Lawrence Dunbar:
albion1938:
Father’s first new lorry after the war, early 1946.
BernardNice photo, an earley curtainsider Eh, Great stuff, Regards Larry.
It’s a shame the picture’s damaged, but you can see enough. The back part of the canvas tilt, you can see a moulding holding it down, was loose and could be rolled forward for overhead loading of heavy items such as boilers, using a block and tackle on a gantry. By the way, everybody thinks the flat bonnet/tinwork on the wartime Bedfords was for economy/ease of construction, but the main reason was that the civvy O types only had a little gauze air filter on top of the carb, the military needed a big oil bath filter for off road/desert use, there wasn’t room under the civilian bonnet, hence the square military front to make room, and to standardise, the few civvy vehicles released had the same front end. The body on the Bedford in the picture was heavily modified in 1955 into a box van, and fitted to a new series 3 Austin, picture attached, have a close look at the headboard and you can see it’s the same framing!
Bernard