The Bus on A Crane.
There has been a development of the story of a crane lifting the bus at Folkestone docks. My conclusion is that the SECR is testing a new railway breakdown crane at the quayside and are using a Tilling Stevens bus from its factory in nearby Maidstone. The railway is interested in increasing the lifting capaity at the docks in preparation for trans-shipping larger and heavier vehicles. The bus company is preparing to export buses to the Continent.
After an appeal for help from the two Bus societies in Kent, a member of the Maidstone & DIstrict and East Kent Bus Club has collected the following information and Chris Duncombe has responded as follows:
Some further research has come to light as a result of a chance remark on your question at our committee meeting yesterday. It appears that Tilling Stevens sent some buses to Barcelona in the early 1920s, with 4 TS double deckers with British registration plates were shipped to Barcelona in May 1922. A Kent registration dating from 1921 would just about fit,
http://perso.wanadoo.es/assotram/bcntilling1eng.htm. There is also some footage on YouTube of the Madrid order being loaded at Folkestone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_rurJvvgxg.
There is also a short article in Catalan on the website of the current Barcelona municipal:
http://horapunta.tmb.cat/seccio/historia/lautobus-tilling-stevens-reviura-90-anys-despresFrom the inforamtion from the Bus Club and on KHF the highlights of this story so far is that:
1. The early Tilling Stevens buses were electrically driven with petrol engine powered dynamos. These machines were easier to drive than the the non synchromesh buses and in the time of very few qualified drivers made vehicle maintenance and driver costs less expensive.
2. The TS petro-electric buses were not sent out to France in 1914-1918 as they were very different to use and maintain than the majority of conventional buses, so the bus-on-a-crane in the picture is not returning from France in 1921.
3. The picture shows a new bus and a new crane. It appears that this was a test of either or both as there are no stretcher bars on the lifting hook to protect the topsides of the bus. Whereas in an earlier photo dating from 1911 a similar crane is lifting a car on a flat tray with stretcher bars so this method was known about and used years before the subject bus is shown being lifted.
4. The crane is fairly unique. It is a railway mobile crane of about 15 tons capacity. This type of crane would be used on railway breakdown trains and would normally be recovering railway locos and vehicles after a derailment. In Folkestone Harbour the story of the cranes is: 1850-1900 - hand operated swan neck cranes on simple rail trolleys. From 1905 (after the big rebuild and extension of the South Quay and southern pier) the cranes were used for lifting luggage and baggage boxes of about 1 ton, and were gantry mounted on the pier or on railway trolleys on the pier and quayside. These appeared in two steam powered versions, the housing of corrugated sheet was either pent roofed or curve roof. The gantry cranes were replaced by electric powered versions from about 1930. The railway mobile crane is a railway vehicle chassis on which the crane is mounted. This means that crane can be marshalled into a train and moved at speed on the railway. The first crane of this type on the Folkestone docks appears in 1910 and is used to load private cars, this has a corrugated sheet housing. The crane in the picture is, I think, a more modern version and is a proper railway breakdown crane. As far as I know the only crane of this type for the SER was a 15 ton swan neck travelling crane by Cowans Sheldon. Peter Tatlow bible on railway cranes volume 1 has not yet reached my bookshelves.
5. There is evidence that buses were lifted onto channel ferries in Dover in 1926 as a Manchester firm had started a Continental coach tour from that port. The Tilling-Stevens history does not mention any export details but the information from the M&D and EK Bus club, above, shows that the municipal authorities in Spain had started a public bus service in their main cities in the early 1920's. This new transport system has proved so popular that the local transport suppliers were unable to meet the demand. So the authorities ordered Tilling-Stevens buses in 1922 and 1924. These driven from the Maidstone factory to Folkestone to be shipped across the channel and driven to Spain. However, British Pathe camermen recorded a single decker being loaded onto the SS Quaysider at Folkestone. This vessel was built in 1909 at North Shields for T Steam Coasters of Newcastle. In 1913 it was sold to a shipping line based in Tenerife and subsequently ended up in various ports in Spain, including Barcelona, before being scrapped in 1973 at Cadiz. It is possible that this shipment went directly to Spain via sea.
6. Tilling Stevens supplied 140 buses to China for Hong Kong and a firm there sells cast die models of these.
Thank you to everybody has contributed to this, and happy New Year,
David