A Trip Down Memory Lane

or more accurately a Parade Reviving Memories.

On Saturday 11th July 2009, there was a Transport Festival in Leyland.  There have been several of these in the past and I thought it was time I had a look.  All my working life was spent on commercial vehicles at Leyland Motors in Leyland.

I read the instructions on the council web site and positioned myself to get a good background for the photos that I planned to take.  Fortunately a lady pointed out to me that the parade was not now coming this way so I hurtled across to the entrance to ‘Morrison’s’ road and took up a position near the traffic lights just in time to get the first vehicle, the Popemobile.

As you can see not a very good background!  I love brass bands.

The only traction engine.  I remember steam rollers, like this only a large roller at the front, from the road works outside our house on Golden Hill Lane.

This is some motorbike but I was never allowed to have one, my dad had cracked his skull when he was young and he didn’t want that to happen to me.  I was promised I could drive the car when I was seventeen.  I’d first driven up and down the long drive next to our house from the age of eleven.  On my seventeenth birthday I took to the roads in our 1936 Standard Big 12.  Took me three times to pass my test, 6th January 1956!  I didn’t have lessons so failed on technicalities, not bad vehicle control.

My own first car was a new Mini in 1961, I think.  It was a white basic model, this one’s got fancy wheels, WFR281.  I was living in Wigan with my new wife and her parents.  We sold it soon afterwards for a deposit on a house.  You’ll laugh at this: up till this time I thought only rich people could buy houses, I had no idea what a mortgage was!

Around the time of my eighteenth birthday, I bought two old Austin 7 vans to make into a 750 Special.  I got well on the way with the chassis, in fact it looked something like the part completed car behind but no bodywork.  I was towed on it from our house in Leyland to my uncle’s smallholding in Bamber Bridge, now an industrial estate.  Marriage intervened before it was completed and I ended up selling it for £25 as by now I was living in Wigan.

Morris Minor 100.  I had a friend who was a rep for Rountrees, his company car was one of these.  He used to use it, against his company’s wishes, to take us to and from rugby matches; we were playing for Preston Grasshoppers.  I remember how I used to feel claustrophobic in the back many times as I thought he drove too fast.

My uncle had a van like this, which he used to let me drive round delivering meat, he was a butcher in Chorley.  I can still remember the sound the open door made as I braked and it shot forward, the door was heavy and hard to open/shut.

I joined the boy scouts at age ten and a half, the Second Leyland troop.  You had to be eleven – I told a lie.  A lie that haunted me and I gave up soon afterwards because I felt guilty.

I think this was a cab similar to the ones that I helped put together in South Works at the beginning of my student apprenticeship.  I looked for a Royal Tiger with the split screen but there wasn’t one – I’d worked with a blacksmith, my next placement, who had formed the windscreen frames from angle-iron.

I remember lots of these, I may even have driven one at Preston where my Dad worked.

A prettier one!

I think these were for South Africa or Africa.  We had factories all over the Commonwealth.  This is a later version, there were none of the ones I worked on.  I was very disappointed by the age of the vehicles, most were younger than me!  I remembered later that vintage vehicles were anything over thirty years old.  I had been expecting veterans, which are pre 1930. 

There were lots of these trucks running around when I was a lad.  I think my Grandad used to drive one for Coulthursts; I used to spend my school summer holidays at my Grandparents who rented a farm in Bamber Bridge, now an industrial estate! I went out with him several times. I can picture now some of the places. One was the Roebuck at Whittle-le-Woods, the publican was a lady.

Brindle Brass Band!  They used to play at Preston North End when there was a match on.  I went a few times with my Dad when I was little, before I started to play rugby.  It was quite impressive watching them march round and listening to the music, Margi was the North End theme song.  I’m sure they wore blue uniforms then, Leyland Motors Brass Band wore red and now they wear blue?  I went to watch a match between marriages, I took my Dad this time and all we got was piped music.  I remember being very disappointed.  Things don’t always change for the better.

X60 Manchester.  This is the bus that my first real girlfriend, used to catch at Chorley to go to go to work at Salford Royal Hospital as a student nurse.  I put her on it many times.  The last time I actually went to Manchester on it to meet her returning from a holiday in Scarborough was when she told me she was ending our relationship.

Many times I/we caught the 109 to and from Euxton, where she lived, to Chorley to go to the pictures and occasionally church at Chorley Parish Church.  Probably on one of these buses.  She never wore a hat, which was unthought of in church in those days.  This was also a route shared by Fishwicks who were our local bus company.

This was a rarity.  The 111 was an almost exclusive route for Fishwicks.  When these buses drove through Leyland they were 113s – Preston/Wigan/Preston.  I rode on one of these to work from Wigan when I lived in Wigan.  I think it’s a PD3.

All Ribble buses had the "Ribble" badge.  This used to confuse me as a child! Why didn't they have a "Leyland" badge?

They didn't have a Ribble hub cap!

When I first started at Leyland, when we piled out of work, whether it was in the town centre or outside the othe factories at Farington or Spurrier, there were always lots of buses with a "W" number.  Many of the buses had drivers who worked at Leyand Motors, I'm not sure how that worked out.  In those days it wa illegal to car-share so most workers travelled to work by bus. they came from all around - Wigan had many Leyland workers.  Of course many people risked getting caught.  However Mrs Thatcher's lot changed all that and you were allowed to charge your passengers in the car, i.e. share the petrol.  So gradually the buses disappeared.

Another exhibit carrying the wrong route number.  Rible di occasionally run buses on these routes but it was a very rare.

Ther must have been thousands of these little Bedford coaches. We used to travel to my grandparents at Bamber Bridge by a Fishwick's bus, an old Lion single-decker.  We had to walk from the Hob Inn as the bus didn't go along Kellet Lane.  I can see these coaches now coming down Church Brow and turning left at the triangular square to cross the bridge over th Lostock to turn right along Woodcock Lane, may be called Lostock Lane now, on their way to Blackpool.  There was no motorway then and this was the mani road to Blackpool from Manchester and all points south.  They were in a constant stream that never semed to stop, literally just one after the other.

They looked serious here but broke into smiles when they realised I'd photographed them - I'd have been locked up in London?

Some lovely old true Leyland buses:

It was Leyland Motors Limited wehen I started, part of Leyland Albion Scammel

All coaches from a certain coachbuilder looked the same. the only way you could identify the chassis was by the wheel hubs.  This could have been a Leyland.  We used to travel on a Fishwick's coach with the Photographic Society in the seventies.

When I traveled on the buses regularly, many journeys on a bus like this one, they didn't have a route number. "Preston Fox Street" or "Leyland Earnshaw Bridge" or Preston via Croston Road" - that was the quickest route to Preston from Earnshaw Bridge where we lived.  The Croston Road route, where we live now, had to have special "Low Bridge" double deckers to get under the railway bridge in Church Lane, Farington Moss.  The bridge has now gone - Dr Beeching.

One of Fishwicks latest fleet, they are quite good to travel on.

Leyland Olympian? The 109 was always a singledecker in my time.

I remeber this fire engine very well, it patrolled the works frequently.

The famous Green Godess strike breaker.

I rember these from World War 2 films

A modern war vehicle?  Leyland Motors have always made M O D vehicles.  I remember working on the large tank recovery vehicle with a Rolls Royce engine, all the other parts were made at Leyland, in the Comet Shop - now Morrisons, and assembled in the shop south of the BX, still standing.  The factory was called the Comet factory because it was constructed to make Comet tanks.  Spurrier works was built by the M O D to make Centurian tanks which I can just about remember.  As children we used to hide in the fields watching them being tested on the Spurrier test track, now a recycling centre.  During the war, WW2, I remember them being tested on Golden Hill Lane outside where we lived, I don't know which tank that was - a Comet?