Eddie Heaton:
Thanks for posting the link to the Shap video m.a.n rules. It’s great to see proper wagons in action again. Unfortunately, for me at least, the vision of the supposedly freighted Tennant wagon and drag breezing up towards the summit at 25 mph doesn’t quite coincide with the mental image that I still retain of watching Fred Rose’s KV cabbed ERF eight leggers grinding up at walking pace, fully freighted with newsreel from Cooke & Nuttall at Horwich , destined for Dundee.To be fair, I’ve only watched the first couple of minutes of the first part. There may be more resonant images to be viewed in subsequent parts.
I do realise of course that we all owe a debt of gratitude to all those vintage vehicle restorers and enthusiasts for their efforts in coming even close to reproducing historical scenes.
The pinnacle of road haulage in the UK, ( to my mind that is ), occurred during the mid 50s to mid 60s, so It would be practically impossible to reproduce a plausible re-enactment of those Halcyon days.
Fair play to everyone involved in these historic vehicle events, but I guess I’m probably too much of a purist and need to accept that history is history,…end of.
If it’s any consolation Eddie, I did the two-day North of England Road Run for most of the 1990s with a well-freighted test trailer. Including setting off from, and returning home to Lancashire, it involved four crossings of the Pennines, plus Shap, The Military Road running parallel with the A69, and then the A68 back from Hexham down to Consett.
As an illustration of the contrast in how different people approach these events, I have a VHS video from 1998, showing wagons climbing Glen Welt, which is where you leave the A69 at Greenhead, west of Haltwhistle and climb up onto the B6318, the Military Road along the Hadrian’s Wall. Glen Welt is, I think, a 1-in-6, and you approach it from a standing start at a T junction at the bottom. The first wagon up is Tyson Burridge’s gleaming unladen Albion Reiver flat, being driven by Bob Tuck, storming up, flashing the lights and waving at everyone.
The very next is my Mk.2 Atkinson, with green mould on the cab roof and pulling a test trailer carrying 18T of concrete. It was being propelled by its original and rather tired 180 Gardner, which has never been overhauled since it went into the wagon in 1969. You can literally watch every single wheelnut going round as it drags itself up the bank, foot-by-foot. I was grateful for the Fuller gearbox with a proper crawler! It was a similar picture on the A68, over Kiln Pit Hill, Allensford and Tow Law Moor before dropping down into West Auckland. I think that was probably the single most enjoyable road run I ever did.