Forty-four years driving for a living have given Alex Heymer a wealth of stories ...
In the Driving Seat by Alex Heymer. Paperback book, 264 pages including 8 pages photographs. ISBN 978-1-905523-96-2. IN STOCK at Old Pond at £9.95.
Alex always wanted to be a driver, like his father, and learned at a very young age. During his national service he drove for the RAF, and then went on to trolleybuses for London Transport. He returned to London Transport later to drive RTs and Routemasters. He has lots of tales about driver shenanigans on the trolleybusus and buses.
Seasonal coach tours were another important part of Alex’s career. With Galleon he took parties to Scotland, Wales and the west of England, entertaining his passengers with light-hearted banter and a few historical facts. Misadventures included a nasty slide off a collapsing road.
For nearly thirty years Alex drove tankers for Gulf Oil. This was a period rich with anecdote including scams, spillages and oil-drenchings. Even in retirement Alex has kept his hand in with casual driving work.
Once a driver always a driver – at least, when you love the profession as much as Alex Heymer does.
Alex with his Dad – and his International truck - outside their house in Stratford, east London, in about 1937.
Alex drove for London Transport when RTs were giving way to Routemasters.
Seasonal coach tours brought Alex a lot of fum - as well as some mishaps. He covered Scotland, Wales and the West of England.
For nearly thirty years Alex drove for Gulf Oil.
Following his immensely successful Scania at Work book, Patrick W Dyer has turned his attention to preparing a pocket-sized title in the Know Your ... series for novice enthusiasts.
Know Your Trucks, paperback book, 96 pages including 45 illustrations. ISBN 978-1-906853-19-8. IN STOCK at Old Pond at £4.99.
As Patrick writes in his Foreword - 'Trucks (or lorries) are all around us. Virtually everything that we eat, drink, wear, ride, drive and, in many cases, live in has at some time been delivered by a truck.
'Trucks form the backbone of industry, feeding the factories with the raw materials and components which enable them to create the end products that are then collected by trucks to be delivered to the shops, dealers and end users. The world economy is dependent on trucks to keep the goods moving, allowing trade between countries to flourish.
'With its origins in the early part of the last century, the truck has developed over the years into a highly specialised tool with a staggering range of variants to fulfil a multitude of tasks. Stringent regulations ensure that trucks are now some of the most efficient and cleanest vehicles on the road.
'As a book of this size could not adequately cover the variants of just one model range from just one manufacturer, we decided it would be better to explain to you the purpose of some of the more common types of trucks that you will see every day on our roads.'
The 44 types shown in the book include flatbeds, box vans, refrigerateds, curtainsiders, sliding canopies, container artic, oil tanker, diesel artic, bulk powder artic, vacuum tanker, machinery carrier, low loader, car and bus transporters, tipper trucks, skip trucks, glass carrier, furniture van, logging trailer, concrete mixer, refuse truck, horsebox, road/rail truck, heavy haulage example and recovery truck.
Patrick accompanies each picture (the majority of which are from the manufacturers) with a clear description of type, a guide to typical use and some engineering details. These are reinfoced by a cutaway and diagrams at the end of the book.
Among the manufacturers who contributed pictures to the book are Isuzu Trucks, Mercedes-Benz UK, Iveco, DAF and Volvo.
Wantisden Valley, whose annual event 'Power of the Past' is fondly remembered (it ran from 1996 to 2004) is starting a new event this year. We don't expect such a feast of working machinery although organiser Kate Leith says that quite a lot will be there. 'Wartime Weekend' takes place on 26-27 September.
As the poster shows, there will be lots of activities relating to the Second World War. The items listed are: steam threshing - steam wood-sawing and ploughing - vintage tractors working - tanks and military vehicles in operation - Land Army girls - 1940s dance demonstrations and classes - 1940s fashion show and cookery - children's funfair - archive film showing.
The archive film show is Old Pond's contribution. But rather than show just our own programmes we are working with Panamint Cinema, a Scottish company which specialises in transferring 'forgotten' documentaries to DVD.
The following are some of the films we shall show:
A Welcome to Britain. A War Office film from 1943 starring Burgess Meredith, Beatrice Lillie and Bob Hope showing what GIs could expect when they arrived over here, from country pubs to racial integration.
The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944) shows the progress of the war through the German and Allied troops' adoption of the Lili Marlene song. A Humphrey Jennings film featuring Marius Goring.
Women and Children at War is a collection of short documentaries from 1940-1943. Land Girls, the Women's Institute, a rural school, evacuees and factory workers are among the themes in this stirring programme.
Another collection of programmes from 1940 to 1944 gives a snapshot of how the services and civilians stood up to the threat of Germany. We Forgot About Germany includes appearances by Leslie Howard and Bernard Miles.
Four war-time farming films showing the seasons in 1941 to 1942 make up The Crown of the Year. The farms featured are from Dorset, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and Norfolk.
Wantisden Valley is a few miles north of Woodbridge, Suffolk, off to the east of the A12. There will be plenty of signs leading in from the A12 itself.
26 and 27 September: 10.00 am to 5.00 pm.
Click on the map to the left to enlarge it.
We Waved to the Baker: tales of a rural childhood by Andrew Arbuckle, hardback book, 144 pages with illustrations by Graham Lang. ISBN 978-1-906853-16-7. IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing at £12.95.
'We boys scuttled down.... Having had our tea, it was not really hunger that drove us on such foraging expeditions, but the sight of a large bowl of Mum’s trifle....'
We Waved to the Baker is an evocative and heart-warming collection of stories from Andrew Arbuckle’s youth in Fife. Through the fresh gaze of childhood, he depicts the rugged hard work of life on the farm, while capturing beautifully the essence of growing up in a boisterous family and a close rural community.
We follow the young Andrew as he deals with the trials and tribulations of school, older brothers and plucking chickens, while throwing into the mix as much mischievous play as possible.
Andrew Arbuckle comes from a Fife farming family which, like many others, could trace their roots back to the west of Scotland. The third son of a tenant farmer, Andrew went on to farm with his father in the 1970s. The farm was mainly arable, growing malting barley, seed potatoes and, before the closure of the local refining factory, sugar beet. The tenancy of the farm was given up in the late 1980s.
During his farming, Andrew contributed to a number of farming magazines and this interest developed into full-time agricultural journalism with the Dundee Courier where he was farming editor for fifteen years.
A short spell as a member of the Scottish Parliament followed between 2005 and 2007. Over the past twenty years, he has been a councillor in Fife. Nowadays, he is a freelance journalist, combining this with agricultural public relations work.
In 2009 Andrew’s first book, Footsteps to the Furrow, was published by Old Pond: ‘An excellent book for anyone interested in Scottish farming’ (Fordyce Maxwell in the Southern Reporter).
Steven Vale's two new DVDs, Britain's Massive Miners parts 1 and 2 (see previous two blogs), focus on surface coal mining in Britain and the dedicated machinery to be found there. However, he couldn't help making a detour to a limestone quarry - Swinden quarry in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
There he found a Caterpillar 5130B hard at work loading the primary crusher and aggregate conveyor.
It's the largest Cat excavator in Britain. Only two are here now, and this is the only one currently working.
There's plenty of footage of the machine in action in Britain's Massive Miners Part 2, soon to be released by Old Pond.
In the second of his two programmes looking at the dedicated machinery working in Britain's surface coal mines (and also a quarry), Steven Vale has found the largest hydraulic excavator working here. As in his other acclaimed DVDs, Steven Vale supplies plenty of information about the machines in his enthusiastic and detailed script which is narrated by David Holt.
Britain's Massive Miners Part 2, Steven Vale. DVD, approx 82 minutes, £15.95 (inc. VAT). IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing
A Northumberland surface coal mine is the setting for the hydraulic excavator which is currently the biggest in Britain and the biggest Terex model in Europe – the Terex O&K RH 200. It works with advanced noise- and dust-suppression technology to load nearly 50 tonnes a time with a 26 cubic metre bucket.
At work in a Yorkshire limestone quarry is the largest excavator Caterpillar currently has in Britain. Only four of these 5130s were ever brought into the country.
A Scottish coal mine yields examples of the R 9350, Liebherr’s biggest excavator in Britain, working with the country’s largest fleet of Terex TR 100 dump trucks and a big Cat 834H wheeled loader.
Other highlights of this exciting programme are a 340-tonne O&K RH170, the only one in Britain, and an old 480-tonne O&K RH 200 loading Cat 789 trucks. There is even a quick look at Chevington Collier, a decommissioned Bucyrus-Erie 1260W walking dragline.
The main machines in this programme (See blogs of 17 & 28 June, 12 & 20 July for pictures)
Terex O&K RH 120-E hydraulic excavator
Terex TR100 dump trucks
Liebherr R 9350 hydraulic excavator (face-shovel and backhoe)
Cat 834H wheeled dozer
Cat D10T tracked dozer
Bucyrus Erie dragline
O&K RH 170 hydraulic excavator
Cat 785 dump trucks
O&K RH 200 hydraulic excavator
Cat 789 dump trucks
Cat 385 hydraulic excavator
Cat 5130B hydraulic excavator
Terex O&K RH 200 hydraulic excavator
Britain's surface coal-mining industry continues to contribute to our power supplies. This year, Steven Vale has been looking at some of the enterprises flourishing in south Wales, Lanarkshire and Northumberland. He has uncovered hydraulic excavators and haul trucks of a significant size by European and even world standards. His results are to be seen in two companion DVDs, of which this is the first.
Britain's Massive Miners Part 1, Steven Vale, DVD approx 79 minutes plus extra, £15.95 (inc. VAT). IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing
Komatsu and Hitachi star in the first of Steven Vale’s films about the hydraulic excavators to be found at work in Britain’s surface coal mines.
In Wales, Steven recorded a couple of 250-tonne PC 3000s, the Dash-6 currently being the biggest and newest Komatsu excavator in Britain. They dwarf the Cat 777F dump trucks they are loading with overburden. Not far away a Demag H185S also loads overburden.
The biggest Hitachi excavators currently at work in the UK are the EX 1900s which Steven also recorded in Wales. They come in at 190 tonnes.
Among the face shovels and backhoes at work in Northumberland are the O&K RH 120-Cs, still going strong after twenty years. Some of them feature industry-leading noise- and dust-suppression technology. These popular workhorses are joined by the very first Cat-powered 120-Es in Britain.
The main machines in this programme (see blogs of 17 & 28 June, 12 & 20 July for pictures)
O&K RH 120-C hydraulic excavator (face-shovels and backhoe)
Terex O&K RH 120-E hydraulic excavator
Cat D9T tracked dozer
Cat 785 dump truck
Demag H185S hydraulic excavator
Cat 824H wheeled dozer
Komatsu PC3000 Dash-1 hydraulic excavator
Komatsu PC3000 Dash-6 hydraulic excavators (face-shovel and backhoe)
Cat 777F dump trucks
Komatsu PC1250 Dash-8 hydraulic excavator
Cat 16M grader
Hitachi EX1900 Dash-5 hydraulic excavator
Hitachi EX1900 Dash-6 hydraulic excavator