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Despite a very rainy evening, the final members’ meeting of 2006 attracted an audience of about 22 members and guests, including some new associates and ranging in age from one to 91!
Our Group Chairman, Chris Kirkby, introduced the meeting and thanked Tony Parish, Catherine Lloyd and everyone else who had contributed to the success of Drive Day on 1 October. He also congratulated Bert Gallagher on passing his IAM test for the first time at the age of 91.
The guest speaker was David Lee from the Wessex Sound and Film Archive, who presented a video showreel compiled from a fascinating programme of old motoring films. He explained that the Archive had been started in 1988 and that the term ‘Wessex’ was used to cover all central southern England. Other archives exist, for example in Brighton, Plymouth and Leicester. The Archive has a library of over 26,000 film and sound items – some of them on highly-inflammable cellulose nitrate stock, in regular use until 1951, which needs careful storage and handling.
The first film was an Austin Motors advertising film from 1935, providing a potted history of transport from stage coaches and horse-drawn buses to contemporary motor-cars. It was presented as a story from a father to his young son, who was preparing a school essay on transport, and it was notable for the archaic language, manners and stilted accents of the time.
That was followed by a film entitled ‘Milestones in Road Transport History, 1896-1945’, about the Thorneycroft company’s involvement in transport, mainly in the Basingstoke area. It started with the 1896 Thorneycroft steam van, built at Chiswick and notable for having front-wheel drive. Then followed a steam-driven double-decker bus, with a canvas canopy to prevent hot cinders falling on the upper-deck passengers. In 1912 Thorneycroft ceased car production to concentrate on commercial vehicles, and built over 5,000 J lorries for the Armed Services. In 1926 a 6-wheeler was introduced with independently driven and suspended rear axles, one of the first off-roaders, ideal for poor surfaces such as muddy fields. In 1936 came the 4/5 and 5/6-ton Sturdy lorry, available with a choice of petrol or diesel engines. In World War II the Basingstoke factory was receiving over 1,000 tons of raw materials per month. It pioneered X-ray inspection of metal castings, and every chassis built was extensively road-tested so that it was ‘run-in’ before the body was added and the vehicle delivered to the customer.
Over 13,000 4 and 6-wheel vehicles were built for many wartime purposes. The RAF used over 2,000 mobile Coles cranes on a 6-wheel Thorneycroft chassis, for heavy aircraft maintenance tasks and the removal of crashed German aircraft. Thorneycroft built 8,230 machine-gun carriers, and then introduced the Terrapin 1 and 2 amphibious vehicles, field guns, parts for tank landing craft and a depth-charge thrower.
The next film was ‘This Motoring’, made in 1935 to show the history of the Automobile Association (AA). It recounted how the AA started to counter police speed traps on the London to Brighton road, using cycle-borne people called ‘scouts’. One scout was convicted of doing this, but the AA fought and won the case – the famous ‘Fairmile Acquittal’. It then issued distinctive badges for members’ cars so that the scouts would recognise them.
We then watched a fascinating silent film, made by BBC South in 1961 but never broadcast, of cars on the A31 in the New Forest. It provided an opportunity for those members of a certain age to identify cars of the period, and also to spot several instances of irresponsible overtaking.
The next film was entitled ‘Milestones and Memories’ from the National Motor Museum, made by Ford in 1938. This was very cleverly intercut with a short ‘public interest’ film called ‘Look, Listen and Take Heed’, aimed at women drivers and ending with the slogan ‘Women – for pity’s sake, don’t drive!’ This was, in fact, a modern spoof but it perfectly and hilariously captured the Cholmondeley-Warner cut-glass accents and behaviour of the day.
Then followed a BBC South film made in 1981 and entitled Brooklands – Looking Back’. It was a compilation of historical films about the famous Brooklands banked racing circuit, near Weybridge. The banking had a dotted line near its top edge which cars would straddle at a speed of 130 mph – below this speed they would sink down the banking and at higher speeds they would rise nearer the top. It included scenes of John Cobb, who set a new world speed record of 143 mph, and of Clive Dunfee who went ‘over the top’ of the banking in a spectacular but fatal crash.
The final offering was a driver-training film made by the Lancashire Constabulary just after the second world war. It followed a police driving instructor in an old black Wolseley police car, giving a commentary as he negotiated a series of road and traffic hazards. The driver’s hand signals and verbal delivery showed the film’s age, but it was notable how similar the techniques were to those covered in the current Roadcraft book and video.
Returning to the present day, we then watched a short report from Meridian TV News on 17 November describing Bert Gallagher’s IAM test success.