Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Classic & Vintage Commercials

The Neath Steam and Vintage Show took place in South Wales over the weekend of June 14-15, writes Ashley Lovering. As usual, the venue is Llwynfelish Farm in Crynant which is owned by Ian Davies and family. It is also home to the family’s extensive collection of old vehicles – cars, lorries, tractors and more. This event provides a rare opportunity for visitors to see some of the in-house collection that lives here – and which we have featured in the past. The show also, of course, attracts lots of visiting vehicles and spectators, and while the adjacent Cefn Coed colliery museum is currently closed for “essential maintenance work” there’s still plenty for everyone to see and enjoy. It is good of the Davies family to allow access to their…

The Essex Fire Museum at Grays Fire Station first opened in 2007. The driving force behind the museum was Roger Pickett, a fireman based there at that time. Behind the active fire station was a former Auxiliary Fire Service depot built in the 1950s, which was then taken over by the Essex County Fire Brigade, subsequently the Essex County Fire & Rescue Service, and was just being used for storage after the AFS was disbanded. He persuaded the authorities to turn the building into a museum. It is quite unusual, as the museum is an integral part of the fire service itself. I believe the only other fire service that has its own museum is the London Fire Brigade, but that is not currently open to the public. The two…

Edoardo Bianchi opened a bicycle and tricycle workshop in Milan in 1885, building his first car in the late 1880s, a small two-seater with bicycle type spoked wheels and a 5hp single-cylinder engine, which he named “Bianchina.” He progressed to building larger, more powerful cars, particularly after the First World War, with the most powerful S8 model of 1930 having a 2900cc engine. More economical cars were also developed, such as the 1300cc S4 model of 1925 and the 1500cc S5 of 1932. The Bianchi factories were bombed during WW2, and Edoardo died in 1946. His son Giuseppe then became president of the firm, which reverted to building bicycles and motorbikes in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Bianchi name still had a reputation for prestigious cars, and the…

The Cheshire Run continues to be one of the most popular road runs in the North of England with a great collection of vehicles meeting up at Lymm Services on the M6 for the trip down to Prees Heath near Whitchurch. After lunch, the route turns north to the finishing point at Rixton near Warrington, covering a total distance of around 90 miles. Looking at the vehicles, as ever there were many regulars on the run, being joined by others taking part for the first time. This was another very successful Cheshire Run, which continues to be an extremely popular event at the beginning of the rally season.…

Last month, we included what we were expecting to be the final selection of photographs from the Alan Robinson/Papworth Coachworks photographic archive which Alan rescued from a skip when the coachbuilding operations closed down. However no sooner had those words been written, than Alan was on the phone to say that he had found another box-full. It was a pretty big box too, with lots of lovely period images which really do need to be shared. So we’ve now got another few month’s worth. These will cover various Post Office and MoD contracts, plus some wonderful pictures of TV Outside Broadcast Units being made. We start, however, with a mixed-load selection comprising jobs for local businesses and some government departments.…

ERF E10 New seven-year restoration back in the livery of its much-missed original operator! MIMBRIDGE FIRE STATION We get to look around Britain’s biggest privately-owned collection of fire appliances and the ‘fire station’ that’s been built especially to house them! FORD ANGLIA VAN Unsurprisingly perhaps, an RAC patrol restored this… BEDFORD TM Peter Davies 50th anniversary mini-series continues… PLUS: Llandudno Festival, AEC Rally and Bressingham show reports, another selection of Papworth Coachworks images, all our usual features plus, of course, a few surprises… These features are all planned at the time os going to press. We reserve the right to make changes and amendments if necessary.…

While I was watching participants drive over the finish line on this year’s HCVS London to Brighton Run, I noticed a rather fine-looking Leyland Comet tipper which I hadn’t actually seen there before. The name on the side was, however, familiar, as Surrey-based Alan Greenwood has been an extremely active preservationist for well over 40 years. His speciality, however, is fire appliances – Surrey fire appliances in particular – and as we will see next month, he has a huge collection of these. He has also built his own fire station – Mimbridge Fire Station and Museum – to house the collection. Oh, and he is also a trustee and committee member of the Historic Commercial Vehicle Society, A Leyland Comet tipper, however, seemed like a new departure for Alan…

The County of Salop Steam Engine Society’s 2025 Shrewsbury Steam Rally takes place on August Bank Holiday, Sunday and Monday August 24/25. With over 1200 exhibits each year, Shrewsbury is Shropshire’s Largest Steam & Vintage Vehicle Rally.’ The event has a variety of highly-entertaining attractions including the wonderful spectacle of working steam engines and beautifully preserved classic vehicles from yesteryear. On each day the ‘Grand Parade of Steam’, is a highly-popular and majestic cavalcade of showman’s engines, traction engines, Sentinel waggons, and steam rollers. There is a packed Arena Programme on both days; where spectators can enjoy moving convoys of historic commercial vehicles, including buses and fire engines; vintage cycles; working horses; vintage tractors; pre- and post-World War II cars; classic motorcycles; and perambulators. There is also of course always…

The Classic & Vintage Commercials Show is one of two van and lorry-based events hosted by the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, and usually takes place in early to mid-June. Though it’s a full-weekend event, the main ‘action’, and biggest public attendance, is usually on the Sunday. This year, unfortunately, the calendar was such that Gaydon’s usual date clashed with the HCVS’s Ridgway Run, Gary and Julie Woodrow’s gathering at Bressingham in Norfolk, the Holbeach Steam and Country Fair in Lincolnshire and an international gathering in Belgium. It’s therefore no real surprise that numbers were slightly down on previous events here, both in terms of exhibitors and visitors. It was still, however, a fabulous event, with lots for visitors to see and do. This included a fair few new restorations,…

Last month’s look at Dennis commercials and fire appliances reached the late 1940s. In 1949 an altogether more modern looking fire engine was introduced, the Dennis F7, built to satisfy the Home Office’s new specifications. With a Rolls-Royce B80 petrol engine and 13ft. 6in. wheelbase, it was built until 1951. The best-selling appliance in the range was the F12, mechanically the same as the F7, but with a 12ft. 6in. wheelbase, 7ft. 6in wide and built from 1950-59. The F15 of 1953-59 looked like the F12 but had heavier duty suspension and brakes, typically used as water tenders. The F8 was a smaller 6ft. 6in wide version built from 1952-60, intended for narrow country lanes or tight urban areas, also popular as works fire appliances. The engine was a Rolls-Royce…

Bedford was always famous for the claim ‘You See Them Everywhere’, used in the firm’s advertising. This was probably true for most of its products but the TM range, first introduced in 1974, didn’t really prove as big a seller as the likes of the old O-types and TKs. The once market-leading Dunstable based manufacturer produced a staggering 3.5 million commercial vehicles in its 55-year existence and was known throughout the world but its performance in the maximum-weight sector was relatively disappointing. In the seventies, possibly spurred on by the promise of increased European sales after Britain joined the Common Market, a number of UK medium-weight manufacturers including Bedford, Ford and Dodge, bid for a share of the heavy-duty market. Each had gradually progressed up the weight range over the…

By their very nature, vehicles which survive long enough to become preserved do so by existing longer than the majority of the others of that make, model, or age. This can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes its down to light use, sometimes it’s a result of a happy accident where an old lorry is parked up at the end of its working life rather than being scrapped. And sometimes it’s because an ‘old’ lorry gets a second life in fairground service. However, another not-uncommon reason is when a lorry that’s been retired from on-road use is retained for use as a yard ‘shunter,’ and used to move trailers around within the yard. Contrary to popular belief, a reliable shunter is an essential part of the operation of a…

AEC (Associated Equipment Company) came into being in June 1912 in Walthamstow, London, but by the mid-1920s they had moved to a new factory at Southall; the London district that will always be synonymous to AEC enthusiasts. A new range of goods vehicles was introduced in 1929, with model names beginning with M. The Mercury was a normal control 3.5-tonner and the Monarch a forward control four-tonner, both with a four-cylinder, 5.1-litre OHC petrol engine. There were no front wheel brakes, although they did have vacuum servos. There was then the normal control Majestic six-tonner and the forward control Mammoth eight-tonner, both having a six-cylinder, 7.4-litre petrol engine. The Matador was added in 1931, a forward control four-wheel, four-cylinder, five-ton lorry with a heavy-duty rear axle. That same year, the…

The annual Cumbria Easter Rally took to the roads of Cumbria in April, and saw a good collection of commercials on view. This is not just a ‘one location’ event with vehicles to be seen at both Brough and Kirkby Stephen over the weekend, with a free vintage bus service linking the various sites. The highlight of the weekend though, has to be the Saturday evening road run that sees many vehicles climb up onto the moorland roads above Kirkby Stephen, a popular spot for watching them pass by.…

Down in Sussex, the Harris family has been entertaining generations of young and not-so-young thrill-seekers since the 1880s. Now being run by the 5th and 6th generations of the family, Harris’s Old Tyme amusements run a range of traditional rides including gallopers, chairoplanes, swing boats and dodgems, along with various ‘juvenile’ rides and side-shows. But for lorry enthusiasts, the vehicles used to take these rides around are just as interesting, representing the type of vehicle that fairgrounds bought back in the day and modified to suit their needs. Much of the Harris fleet is ex-military, but has spent more time in fairground service than it did defending the nation. Anyway, here are a few of the fleet. With Carter fairground having stopped touring. Harris’s is probably the only traditional fairground…