocking over 100,000 miles a year out of XWU and we started to get trouble with overheating. I told Richard about the problem and advised him to fit a short reconditioned engine but I think he took advice from Gilbraith's at Accrington and they decided that all it needed was a new cylinder head. The first day we got it back was a Tuesday and on the way up to Ayr I told Keith that we'd be lucky if we lasted the day, I had a rough engine and thought I knew why. He ignored me, told me it sounded fine to him and told me to carry on. He was the boss....
Later that day, my diagnosis was spectacularly confirmed!

[Tizer]

That photo of the Vauxhall Cresta brought back a wonderful memory from the early 1960s. My dad was always changing his car but they were always old cars and small cars, so I had plenty of experience of being driven in those but nothing bigger or faster. Then one day we had to go on a trip from Blackburn to Southport and had a lift from someone in his Vauxhall Cresta, a 6-cylinder job with about 2.5 litre engine. It was wonderful! The style, the luxury inside, the power, the quiet motor - I fell in love with it! But once I learnt to drive it was A35s and Morris Minors and many years before I got to that sort of motor again. The acceleration and speed seemed incredible. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says: "They [The Motor] tested the 2.6 Litre version with overdrive in 1960 and found the top speed had increased to 94.7 mph (152.4 km/h), acceleration from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) to 15.2 seconds and fuel consumption improved to 26.8 miles per imperial gallon (10.5 L/100 km; 22.3 mpg."

[Stanley]

Billy loved his Cresta, his brother bought a new car at the same time and got the Velox, the four cylinder version. He insisted on me driving it fast when I was acting as his chauffeur...
I set off back home from Ayr that afternoon and didn't hold out much hope for a good trip, I knew too much about engines and had decided that the noise I could hear was the pistons hitting the valves at the top of the stroke. But you can't argue with weight so I drove it just the same as usual. On the quiet I wanted to be proved right I suppose. All went well, but rough, until I was hammering down the slope on the M6 to the Golden Fleece interchange on the South side of Carlisle getting speed up to attack the hill on the other side. As I climbed the hill there was a loud bang, I lost all drive and coasted into the mouth of the access road from the southbound carriage way to the salt depot on the opposite side. I had a fair idea of what had happened and the subsequent inquest proved me right. Gilbraith's had fitted an exchange cylinder head, not a new one. It had been ground down to a flat face but they had forgotten to recess the valve seats to compensate so at the top of the stroke the flat piston heads were tapping the valves. This was the noise I could hear all day. Eventually one of the exhaust valve heads fatigued and let go. The valve head dropped into the cylinder where there was no room for it and stopped the piston before it had reached the top of its stroke. This meant that the con rod fractured and one of the broken ends smashed through the side of the block and destroyed the camshaft. This left the valves all in the wrong positions and in the general destruction that followed the crankshaft broke completing the destruction of the engine. All I knew for sure at the time was that it was terminal!
My ladies were OK, they all stood there quietly waiting for me so I went and stood on the side of the road. I saw a Penrith cattle wagon coming up the hill and flagged him down (in those days you stopped to help your mates!). He was taking a load of sheep back to Penrith and was then finished for the day. I told him what was up and he promised to come back for me and the cattle. This was progress and so I sat there waiting for Richard and Keith to come down the road in Richards new BMW 2000 car, he'd only taken delivery ten days before and was enjoying it. Richard saw me, pulled up and I told him where we were. He promised me he'd wait for me at Yew Tree. I sat there waiting. My next visitor was a patrol car, the police knew the regular drivers and when I explained what had happened they said they'd get the council men at the salt depot to unlock the access gate as we would have to turn the Penrith wagon round to get the two wagons tailgate to tailgate to do the transfer.
A couple of hours later the Penrith wagon came back, the police shielded us and we got the beasts transferred to the other wagon. I had already told Richard to alert the garage at Carlisle and I told the police they would recover the Leyland before morning. With that I gathered my stuff, hopped into the other wagon and was driven back to Yew Tree.
After an uneventful ride we tipped the cattle into the byre at Yew Tree and at this point I made my big mistake! This was a time when attested cattle had come in, certified Brucellosis free. Yew Tree was an accredited farm but I had two non-attested calves on the canopy and told Richard that as we'd got everything else right, these two calves should go the Demesne near Gisburn which was not accredited. Richard had already told me to take his car to get home and so I followed the wagon to Demesne, chucked the calves off, thanked the driver and waved him off down the road. So far so good! Everything done properly to retrieve a bad situation, all the cattle OK and bedded down, all I had to do was go home.
I set off down the road, it was around midnight, lovely car, radio playing quiet music and I was in no rush, about 40mph and I was enjoying myself. Despite all the problems, a good day's work and the certainty I would now get the new engine. Unfortunately, I didn't know it at the time but my guardian angel had knocked off for the night....

[Wendyf]

We had a Vauxhall Cresta in the early 60's, Dad needed a powerful car to tow the caravan which weighed a ton unloaded. I have a file full of Dad's car invoices on my desk at the moment and he bought our first Cresta in 1963. It was two tone green, a year old and cost £580. I see from the invoice that he got £250 part exchange against our 1959 Landrover which I loved desperately ....I remember weeping buckets when it went and I hated the Cresta not least because my car sickness returned. I never suffered from it sitting on the old ex-bus bench seats in the back of the landrover with the back rolled up for fresh air.
The Cresta was the first car we had with a cigarette lighter on the dash....my brother used to kill flies with it just to upset me.

[Stanley]

I can understand the car sickness Wendy, they were a bit soft on the suspension and wallowed a bit. Billy's was that same two tone green.... Back to my adventure...
I drove up the road towards Gisburn in Richard's brand new BMW and all was well with the world, it had been a hard and eventful day but we'd finished up with a result, all the cattle safely back home and the loose ends tidied up. Richard had been across to Barlick so Vera knew what was happening and wouldn't be worrying about me. All the bases were covered!
I was almost in Gisburn, just crossed the railway bridge and coming up the hill to the slight right hand bend about 300 yards from the main road when a car came round the bend going like hell, headlights on full beam and on my side of the road! No time to do a lot of thinking and instinct took over. In my head I was still in the wagon and if I hit the car the driver was dead so I steered to the near side to miss him. As soon as the front wheel got in the soft verge everything went pear shaped, I was pulled into the breast wall, bounced off it and afterwards we reckoned that the car had somersaulted back onto the road on its roof and then slid on its side up the road. I can remember hitting the roof lining and noting how soft it was and then watching the sparks flying past my face as I slid up the road on the off side, then there was another adjustment and the car righted itself and came to rest across the road facing into the hear side wall. The lights were still on, the radio was playing quietly and the driver's door opened perfectly so I got out.
Funny thing is that I have perfect recall of everything that happened. The first thing I saw was one of the coil springs from the front suspension stood on a cat's eye in the road and said to it "Bloody hell Zebedee! What are you doing here?" [Magic Roundabout fans will recognise that one.] Then I leaned on the car and looked down the road and saw that the other car had stopped, the driver must have seen me out of the car and set off down the road towards Long Preston at high speed. Nothing to be done about that so I gathered my thoughts and realised the next move was to walk up to the road end where there was a telephone box.
The funny thing was that every time I tried to walk up the road I finished up flat on the ground and soon realised that some bits of my body weren't working as they should. No pain, just inability to walk so I did the only thing I could and started to crawl up the road towards Gisburn. I don't remember a lot after that and have no idea how long it took me, the next clear memory I have is being in the telephone box talking to the operator and asking for the police and an ambulance. Later they told me that I kept passing out and it took quite a while to get a coherent story out of me.
Once I had called for help I realised that the next pressing matter was the fact that my bowels were calling urgently for attention. I shame to say that I took care of this in the flower bed behind the telephone box and this must have distressed someone later but I had no choice, it must have been shock. Funny thing is that I managed to get my trousers back up and fastened, it was to be a long time before I managed that again!
I realised I would have a bit of a wait so I looked for some way to get comfortable, still no pain. Eventually I settled in the gutter on my left side with my back against the kerb and lay there having a quiet smoke. Once again, I am not sure of the time, I suspect I was drifting in and out of consciousness, the next thing I remember was a lot of blue flashing lights.....

[Stanley]

The first arrival at the party was an ambulance from Barlick, two men, I have forgotten the name of the driver but his mate was George Horton who knew me. As they stood looking at me and George was asking me questions, I suppose to ascertain whether I was rational, his mate said "It's his legs!". He had noted that I had my legs doubled up under me but this was just to get comfortable in the gutter. I told the bloke he was wrong, by then I knew that it all centred round my right shoulder but he took no notice of me and grabbed me under the arms to straighten me out. At that point the pain kicked in and I passed out again.
I came to as they lifted me onto a stretcher, by this time they had realised I was right and did all they could to get me comfortable. While they were doing this the police arrived and got my story off me but evidently didn't believe my account of the other car and decided that they would breathalyse me there and then. Give George his due, he refused to allow this as he suspected I had broken ribs. They loaded me into the ambulance and we set off for Burnley Victoria Hospital. I swear that vehicle had no springs and that his mate drove over every kerb and manhole all the way to Burnley! I told George it was worse than a bread van.
When we got to the hospital there wasn't a doctor available but a senior nurse, could have been a ward sister, stripped my shirt off, decided that I had a broken collar bone and put a butterfly bandage on me [With a large knot in the middle of my back! This was a pain in the neck since I found out that the most comfortable position to sleep was flat on my back.] She gave me a couple of white pills and these kicked in almost straight away and I told them I was fit to be taken home. She made me walk about a bit and then approved. At that point the police arrived.
I asked them immediately if they had told Richard I had bent his new motor and they had, one of them told me that he was a good boss, he told them that he wasn't worried about the car, all he wanted to know was how I was. Then they decided, against the protests of the nurse, that I had to have a breath test. I told them that the last drink I had was about three weeks previous but they had their way and of course I blew a zero result.
George and his mate delivered me back home and when I got there Vera was up and Richard and his wife Ursula were there. I embarrassed everyone by bursting into tears as soon as I got in the house, I think the shock had kicked in and I was relieving myself. Richard told me that I was to get well and he would pay my wage even though I was off, he said he had no worries about the car, he would get another one. I asked him what he had done about the wagon and he said it was all taken care of. I went to bed and despite everything fell asleep straight away.
I won't bore you with my recovery, it took about eight weeks. The final tally for the day was expensive! One wagon and one new car buggered, I never saw the car but they told me that apart from both front wheels being ripped off, every panel had been destroyed, the wonder was that I had survived! I had a broken right collar bone, a cracked shoulder blade and a chipped shoulder socket.My job was to do the worst part of the whole affair, do nothing for eight weeks!

[Stanley]

As things started to knit back together I learned a lot about ossification and the benign effects of constructive stress, if the broken bones are rubbing against each other they knit faster. The consultant at the hospital told me that the worst after effect was residual arthritis and that the best thing I could do was keep everything moving. I mentioned this to my milkman, Fred Smith, and he told me to rig a cord over one of the hooks in the beam in the kitchen and use my good arm to pull the right one up until it hurt. The consultant was delighted with my progress but when I told him what I was doing he said that if he made his patients do that he would be struck off! It worked, I never got the arthritis and my right shoulder is just as mobile as the left to this day.
I had plenty of time and did a lot of reading. This was the time when I first read all five volumes of Smiles Lives of the Engineers and triggered of my serious study of industrial archaeology.At the same time I was doing a lot of thinking about Richard's transport needs. He was buying both accredited and non-accredited cattle and they had to be kept separate. This meant his business options were limited, he either had to refuse good beasts or hire transport, I reckoned there was a solution.
The trend was for wagons to get bigger but due to the restrictions on wagon and trailer combinations the large articulated wagon was taking over. The problem was that under the old regs a wagon and trailer had to have a mechanical connection to the trailer brakes operated by a driver's mate with a large lever! In 1968 the new Transport Act included a little noticed provision that if modern multi-line air braking systems were used, this requirement was abolished. The perfect solution to Richard's problem, accredited stock in one box and non-accredited in the other. I got Richard to come round to see me and I put all this to him plus a written paper on the subject. [I was typing a lot as well to pass the time....]
Richard got it straight away, he told me he liked the idea and would give it some serious thought. He told John Harrison at Old Stone Trough about it and he liked the idea as well. He had just bought a new wagon, a Scania, and with a gearbox change it would do the job. Richard asked if the Comet would manage a trailer and I told him no.



Richard moved fast, he arranged to sell the Leyland to a Scottish Haulier and set me on to finding him a wagon that would do the job. John Harrison moved even faster and fitted the body off his old wagon on to a York four wheeled trailer and beat us on to the road but I upset him by telling him it looked a mess as it looked like a pup following on behind! I found two candidates, a demonstration Volvo F88 built specially for trailer work and on sale at Ailsa Motors in Glasgow for a good price and an ERF at Reliance Motors at Brighouse built for trailer work. The difference between them was that the Volvo was one of the new breed of wagons with a turbocharged engine while the ERF depended on the old fashioned Gardner. Richard asked me what the difference was and i told him, I also told him I favoured the Volvo but he thought the cab was too imposing and didn't like it!
To cut a long story short, we bought the ERF, got a beautiful Houghton body made especially for it and Richard went shopping for a trailer. I recommended the Dyson built in Liverpool and Richard asked why it was 50% more expensive than a York. I told him we could get it built exactly to our design to get maximum length and that he'd find out why it cost more in twenty years. He took the bait, I designed the trailer and I wouldn't let Richard commission the box for it until Houghton's had measured it up while coupled to the wagon, I was determined that the roof lines should match. I'll leave it to you to judge whether that extra care was worth it.



The new outfit parked outside Yew Tree Farm at West Marton. A complete success and Stanley was King of the Road! A few weeks after I got it I was having a Guinness in the Dog one weekend and one of my old driving mates asked me what I was going to do next. I had reached the peak of the profession, the biggest wagon in Barlick, the most miles and the best wage. I told him that my next ambition was to run a big mill engine, I had seen Bancroft running while I was off work.....

[David Whipp]

I'm looking forward to catching up with this topic soon - haven't had time since our holiday break. There looks like a good deal of content!

[Stanley]

I like telling stories David....
I soon got into the swing of handling the outfit but had some adventures along the way. I'm sure you have worked out that reversing the outfit was a major problem. Not only were all the rules of steering reversed but as you went back these rules themselves were reversed if you changed the line slightly. Work it out for yourself and if you want the full story buy Volume Two of Stanley’s Story on Lulu.com. Suffice it to say that for years, the Country and Western song 'Give me forty acres and I'll turn this rig around' was a favourite! (LYRIC)
The outfit was perfect for carrying cattle and excited a lot of interest in Scotland. Nobody had used a wagon and pup for years but they soon twigged and they became common. Steady as a rock on the road and even though it was underpowered when you had 32 big beasts on board and running overweight and was limited to 52mph the journey times weren't much more than with the faster Leyland. Fuel consumption was wonderful, about 13mpg.
Richard worked me hard, I did 110,000 miles in my first year with it and for a while all was well. All this changed one fateful day on Beattock, the big climb out of the lowlands into Lanarkshire. We used to change over at a calf drop on Beattock on the way to Lanark and David was driving. It was a bright sunny morning and as we climbed towards the summit a silver Bentley coming at high speed down the opposite carriage way (The A74 had been dualled by that time) veered into the kerb of the central reservation careered from side to side, overturned and killed I think five of the occupants. The bodies were scattered down the road and you knew they were dead, they looked dusty... I remember a small dog was thrown out and ran north up the carriageway...
It all happened in a flash and of course we kept going, nothing we could do and plenty of witnesses at the scene. David said that it did you good to see something like that as it made you more careful. I said it hadn't done me any good and gave him a fortnight's notice! I'd been thinking for a while that driving was a young lad's job and coming up to forty years old it was getting time to be thinking about getting out. This crash was the final straw.
The funny thing was that nobody said anything to me about this. When I got home that night I asked Vera to go to Bancroft and ask if I could have the job of firebeater that was going. I called in on Wednesday and spoke to Sidney Nutter and told him I wanted the engineer's job when George Bleasdale, the current engineer, retired later that year. They must have known a bit about me because they bit my hand off. I was to start a week on Monday.
It was over a week later when Richard and I were at Gisburn on the Thursday getting the cattle groomed for the sale when he asked me if I was serious. I told him yes and I had a job to go to. He never argued with me but later on I saw one of our old customers, Wilf Bargh from Waddington, and he told me that Richard was dumbfounded, when Wilf asked him what he was going to do he said that he's have to set on two drivers and a mechanic!



TWY at Gisburn Auction in 1972.

That was it. No drama, no recriminations, I was no longer a long distance driver! A few years later I got a phone call one evening from my daughter Susan who was making a bit of money as a silver service waitress at Stirk House and she said that Richard was on his feet at an NFU dinner making a speech on the importance having good men and he mentioned John Henry Pickles and me by name. Nice!
My commute to work was now a walk down my own field to the mill. I took to it like a duck to water! No more 40 hours the first two days of the week, home every night for tea. It was a different world.....
One little story to finish off. Shortly after returning to work and getting the new outfit, I called at Yew Tree one day for instructions and as I went to get out of the cab a tear in the leg of my overalls snagged on something in the cab. I was already committed to getting out and so I carried on, head first heading towards the tarmac. In the considerable length of time (or so it seemed) when I was heading down I realised I was going to land on my newly mended right shoulder and thought Oh S**T!! Happily it turned out that Mother Nature is pretty good at welding bones back together, I bounced, picked myself up and was none the worse.

[Stanley]

Richard Drinkall visiting me at Hey Farm, a good boss and a nice man.

[Stanley]

Richard Drinkall (third from the left with his elbow on the rail) buying at Lanark Auction in 1977. Some serious dealers in this corner and the auctioneer was capable of controlling them, if he thought they weren’t paying attention he told them so! It was a fascinating place and you could learn a lot just watching these men, all characters and all impressive men.

[Stanley]

Can anyone remember knife-grinders coming round the streets? We had them in Stockport, they had a bike that could be put on a stand and the grinding wheel was driven by pedalling the back wheel. In the LTP I was told about a man who did this in Barlick but he hadn't got a bike, he sharpened the knives on a kerb stone.

[plaques]

I came across this when clearing the garage out or should I say shuffling things round. A Pifco mini boiler. 220V fused at 3 Amp. Someone had fitted a two pin plug but left the earth out. Never used it myself but I would think they were popular in their time.

[Tripps]

These things were very popular when I was in the army in Germany in the 1960's. Known as 'curly pokers'
Quite dangerous too - no timer or cut out switch. A colleague once left one plugged in and it burned its way through a wooden table. I would not have one on the premises.

[Stanley]

Do not try this! If you cut both ends out of an A4 tin, punch two holes in the sides and fix one lid on a non-conductor like a wood dowel in the centre and then connect one leg of a circuit to the tin and one to the lid it will boil water in no time but probably blow every fuse in the circuit! They tell me that this was used in the army in tented camps abroad.

[Stanley]

Thinking about blowing fuses in electrical circuits.... When electric lights were first introduced there were no power points as we know them. The comm on way of running an iron or other electrical object was to take out the light bulb, put an adapter in with two sockets, replace the light bulb and plug the appliance in to the empty socket. You would see quite amazing 'Christmas trees' of multiple adapters hanging from the ceiling! They soon learned that you needed thicker fuse wire in the circuit and in some cases finally reached the point where the fuse was heavier than the wiring!

[PanBiker]

And a form of supplementary heating. With my TV serviceman hat on, I was once was called to a house in Earby to a supposed TV fault only to find the house had been DIY rewired with extra ring circuits using figure eight bell wire! No earth of course but what does that matter. Lady of the house said hubby was "very handy like that". I pulled the main 100amp fuses on the feed before the consumer unit and took them away with me before calling the YEB. Bloke who did it came in the shop to complain that his tea wasn't ready when he got home from work!

[Stanley]

When I moved into this house in 2000 we completely rewired it to a very high standard. Plenty of sockets and two high amperage circuits (60 amps) one for the cooker of course but the other for the workshop with one special connection for the 200amp electric welder. They are supposed to function on a 13amp plug but in practice often blow the fuse when you strike the arc. That has a 40 amp fuse on it and has never been any problem.
I have seen some amazing DIY lash ups and the wonder was that for much of the time they worked! I still have some bobbins of old fashioned fuse wire in the shed....

[Stanley]

Gas use was a similar picture when I was a lad. I particularly remember the simple gas cocks in the fireplace to which you could connect the 'gas poker' or a gas fire by a simple piece of rubber tubing, for some reason it was always red. You never see gas pokers these days but they were a hollow steel spear with holes in that you thrust into the heap of coal in the grate after turning the gas on and lighting it. Ten minutes later the coal was burning and the gas poker was red hot. Over time the end broke off the spear and you had one big jet from the end.....

[Stanley]

Gas fires in those days were free-standing and the products of combustion were discharged into the room.

[Stanley]

Thinking about the gas fire... My friend Bill Rae lived in a large Victorian House which had a front room about 30ft x 15ft. The only heating in the house apart from the gas cooker in the kitchen was a single element gas fire free-standing in the hearth. We spent hours sat as close to the fire as we could in the depths of winter. We have forgotten how cold our living environment was in those days and if we had to go back to it I don't know how we'd survive!

[Tizer]

We have forgotten how cold our living environment was in those days and if we had to go back to it I don't know how we'd survive!

In a similar vein, we've forgotten what holidays were like before the Mediterranean hotels. A young friend has been to Tenerife and was disappointed because the hotel wasn't as good as the one she was in last time. I had to explain how we had holidays in Blackpool boarding houses in the 1950s; the family in one small room with a washbasin; one loo/bathroom in the house, serving several families; sent out in between mealtimes to entertain ourselves come rain or shine; sometimes having to supply your own food for the landlady to cook etc.