Arrows

The SeeRed meeting ar Donington Park in September 2006 included a race for the Thoroughbred Grand Prix Championship for Grand Prix cars from 1966 to 1985. Four Arrows cars took part, including this Arrows A4 of 1982:

The car is shown above in the pit garage and below at Redgate Corner in a practice session, driven by Hubertus Bahlsen

The car was driven in the 1982 season by Marc Surer, Mauro Baldi and Brian Henton

Another Arrows car in the race was this A1 model of 1979, again seen at Redgate Corner and driven by Rowland Kinch:

The car was driven in the first part of the 1979 season by Riccardo Patrese and Jochen Mass

Aeroplanes

As I've said before, we live right underneath the most commonly used flightpath into Manchester Airport and when aircraft are landing they are often so low it's possible to tell whether they've passed over our house or the one next door. It used to be interesting watching planes coming over and speculating where they might be coming from, but now, thanks to a site called flightradar24.com it's possible to see all the flight details for each one.

Here are photographs of a few of the aircraft landing early on Wednesday 24th July with details taken from the Flightradar24 site:

8:10am US Airways US734 from Philadelphia (Airbus A330-243)

8:15am KLM KL1073 from Amsterdam (Boeing 737-7K2)

8:41am American Airlines AA210 from New York JFK (Boeing 757-223)

8:53am Ryanair FR3233 from Malaga (Boeing 737-8AS)

8:59am Virgin Atlantic VS74 from Orlando (Boeing 747-41R)

9:39am British Airways BA1386 from London Heathrow (Airbus A319-131)

9:51am Turkish Airlines TK1993 from Istanbul (Boeing 737-9F2ER)

10:08am Air Transat from Glasgow (Airbus A330-243)

Friday's Ferrari

Today's car, seen at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1994, is a 1962 Ferrari 250GT SWB which was entered in the 'Coys of Kensington GT Race' by Lindsay Owen-Jones with the two listed drivers being Peter Hannen and 'To be nominated'. As far as I can ascertain it seems to be this car, although the list of events in which that car is shown to have competed doesn't include the 1994 Coys meeting.

OSCA FS 372

Last Friday I showed a photograph of a blue Ferrari 166MM Barchetta at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1992. Next to it was another blue Italian car, an OSCA FS 372 from the late 1950s. Here is a photograph of that car, which wasn't listed in the programme to take part in the 1950s sports car race and as far as I recall didn't take part:

The OSCA concern was founded in 1947 by the Maserati brothers Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo, and this Wikipedia article has a brief history of the company.

The Pallot Museum, Jersey - Tractors

Here's another couple of the tractors in the Pallot Museum in Jersey:

This is a 1953 Case 500 and below is the information sheet attached to the tractor:

This is a 1950s Nuffield M4 and its log sheet

Friday's Ferrari

Shown at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1992, this is a 1950 Ferrari 166MM Barchetta. The same car appears on this photograph on flickr which the photographer says was taken in April 2009, but the car alongside it on that photograph appears to be the same OSCA FS372 which is alongside it on my photograph, so both photographs appear to have been taken on the same day. It apparently has the chassis number 0068M and this site gives the history of that car.

Lister Bristol

Lister is a manufacturer better known for its Jaguar-engined cars, but early Listers were often fitted with Bristol engines. The first race meeting I ever attended, the 1955 British Empire Trophy race at Oulton Park, was won by a Lister Bristol driven by Archie Scott-Brown.

The car pictured below is a 1954 Lister Bristol which was entered and driven by Barry Wood in the 1950s Sports Car Race in the Coys International Historic Trophy meeting at Silverstone in July 1999.

Rolls Royce Marina

The SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006 featured a one hour Sports Racing masters race for sports cars of the 1960-65 period. One of the cars entered was shown in the programme as a Rolls Royce Marina, although I confess that I don't remember hearing of this car in the 1960s. It was apparently a tubular spaceframe chassis with Formula 1 Cooper suspension units at front and rear and a 6.25 litre Rolls Royce marine engine converted to dry-sump lubrication, although the programme shows the capacity of the car as 6.75 litres. Apparently the car wasn't successful in the 1960s and doesn't appear to have had any better luck since. It was driven in the Donington Park race by Simon and Mark Ashworth.

This link to a Bonhams auction in 2005 gives some information about the car. There's apparently no connection with the Morris Marina car of the 1970s - the 'Marina' in the name of this car being merely a reference to the 'marine' engine.

Friday's Ferrari

The Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1999 featured a round of the Shell Historic Ferrari Maserati Challenge. This is a photograph of one of the cars which took part in that race.

It's a 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB/C, serial number 07271, which was entered and driven by Jose Albuquerque from Portugal.

This is what the Wikipedia article says about the 275 GTB/C:

"275 GTB/C

For the 1965 racing season, 4 lightweight 275 GTB Competizione Speciales were built and equipped with 250 LM engines.

For the 1966 season, Ferrari decided to build 12 lightweight 275 GTB/C cars, they were constructed between the end of the 275 two-cam production run and the start of the 275 four-cam production run; even though they very much resembled the road-going 275 GTB, not one body panel was the same and underneath and very little of the road car remained.

Mauro Forghieri designed a special super-lightweight steel and aluminium version of the 275 GTB chassis. A regular suspension was fitted, but it was made slightly stiffer by the addition of extra springs. Scaglietti bodied the chassis with an ultra thin aluminum body; the panels were about half as thick as the ones used on the GTO and the Cobra - even leaning on the 275 GTB/C would dent the body; the entire rear section was reinforced by fiberglass to prevent it from flexing at the slightest impact. In all, this focus on saving weight made a difference of over 150 kg (331 lb) compared to the alloy bodied road cars.

Like the four 'Competizione Speciales', the 275 GTB/C was powered by the 250 LM engine. Somehow Ferrari 'forgot' to mention to the governing body that the 275 GTB had a six carburetor option, so only a three 'carb' engine could be homologated. Specifically for the 275 GTB/C, Weber constructed the 40 DF13 carburetor of which three would replace the six 38 DCNs found on the 250 LM. The rest of the drivetrain was similar to the 275 GTB, but strengthened slightly.

Two of the twelve built were sold for street use. Unlike the race cars, these street cars were fitted with alloy wheels shod with Pirelli tires. Competition cars were fitted with special Borrani wire wheels, shod with Dunlop's latest racing tires. It was this combination that would prove to be the weak spot of the 275 GTB/C; the tires had so much grip that they could overstress and break the spokes on the wheels. After the 275 GTB/C, no competition Ferrari would be fitted with wire wheels again.

A British-entered 275 GTB/C finished 8th overall, gaining class victory in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans".

Post Office Letter Boxes and Pillar Boxes

The Daily Mail yesterday (9 Jul) printed an article about the British Postal Museum which is apparently near to London's King's Cross Station, though few people know of its existence. Anthony Trollope the novelist, who was employed as a postal surveyor first trialled pillar boxes in Jersey before introducing them to mainland Britain and in the Channel Islands Jersey Post and Guernsey Post are now independent postal services. The pillar and letter boxes still use the mainland's traditional design and whilst Jersey's are the traditional red colour those in Guernsey are blue (with one exception). On recent visits to Guernsey I've photographed some of these and these are shown below.

This is the only pillar box in Guernsey that isn't blue. It's in Union Street, St Peter Port and is the oldest letter box still in use in the British Isles, dating from 1853.

This is another Victorian pillar box, of the more modern design, in Trinity Square, St Peter Port

A Victorian wall mounted letter box

A wall mounted letter box from the reign of King Edward VII

A George V wall mounted letter box. Interestingly there's no 'V' to indicate that it's King George the Fifth, presumably because there was no national postal service during the reigns of the first four King Georges, so there wouldn't have been any confusion about to which of the Georges it related. If that's the case though, why did the ones for Edward VII have a 'VII'?

I didn't come across any King George VI boxes but this one for Queen Elizabeth II is, I think, at L'Erée on the west coast of Guernsey.

The Pallot Steam, Motor & General Museum

During our holiday in Jersey in May this year we visited the Pallot Steam, Motor & General Museum which the advertising brochure says is "An absorbing evocation of times past. There is something to excite the interest of everyone in this fascinating collection of Steam, Motor, Farm and other machinery."

Inside you'll find cars:

Here there's a Morgan Plus 4, Austin Vanden Plas Princess 1100, Riley One-Point-Five, Austin A35, Renault Dauphine, Renault 4CV and Citroen 2CV.

Commercial vehicles:

Three 1920s/30s trucks, an International (green), Dodge (blue) and Chevrolet (red)

Bicycles (Unicycles, Tricycles etc):

Assorted agricultural implements:

Steam locomotives:

1931 Bagnall 0-4-0 saddle tank 'J.T.Daly' which entered service with Horseley Bridge & Thomas Piggot Ltd in Tipton, Staffordshire. In 1969 it was sold to the Foxfield Light Railway and in 1982 was purchased for the Alderney Railway Society. It's been at the Pallot Museum since November 1993.

There's even a church organ:

And a variety of tractors:

An International B-275 and the other's a Ferguson, possibly a TEA

More photographs from the Pallot Museum in the near future.

Speed Cameras - is that all they look for?

The upper part of Stockport Road in Hyde between Dowson Road and Mottram Old Road is mainly used by local traffic - any vehicles travelling between Hyde and Stockport usually take the shorter route along Dowson Road. Along most of this stretch of Stockport Road there's a gentle downhill gradient as you drive towards Hyde town centre and about half-way down, just after a slight left-hand bend in the road, there's a speed camera. Unusually for Tameside the camera is painted yellow, the normal colour being a more inconspicuous dark green - "the corporate colour of Tameside" as a former Leader of the Council jokingly claimed. The gradient of the road is such that as you drop down Stockport Road from the point where it joins Mottram Old Road doing 25 mph and take your foot off the accelerator by the time you pass the camera you're doing 35-40 mph and get a fine and 3 points on your licence. Fair enough, the speed limit's 30 mph and you know what to expect if you exceed that. But look at the two photographs below:

This is the view from behind the camera looking up the gradient

This is the view as you approach the camera from the opposite direction

Look at the car coming towards the camera in the first photograph - it's had to move towards the centre of the road because of the car parked just before the bend (and with two wheels on the pavement). Any car going in the opposite direction would similarly have to move into the centre of the road because of the car parked on the other side of the bend - and this is a common occurrence as there are invariably cars parked on both sides of the road at this point. It's a recipe for disaster, particularly as the road is also a bus route. What I'd like to know is this: when the police prosecute a motorist for exceeding the speed limit do also prosecute any motorists seen on the relevant photograph to be parked in such a dangerous place, or do they just turn a blind eye as they do when they drive past in their police cars?

Friday's Ferrari

In April last year I posted photographs of some of David Piper's Ferraris at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in 2001. David Piper and his cars have been regular competitors in historic motor racing and below are photographs of some more of his cars, plus one from Nick Mason's Ten Tenths company at the 1999 Coys meeting.

Car number 7 is Nick Mason's 1970 Ferrari 512S (1026), number 81 is David Piper's 1964 Ferrari 275LM (8165) and number 8 is David Piper's 1969 Lola T70 MkIIIB

Nick Mason's 1970 Ferrari 512S

David Piper leaving the pits during practice in his 1964 Ferrari 275LM

Edward Snowden

I've been following the story of Edward Snowden's leaking of information about US and British government classified intelligence programs, his flight to Hong Kong and then to Russia, and his subsequent disappearance from public view together with claims that he is appealing for asylum in a variety of countries. It all reminds me very much of the Monty Python sketch entitled "The Olympic Hide-and-seek Final" (which was apparently first shown in episode 9 of the third series on 14 December 1972).

ERA R5B 'Remus'

There are comprehensive records detailing the history of each of the ERA cars built during the 1930s, and of the few cars subsequently built in the post-war years. This site gives the history of each car and all the owners of each car are listed here.

ERA R5B 'Remus' was originally owned by the White Mouse team of HRH Prince Chula of Siam and driven by his cousin HRH Prince Birabongse, otherwise known as B. Bira. This is the list from the second site linked above showing all the owners of that car:

R5B
H R H Prince Chula 1936 to 1937
A P R Rolt 1937 to 1939
A P R Rolt & St.J R Horsfall 1939 to 1946
I F Connell 1946
P H Bell 1946 to 1951
J D Hamilton & P Fotheringham-Parker 1951
H Sullivan 1951 to 1952
V Thomas 1952 to 1954
K Flint 1954 to 1955
J W Broad 1955 to 1956
W F Moss 1956 to 1959
Hon. Patrick Lindsay 1959 to 1986
A L Lindsay 1986 to 2010
C K McCabe 2010 to date

Here is a photograph of the car at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Donington Park in May 2001 when it was in the ownership of Ludovic Lindsay.

Edwardian Cars

This is another of the Edwardian (cars built between January 1905 and December 1918) cars seen at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006.

It's a 1905 Lorraine Dietrich CR2 entered by John Brydon and driven in the Edwardian Race by Richard Black.