gingerfold:
Chris Webb:
gingerfold:
Chris Webb:
Hi Dean.
The ERF is one of Hipwood and Grundy’s from Farnworth Lancs.They had two with the Jennings sleeper,both with 240 Gardner.Taken not long before they folded. Hipwood & Grundy was a sizable company in its day, famous for its elderly Leyland Octopus tankers that were going on for 20 years old when they closed down.
I remember those old Leylands running about Graham,usually out of BTP and LTD Cadishead early 70s.They went well with those old wagons of Horrocks as well.
Hi Chris, yes Horrocks got his money’s worth out of his old Foden tar tankers. I was talking to one of Hipwoods Octopus drivers about 6 years ago and he was adamant that in 1979 with an Octopus that was 19 years old he was still regularly going to Milford Haven, Fawley, Grangemouth and Thameshaven refineries. Goodness knows what one of today’s generation of drivers would have made of one of those Octopuses. I had to send one of my night drivers to Newmarket on Monday night with a 12 plate DAF CF which is usually my yard shunter; he had a sulk and a face like a smacked arse when I told him what he was taking because his usual much newer unit was in for service. However the 12 plate didn’t do so bad; he grudgingly admitted it was 10 minutes quicker coming back to Manchester than his usual unit. The CF had 26 pallets of frozen NZ lamb behind it, so fully freighted.
Aye Graham,we got some strange looks at Evans when running those MK3 AECs into early 70s.If you got a MK5 it was a real step up the ladder.
I remember a driver on nights at MFS having a tantrum cos his Scania 81 unit was on service and he had to take a Seddon Atki 400 with 180 and DB box on a Carlisle changeover.He tried his utmost to get somebody elses 81 and eventually got one returning late off day shift,but our TSM radioed me and told me to remove the 2 amp fuse at back of radio on parcel shelf " So he can whine to hisen to Carlisle and back". 
Manchester - Newmarket - Manchester on nights is a nice run,I would have loved that.