Hello Carl, Good to see you back on here, looking forward to more stories in the New Year, all the best, Regards, Mizzo.
Nice to hear from you Eddie, I’m sure you have plenty of tales to tell both from W.H. Williams and other firms. I worked with you at Ogden’s until you sacked me, but that’s another story. Hope you are well and have a Merry Xmas and Prosperous New Year. That goes to anybody else reading this thread. Regards Ron.
mizzo:
Hello Carl, Good to see you back on here, looking forward to more stories in the New Year, all the best, Regards, Mizzo.
And the same from v7vic.
mizzo:
Hello Carl, Good to see you back on here, looking forward to more stories in the New Year, all the best, Regards, Mizzo.
And me all the best.Regards Mike.
I am so pleased to hear from Eddy, and I hope it triggers more ex drivers to contribute. I am particularly interested from hearing from Eddy which vehicles he drove, and in particular which was the first. I stil have a lot to tell, but the problem I was having was getting my head round as most of the stories left involved te final couple of years. From what you have said already, Eddy it brings back so many memories and gives me short comments that I can make to add to what you have said.
Thank you and I cannot wait to hear more from you.
20 pages in and I’ll belatedly add my voice to all the other appreciative readers and say how good it is to see you back in action Carl. I’ve nothing to contribute to your thread other than to say how much I enjoy reading each word that you post. Keep well and keep them coming.
Eddy mentioned his first night out was with Harry Hawkins with 367MPT, a Marsden pantechnicon based on SB passenger chassis MPT must have been new then.
Harry Hawkins drove it from new. Harry, who lived in Byers Green was a very good driver, best described as a ‘Good all-rounder’ had a problem that he was very moody. Dad had to use all his diplomatic skills to keep him at his best, as he always needed praise.
In early 1964, when I was 16 years old I travelled with Harry in 367MPT with a load from Kenmire Brothers of Spennymoor down to Vono Bedding at Tipton, we were followed by DPT100B which was just about 2 weeks old at the time, and I cannot remember who was driving it.
DPT100B was a Morris FG2 tonner with an integral Marsden pantechnicon body. It was loaded with a removal for the Birmingham area, and our job was to tip MPT and then travel to the removal and unload DPT and I had been sent as the time was tight to do it in the day and it was my job to help and ensure both vans were back that night. Vono had union problems and could be slow at unloading, but we managed and got back OK.
I can honestly say I never liked DPT100B and so chose to travel with Harry in the Bedford, but he was difficult company and conversations were not easy. I remember our first stop was at Leaming Bar for breakfast and I don’t think Harry would have eaten had it not been that I was paying.
Hope you are feeling well nice to have you back on
Merry Christmas hope you have a good one
Hi carl glad to see you posting bit of a christmas pressie for you here i have managed to get round to scanning my vanplan stuff and even better there is one of yours in side it so for your viewing plesure
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hiya,
Nice to see you back doing what you do extremely well Carl, it will be good when you are firing on all cylinders again and posting on a daily basis am looking forward to that, in the meantime yourself and your family have a good Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
thanks harry long retired.
Merry Christmas to everyone, and thank you everyone who has asked about my health. Yes Harry I am going to try to do a daily post. If I keep it short and non complicated I should manage.
To you, Legion, what a lovely Christmas present. Reading about Van Plan brought back so many memories, and I never could have hoped it would have had a photo of one of ours.
I am sure had we known that they were going to photograph it we would have least seen that the wheels were painted on the Leyland Super Comet tractor unit, before it left Spennymoor on its journey down to Warrington to collect the trailer.
I cannot see the number on the tractor, so I don’t know which Super Comet it is. As far as the trailer we had two built by Van Plan and two built by Marsden and all four were virtually identical, with the trailer chassis built by Fletcher of Fosset near Richmond N. Yorks
I would be very surprised if they are not being used today for storage here and there round the country, as they would last forever without much deterioration, built in fibreglass.
Looking at the photograph on the Van Plan leaflet I can’t help thinking that the Leyland should have been an AEC Mercury.
We had suffered the dreadful experience of buying three new Leyland lynx, and decided that the Mercury, which we had run three successfully was the answer, but try as we may we could not get delivery. We were advised that the Super Comet would be Ok and so we bought two or three.
All in all they were not bad, and almost as good as the Mercuries, but not quite.
Someone, somewhere at British Leyland must have had a death wish, being determined to destroy AEC…
In his first post Eddie Worthington mentioned Ozzie Broomfield. Dad went to King Street school Spennymoor with Ozzie and they were very good friends. When they left school Ozzie worked for my Grandfather for some time up to him being called up for the army during the war.
Dad had so many tales to tell about Ozzie and whenever we needed a tipper he always used him and Peter, Ozzie’s son.
Dad drove Ozzie to Durham Station when he was leaving to join the army, and saying ‘goodbye’ saw him board the train. As the train left the station dad felt a tap on his shoulder and it was Ozzie saying that he just couldn’t go and that they never would make a soldier out of him. A few days later the Military Police came and took him away and a few days later dad got a letter from ‘The glass House’.
But before then when they were at school, Ozzie constantly got the cane and one day got sick and grabbed it off the teacher as it hit his hand and broke it in two. ‘I have plenty more soaking in brine’ came the teacher’s reply. ‘Bring them in and I’ll do the same with them’Ozzie came back.
Leaving School one day at about 11 years old dad and Ozzie passed an Austin seven parked outside of the Salvyn Arms. Ozzie said that it didn’t look right there in parked on the kerb and proceeded in lifting it into the middle of the road. Dad always said that he was as strong as an Ox ad the hardest worker you could ever meet.
Unfortunately life was unkind to Ozzie when he died at such an early age.
Hi Carl…Keith McCrone was my best mate at both King St and Durham Rd schools, Ozzie Broomfield was his uncle they lived at barbfield road next to Broomsfield yard so me and Keith used to help Ozzie fill coal and deliver it on a night time with Ozzie , when I called to Marmaduke street and saw your Dad about a job, he asked if I had worked for anybody, having not long been left school I told him that me and Keith used to help Ozzie Broomfield (I had no idea then how much your Dad and Grandad thought of Ozzie) as soon as I mentioned Ozzie your Dad asked me to stay put and he would not belong, he was back in about ten minutes and asked if I could start monday (this was friday then) I found out later from Ozzie that your Dad had gone round to Bryan Street to see Ozzie and ask him about me, Ozzie was a great bloke as hard as a nut and a hell of a bodybuilder (wagons) he never wore masks when spraying and I think that contributed to his early death, Keiths dad Arthur McCrone drove for Harlod Wood tar tanker delivered for Berry Wiggins there depot was up at whitworth near the pit it was a railway dead end above the park and the tar came in by rail, when I get to know this site better I have some photos of MPT and Harry Hawkins driving over the Forth road bridge, it had not been open very long, I took the photos on our way to Inverness and two of MPT are in the Cairngorms and two in Inveress with the castle behind her, I also will be posting later some with SGS which your dad sold me in your colours and mine, before I forget that bloke Clegg that used to call at marmaduke street and bought a van off your dad, he never painted them and ran around in the colours he had bought from, I remember the police calling and telling him one of his vans was stuck in a ploughed field, you can imagine what reaction your Dad had, he went ballistic, but when it was sorted it was Cleggy’s van that he had bought from your Dad.
Getting tired, see you later.
Eddie
edworth:
Hi Carl…Keith McCrone was my best mate at both King St and Durham Rd schools, Ozzie Broomfield was his uncle they lived at barbfield road next to Broomsfield yard so me and Keith used to help Ozzie fill coal and deliver it on a night time with Ozzie , when I called to Marmaduke street and saw your Dad about a job, he asked if I had worked for anybody, having not long been left school I told him that me and Keith used to help Ozzie Broomfield (I had no idea then how much your Dad and Grandad thought of Ozzie) as soon as I mentioned Ozzie your Dad asked me to stay put and he would not belong, he was back in about ten minutes and asked if I could start monday (this was friday then) I found out later from Ozzie that your Dad had gone round to Bryan Street to see Ozzie and ask him about me, Ozzie was a great bloke as hard as a nut and a hell of a bodybuilder (wagons) he never wore masks when spraying and I think that contributed to his early death, Keiths dad Arthur McCrone drove for Harlod Wood tar tanker delivered for Berry Wiggins there depot was up at whitworth near the pit it was a railway dead end above the park and the tar came in by rail, when I get to know this site better I have some photos of MPT and Harry Hawkins driving over the Forth road bridge, it had not been open very long, I took the photos on our way to Inverness and two of MPT are in the Cairngorms and two in Inveress with the castle behind her, I also will be posting later some with SGS which your dad sold me in your colours and mine, before I forget that bloke Clegg that used to call at marmaduke street and bought a van off your dad, he never painted them and ran around in the colours he had bought from, I remember the police calling and telling him one of his vans was stuck in a ploughed field, you can imagine what reaction your Dad had, he went ballistic, but when it was sorted it was Cleggy’s van that he had bought from your Dad.
Getting tired, see you later.
Eddie
tHANKS eDDIE
I eally would love to see the photos of 367MPT and Harry Hawkins, and also SGS as I have quite a bit to tell about SGS
Many thanks
Carl
i
hi carl glad to see you started again i really love to come home to see your stories makes my day thank you regards rowland from wales
rward:
hi carl glad to see you started again i really love to come home to see your stories makes my day thank you regards rowland from wales
Thank you rward. I always worry if the comments I am putting on here are interesting, and reading replies from members like you, from as far away as Wales makes it all worth while
Best wishes
carl
When Eddie Worthington mentioned Ozzie Broomfield’s Bedford Tipper being used when we made the parking area next to the garage in Marmaduke Street, it took my memory back a year or two before 1963 till the time we extended the garage length.
When the days came that the back wall 40 foot by about 23 foot high at the apex had to be demolished and taken away to make way through to the extension, again we used Ozzie.
Eddie described his tippers as Bedford, to which they certainly had a passing resemblance. Bedford J series normal control looked slightly similar but they never turned anything quite like them at Dunstable. I think they had a bit of every make in them.
Even more amazing he had two that certainly appeared identical even down to the registration number
Peter Broomfield was loading one whilst the other went to get unloaded. As the vehicles were reversed into the garage he carefully put a spare wheel in front of the number plate, obviously worried that someone might have accidently reversed into the garage right back and damaged it.
Getting sick of knocking the brickwork down and having to shovel it up off the floor onto the back of the tipper he got a wonderful inspiration and as soon as he had made an opening large enough to reverse the tipper into, with the wall above the body he continued to hammer like mad thinking that as the bricks fell they would land in the tipper and save the effort of reloading off the floor.
Unfortunately a large panel of bricks still concreted together dropped and broke the tipper in two.
I don’t recall how he got it out of Marmaduke Street round into Bryan Street, but I’m sure it was nothing a bit of welding wouldn’t put right. (No plating and testing in those days)
Talking about the Broomfield’s I cannot miss Ozzies older brother Jacky, still regularly spotted in Spennymoor in the 60’s with his horse and cart.
Jacky would have left school, if indeed he ever went and started working. Eventually when the war demanded conscription, it took a while to catch up with Jacky. The dole. Where he had to register would have been a place he never visited, and when he walked in smoking he was told to stop. ‘I will, he replied when that fat man over there puts out his brier’, pointing at a member of staff behind the desk. (All told by my dad many times).
Jacky was told he should have registered about a year earlier. ‘How am I to know’ was his reply. After being told it was on the radio and in the newspapers, Jacky told them he couldn’t read or afford a radio.
The Broomfield home was just over the road on Barnfield Road and dad said if they had gone outside their radio was blasting onto the street. Inside dad said it was from a previous century with hens and other livestock roaming freely inside with old Mrs Broomfield sitting smoking a clay pipe spitting onto the open fire.
In the army Jacky played the fool, and got away with it. A general was coming to the camp where he was based and the commanding officer said ‘Get Broomfield off the site, giving him a broom and told to go into town and sweep the pavement.
To everyone’s horror all the soldiers were standing to attention on the parade ground as the general’s car pulled up, the door opened and out stepped Jacky with his broom. Apparently the driver had asked him the way as he passed by and saw him sweeping the pavement.
Dad also told the story of when he was just putting up the tailboard after loading a removal in Spennymoor when up pulled Jacky with his horse and cart to collect about 2 ton of coal from the coalhouse. Dad said he had just travelled to the new house and started to unload when along came Jacky with the coal on his cart. Dad always said he had never seen such large shovels as the Broomfields used.
Hi Carl…We are going off our topic now but you have brought more memories back from when I used to go round to the yard (Broomfields) old Mrs Broomfield had died before I started knocking around with Keith, but the old man was still alive Ozzie and Jacky’s father, can you remember when you looked at the house (same today) there is a Left front door and a right front door the house was semi-detatched and you had to go around the side of Keiths house (right hand side) to get around the back of the old mans house, so if we wanted to go in the old mans house we would go straight through the left side front door, this day we went belting through and there was the old man Broomfield layed out dead on the dining table and Keiths mother and another woman washing him down, he was the first dead person I had seen, Keiths mum was talking away to him as if he was sat in the chair, hope you can make this out, by the way Keiths mum was the old mans daughter Audrey Broomfield nee McCrone, after the death of the old man Jacky and Steve (another brother) lived in the house together and it was like your dad told you, hens and anything that walked could go into the house and Jacky never used the proper toilet, he always did everything behind the barn door then just throw more straw onto it, until it had to be shoveled out, you mentioned Ozzie and the army, he fought at El Alemien in the 8th Army and Joseph another brother fought in Burmha against the Japanese he lost his big toe in some sort of explosion, he always wore wellys after the war, we all use to meet up at the yard on a night, Peter Broomfield, Alan Bainbridge,Frankie Corbett and anyone who fancied coming with us, Peter use to put a drop diesel on his hair as he did not like vaseline and we could not afford brylcream, he as a old truck he enters into shows and is done in Cameron’s the Brewers colours, I remember his dad Ozzie making a tipper wagon out of a old Bedford artic unit, it must have been the shortest wheel base ever.
Eddie
