1953

NEW CATEGORY HERE PEOPLE, AS WE WERE NOT SURE HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF SOME WONDERFUL PUBLICATIONS WE HAVE BEEN ENDOWED WITH.

Rob Brown has contributed, page by page, copies of the "Blackwood Hodge Directors`Report and Accounts", from 1953 to 1959, which of course fill all of you with enthusiasm !!

Well, we are not showing the accounts, so stop yawning, but the fantastic photos of machines & people & places all around the world that appear in them, and as they looked better as an item, and not broken up into different categories, we have created "B.H. Empire" (Rob`s suggestion, & we agree), and will be listing them year by year, over the next few weeks.

So we start with 1953, (although we know 1952 is out there, and should be with us soon) and notes are added to each block of photos, to keep you informed, as some of the printing will not be readable, as it is so small, but if anyone wants an original, just ask.

The cover from 1953….according to Ken Lansley, this could be W & C French working on the reservoir near to Slough,, alongside the M4…if anybody could confirm or refute, we would be obliged. 

 

Next is the main title page…. 

Map of the "Empire" as it was then.

World wide offices & works….l to r, top Granville, NSW & Salisbury, S/Rhodesia…. centre, Calcutta, India & Colombo, Ceylon….bottom Elisabethville, Belgian Congo & Clayton, Melbourne.

 

The next 4 pages are shown opposite each other in the Report, as you will see the slogan runs over all. As they sit on the page, the first two cover Laings in Iraq, a Marion 7200 w/dragline in Scotland, a Carlisle grader being shipped to India, and a Euclid Loader (see Eric C.Orlemann) with Euc bottom dumps in RSA…….

 

The second two pages are made up of Euc R-15`s in Aden (B5 maybe ??) & Kuwait, working for Wimpey & John Howard…..and then an R-15 (note Euclid Wagon Hirers logo on door, a rare sighting) & Marion 111-M at Blithfield Res. for Mowlem, and a Carlisle at work in southern England. 

 

General shots of the Hunsbury Works, Euclid Avenue as it was then, at Northampton. L/h/s from top shows the old Test House, then at the top end of the Engine Shop, Injector Shop, and Machine Shop….centre is a very early aerial view, to be gone into more detail at a later date…..and r/h/s from top is what was then the Chassis Shop, eventually the Engine Shop & Gearbox Bay##, filled with FD ex-US Army trucks, probably bought by Mr Sunley at auction, for refurb & resale, then the Engine Shop & the new Chassis Shop##.

## Obviously this could not have all been at the same time, so we imagine the Army truck photo was much earlier, probably from the 1940`s, and just used here with a little journalistic licence.

 

Another double page, as you see….the very new R-22 dumptruck, Rolls Royce power, & a 15TDT scraper in UK, and a photo of a "Carlisle Blade" fitted to an unknown make tractor (anybody ??), which Ken Lansley says was "copied" from someone else`s (perish the thought !!), but never sold, and another shot of a Carlisle on demonstration by the look of it, so clean it is.

   

Lastly, one of a series of un-PC adverts that appeared in the Fifties in these Reports. Not un-PC then of course, and totally innocent even now, but one could imagine the Senator (or is it Mr President by now) would not be over-chuffed with the wording, of this and some of the others.

"Power will transform the jungle scrub to fruitful acres. Power will build thriving cities where mud huts now crumble in the sun. Power is coming to these awakening lands in the giant Euclid earthmovers, tractors, scrapers & Carlisle graders – power to clear, reclaim & irrigate the land, to dig the ditches, and the canals, construct the motorways, railsways & airfields…..power to prosper lives which now are so precarious."

Nothing changes then.