edworth:
Peter…Think somebody as pinched your Pigfords van.
Eddie
Excellent work Eddie. Really suits the livery.
Harry would have been really chuffed with the registration. 
Lot of thought gone into this. Well done.
Peter.
pbsummers:
edworth:
Peter…Think somebody as pinched your Pigfords van.
EddieExcellent work Eddie. Really suits the livery.
Harry would have been really chuffed with the registration.
Lot of thought gone into this. Well done.
Peter.
Hi Eddie and Peter,
I hadn’t known the reg number until you said Peter.
You have a gift Eddie. Certainly improving things from tha miserable awful black.
I don’t know how you did it, but it is very good, but one thing, it would be a lot easier than actually painting it.
Carl
It’s a small world.
Last night my son, Paul met Ken Howe. Ken, a retired solicitor is the son of Eddie Howe that founded the OK bus service between Bishop Auckland and Newcastle. After asking about me and briefly talking about dad, Ken went on ‘ And I knew your Great Grandfather’. Eddie of course would have known my great grandfather, Paul’s great great grandfather.
What Paul did not remember to tell Ken was that my grandfather had taught Eddie to drive and after he died my dad had bought and lived in the bungalow Eddie built at Farewell Hall Durham. As I have explained before, in Marmaduke Street Spennymoor, Howe had the top garage, us the middle then at the bottom was Oughton Carriers and the bottom corner H. Raine and Son (Coachbuilders)
Eddie had started operating his OK service about 1925 and as there was a large exhibition on the Town Moor in Newcastle he found he couldn’t cope with passenger numbers so he had approached Wayne Emmerson in Bishop Auckland to jointly run the service. One week Howe ran two busses with often two duplicates and Emmerson One with one duplicate and next week visa versa.
Howe’s fleet therefore always consisted of two service buses, two semi coaches and two coaches. At first Howe ran Reos and then went onto AEC. Originally all repairs and maintenance was carried out by Hodgson’s the AEC agents in Newcastle and bodywork and Certificate of fitness’s by H. Raine and Son. Later on Howe employed a driver mechanic for minor servicing but still used Hodgson’s for major work. The service buses in Howe’s fleet did very high mileages running 16 hours a day seven days a week to and from Newcastle and it must be a testament to AEC that he never had a breakdown.
One strange thing was in the early days the buses didn’t carry enough fuel for a day’s work and dad said it was laughable to see a bus full of passengers diverting up Marmaduke Street to refuel, whilst the passengers watched from their seats. I don’t think today’s health and safety laws would have allowed that.
Eddie always kept one coach that he drove himself. However as the OK bus service was so profitable, getting work for his two coaches was not important and so the one he drove rarely got used. I remember when in 1958 he purchased 129DPT shown below (And still in preservation) the coach it replaced (an AEC half cab which seemed very old) had only done 38,000 miles.
Ken had for a time run OK Service Station then on the A1 at Chilton, until he decided to become a solicitor, and Eddie had no one to hand over the business to, and so decided to sell out to Emmerson’s OK at Bishop Auckland. In the last year or two he had bought two Bedford coaches, as perhaps he had decided he was not carrying on for long However he was surprised at how well the Bedford’s performed.
Sadly, I was told he was heart broken when finally he sold out, and no longer had the business, because it had been his life.
Hi Carl, I can remember the OK bus service. No matter what the weather it always got through unlike the other bus companies. Even in blizzards it always turned up albiet a bit late. Chris
If the bus company’s can have a model, he’s one for you Carl.
edworth:
If the bus company’s can have a model, he’s one for you Carl.
Hi Eddie
That picture is so accurate that it could easily hae been NXG526G Bddford Tk 1969 Tractor unit.
I cannot remember who I was talking to on Saturday who told me that he had been recomended to go to see us for a job and got employment with us about 5 days after passing his class 1 HGV and was only 21 years old.
On his first morning NXG526G was pulling out of the paintshop, newly painted coupled to a 28ft single axle York drop frame van trailer we had bought with it. This chap was told take that TK artic round to Courtauds and load it, and was sent off with a load oy yarn fr the Leicester area.
He said he had hoped he was given a rigid when he got the job but was thrown in with an artic.
Yes Eddie you are right it is about time some model maker made a model of one of our Bedford Marsden Pantechnicons.
Carl
825christineh:
Hi Carl, I can remember the OK bus service. No matter what the weather it always got through unlike the other bus companies. Even in blizzards it always turned up albiet a bit late. Chris
I remember OK buses running in Gateshead not that long ago used to take my kids to school on it as was to far to walk in the mor approx 5 mile they were only aged 5 & 6 at the time OK ran the most direct reliable service although we still had a walk this took the bulk of the inclines & journey
Was sad to see them bought out as they other company took that bus of straight away 
There was a good turnout for the reunion last week, and four people I know of didn’t come who I know wanted to.
Keith Winter was working abroad.
Raymond Russell forgot the date as he explained on this site.
Eric Nelson rang me after I had left explaining his wife who was going to drive him to Ferryhill had been called out to work and was unable to get. Eric, like me has been stopped driving, and I explained to him, that I wish he had contacted me as Paul would have gone and given him a lift.
The final one was Geoff Pye, who I know was in bad health. Geoff who I had met a few weeks earlier, so much wanted to go and I am sure everyone present would want me to pass their good wishes onto him on their behalf. Please Barbara (Geoff’s daughter) if you read this tell Geoff that we missed meeting him again and please let us know how he is.
Colin is going to organise another reunion in 2013, and I hope, God willing, everyone including Keith, Ray, Eric and Geoff is able to attend, as I am sure all who did will confirm everyone had ‘a day to remember’
Hi Carl…It would have been great to see Geoff and Eric, Ray was just a kid when I left but I remember his cheeky face well as for Keith ,I do not know him, but having said that, after the reunion it do’s not matter if you know so and so, it is we all worked for WHW and made friends for life and like me at the reunion, although I did not know lads that started after I left, I made new friends with them through WHW reunion, I hope you all can make some sense out of what I have said, if you have then please explain it to me .
Eddie
I know what you mean Eddie. It’s called camaraderie. Chris 
I knew I was a Camaraderer,have to see the doctor about it.
Eddie
I think most of us were Camararaders last Saturday. I know I was. I haven’t had a drink since. Chris
edworth:
Hi Carl…It would have been great to see Geoff and Eric, Ray was just a kid when I left but I remember his cheeky face well as for Keith ,I do not know him, but having said that, after the reunion it do’s not matter if you know so and so, it is we all worked for WHW and made friends for life and like me at the reunion, although I did not know lads that started after I left, I made new friends with them through WHW reunion, I hope you all can make some sense out of what I have said, if you have then please explain it to me
Eddie
Hi Eddie
The one thing all of you had in common was the vans.
We ran the Bedfords so long that all of you will have driven the same ones at some stage during their life with us. Many were up to sixteen and seventeen years old when we finished. The likes of BUP312F EUP488G and FPT780G were so long in the tooth that you would have driven them when they were young and you had just got your HGV licence, and yet there they were on the day we closed.
Dad’s maintenance standards were so high that they were still performing as well as they were when they were a year old. The problem we always had was when to sell them, because if the body was still in good condition and after a repaint they could look almost as good as new, why part with them, as all mechanical parts would be only on average about two to three years old. Dad as you know only fitted New Bedford parts, so the age could be deceptive, particularly with Marsden bodies.
So there you have it Eddie. You were sometimes talking to someone who had been driving a van that you had driven at 22 years old and they had driven a dozen years later, and it will still have had the same peculiarities that it had all those years earlier, and with the job they would have experienced the same problems that you have, so everyone had so much in common.
Carl
You are right about your Dad’s maintenance standards, although I was a driver and not a fitter, you cannot drive as long as I have without picking up some maintenance knowledge, when I bought SGS 333R from your Dad I thought all my birthdays had come together I had actually made it, to have a Marsden was fantastic although i went on to have other Marsdens and Vanplan one thing I always did, was to put new parts on them, unlike my ex son-law who would hunt around all the scrapyards, so even on the maintenance side I still learn’t from your Dad.
Eddie
edworth:
You are right about your Dad’s maintenance standards, although I was a driver and not a fitter, you cannot drive as long as I have without picking up some maintenance knowledge, when I bought SGS 333R from your Dad I thought all my birthdays had come together I had actually made it, to have a Marsden was fantastic although i went on to have other Marsdens and Vanplan one thing I always did, was to put new parts on them, unlike my ex son-law who would hunt around all the scrapyards, so even on the maintenance side I still learn’t from your Dad.
Eddie
Hi Eddie,
The first of the engine problems we experienced with the Bedford diesels was 1372UP. Tommy Stoddard who was a hard flogging driver didn’t achieve as high mileages as others. The early 330 cu in engines were still sleeved bores so we had the crankshaft re ground and put in new piston and sleeves. Shortly afterwards it blew up when the crank shaft snapped.
The thing about Bedford was they were American owned by GM and as a basic American Product everything was disposable. From then onwards we fitted new Bedford Short Motors, and the next life was usually as good as the first with most averaging about 300,000 miles on a short motor.
I read many people Criticising Bedfords, but if you accepted them for what they were, they provided exceptional service. Many operators expected them to be like Leyland etc. and they never pretended to be. In fact the down time and labour costs alone made the Bedford Short motor a cheaper option.
Similarly with diesel pumps and injectors, I remember sending them to various places to have them recalibrated including Bishop Auckland Auto Electrics, and they never were a success, particularly with being pulled up for black smoke, whereas the exchange Bedford injectors and rotary pumps put you back to new again.
Track rod ends and draglinks were similar. At one time we bought them from Syd Snowball’s at Bishop Auckland but soon found out by fitting genuine Bedford saved us money in the long term.
I won’t mention names but on one occasion a parts supplier, in error sent an expensive Christmas Present to a certain employee. Dad and I took the view that if they could afford to do that, one way or another we were paying for it. I had a meeting with Derek Rennie parts manager at Adams and Gibbon’s Durham and we agreed that if we bought all our Bedford Parts from them they would increase our discount, so a message was given to Terry in our stores that all Bedford parts must be bought from Adams and Gibbon, and ignore any requests from the person who received the gift to buy them elsewhere.
Similarly we used 100% new Pirelli tyres. Pirelli provided a supervision of our tyre supplier who sent a fitter each Saturday, by sending their technical manager each month to make a second check on the tyres and monitor the mileage we were achieving. It also had the benefit that should a dishonest driver consider selling the tyres on the vehicle he was driving and fitting well-worn ones in return would be caught out. We had very few punctures or any tyre breakdowns as a result.
Carl
Hi Carl
Snowballs !!! Thats a blast from the past. IIRC the parts vans were green and used to call weekly. Supplied shackle pins,king pins and other ’ consumables ’ One day the van pulled in to the yard and a few minutes later Mr Snowball followed him in with a brand new Wolsley 2200 automatic. Not sure if he was showing off his new car or following the van to see what business was like.
Do you know if the Bishop Auckland Snowballs were related to Snowballs the saddlers in Newcastle ■■?
tyneside:
Hi Carl
Snowballs !!! Thats a blast from the past. IIRC the parts vans were green and used to call weekly. Supplied shackle pins,king pins and other ’ consumables ’ One day the van pulled in to the yard and a few minutes later Mr Snowball followed him in with a brand new Wolsley 2200 automatic. Not sure if he was showing off his new car or following the van to see what business was like.
Do you know if the Bishop Auckland Snowballs were related to Snowballs the saddlers in Newcastle ■■?
Thats a blast from the past Tyneside, Bart J Snowball, I remember the shop well on Dean Street, When I worked for Baxters on the Quayside we use to deliver there with stuff from Rutherglen, Regards Larry.
Snowballs (Railway Street) are still on the go,I bought some workshop equipment from them a few month ago, now run by Sid’s grandson
Stephen.
tyneside:
Hi Carl
Snowballs !!! Thats a blast from the past. IIRC the parts vans were green and used to call weekly. Supplied shackle pins,king pins and other ’ consumables ’ One day the van pulled in to the yard and a few minutes later Mr Snowball followed him in with a brand new Wolsley 2200 automatic. Not sure if he was showing off his new car or following the van to see what business was like.
Do you know if the Bishop Auckland Snowballs were related to Snowballs the saddlers in Newcastle ■■?
Hi Carl, Do you still have your collection of Pirelli calendars? I can remember you getting one annually from the firm. They would be worth a bit now if you’ve still got them. Chris
Carl Williams:
There was a good turnout for the reunion last week, and four people I know of didn’t come who I know wanted to.
Keith Winter was working abroad.
Raymond Russell forgot the date as he explained on this site.
Eric Nelson rang me after I had left explaining his wife who was going to drive him to Ferryhill had been called out to work and was unable to get. Eric, like me has been stopped driving, and I explained to him, that I wish he had contacted me as Paul would have gone and given him a lift.
The final one was Geoff Pye, who I know was in bad health. Geoff who I had met a few weeks earlier, so much wanted to go and I am sure everyone present would want me to pass their good wishes onto him on their behalf. Please Barbara (Geoff’s daughter) if you read this tell Geoff that we missed meeting him again and please let us know how he is.
Colin is going to organise another reunion in 2013, and I hope, God willing, everyone including Keith, Ray, Eric and Geoff is able to attend, as I am sure all who did will confirm everyone had ‘a day to remember’
Sorry my dad couldn’t make it his eye sight has detrioated a bit but he has his dadt for his op to remove the cataracts he goes on the 13th dec i’ll let you all know how he gets on .
Apart from his eye he’s doing ok he’s had no more flare up’s of his copd thank god x
