Off My Trolley

You may think that I am behaving in an extremely unusual way or doing something very silly as I decided to pick up on the trolley in Alan's picture of the London & North Western Railway office. Trolleys are my theme for the week.

World War I Daily Mail Official War Photograph, Series 21, No. 121, titled "One of our monster guns".

On the back it said, "Passed by Censor" and "One of our monster guns with which we are hammering our way forward is seen travelling on a railway trolley".

If war is not to your taste then how about Harry Potter?

Platform 9.3/4 at Kings Cross Station

( by Matthewedwards at en.wikipedia - CC A-S A 3.0 license)

 

with a trolley disappearing through the wall between platforms 9 and 10.

This lad is no apprentice magician but he is proud of the trolley he rides,

Karrawang woodline, south west of Coolgardie, Western Australia, May 1928. (CC A 2.0 generic license)

 This photo comes from the W E Fretwell Collection  -Photographs of  William Edward Fretwell (1874-1958). The boy in the photo is H N Fretwell who wrote of this photograph:

"These woodlines used to supply timber to the mines and Kalgoorlie Power House. The lines were moved about to follow the salmon gum forests. The rails were leased from the W.A. Govt. Railways by the Timber Co. and once a year this trolley had to be run all over the line and spurs to measure the distance. H.N. Fretwell on Trolley. Timber cutters were nearly all Yugo-Slavs."

However my trolley search ended much closer to home.

Blackpool Balcony Car - by Dr Neil Clifton -1 Aug 1959

(CC A-S A 2.0 generic license)

Abalcony car seen near the Tower.  By 1959, traditional trams like the Blackpool Standards were considered very old-hat. They had been removed from almost all British cities, and the last few remaining in Blackpool were felt to be an embarrassment - but on very busy days they had to be brought out. Car No 40, still retaining its open ends, was not an object for Blackpool to be proud of. It is seen here reversing at a point which, in those days, was called 'Central Station' (that railway establishment nearby still remained open). Note the conductor with his long bamboo pole for reversing the trolley arm.

You will not need a bamboo pole to get back on track. Just visit Sepia Saturday 92

Sidecars to Jaguars: Amy on Sepia Saturday 51

The origins of Jaguar go back to the seaside town of Blackpool. In 1922 Bill Lyons, a motorcycle enthusiast, and William Walmsley formed the Swallow Sidecar Company – Walmsley had previously been building sidecars and attaching them to reconditioned motorbikes.

In 1926/27 The Swallow Sidecar and Coachbuilding Company diversified taking existing cars and re-bodying them with more fashionable coachwork.

SS cars came in the 1930s when a chassis to Swallow’s design was fitted with engines from the Standard Motor Company. Later the SS name was altered to SS Jaguar. As a consequence of WWII the term SS had unwanted Nazi connotations and in April 1945 SS Cars became Jaguar Cars.

What’s this to do with Amy?

In September 1948 Jaguar announced the Jaguar Mark V, its first post war model.

 This week’s photo shows Amy with her husband Bob (the couple on the left), her sister Edna and Edna’s husband, Charles. They were on a trip to London in 1948 to see the Motor Show at Earls Court, the first after the war.

More Sepia Saturday at http://www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/