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Network Rail are working to reinstate confidence into passengers as more people begin to use the railway again, following Boris Johnston’s announcement on Friday that travel advice is changing with restrictions being lifted. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Network Rail have been working hard to keep its stations and facilities in the most hygienic and best possible condition for passengers, station users and staff. As well as ‘business as usual’ cleaning regimes, including regular deep cleans, additional deep cleans have been carried out in toilet areas, while sanitiser and anti-viral treatment have been used on common touch-point areas such as doors and handrails. The number of station staff has also increased to offer information to passengers, encourage the use of face coverings and help people travel safely. Numerous other measures have also been introduced. Vending machines have been fitted at Network Rail’s managed stations, 20 of the biggest stations in the country, including Waterloo, King’s Cross and Birmingham New Street, so passengers can buy face coverings, gloves, anti-bacterial wet wipes and hand sanitiser. Network Rail have also begun a 21-day cycle of Zoono, an anti-viral treatment that guards surfaces for up to 30 days, to all touch point and hygiene areas, and additional touch-point cleaning no less than four-hourly on a continuous cycle, guarding against risk of contamination. One-way systems and floor stickers have also been put in place to help passengers navigate stations in a controlled way as well as 250 hand sanitiser stations across their managed stations. Queuing systems to limit the number of people in and out of toilets where required and cubicles, urinals, sinks and dryers have also been marked out of use, and new signage installed, to uphold social distancing. Seating in stations and waiting rooms have been altered to support distancing. Andrew Haines, Network Rail Chief Executive, said: “I would like to thank passengers for following Government advice over the last few months. By only travelling if absolutely necessary, you have helped us to operate a reliable service for critical workers, such as doctors, nurses, carers and supermarket workers – who have needed to travel, and to keep the country connected by moving goods such as food and medicine by rail freight. “Now, as lockdown continues to ease and the nation turns towards recovering from this pandemic, I look forward to welcoming more people back to the railway. We have significantly stepped up cleaning regimes and made sure there are more staff on hand to help with information so you can travel safely.” Image: Network Rail From: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/network-rail-introduces-further-safety-measures-as-more-passengers-return-?gator_td=tZVjAKFZLmdXa%2bQdZ0OkeuEEify48pchy9Reey%2f%2fW3eU6eSV%2biaKyvUMkXvuN4TRsz7TGFCpmSbzcZhWJv6FfbdtgTgYPZS22m6VaX%2fhedchcYyymoU5GuSYw6ugBDmfIqe1H0duHnW5a5nyCSz0zSHsZ74aOaDhFZcYygTFwlvLsB1zsLmjGUplhEPfwpRfLidnVmQiDXheONkbEfQHSA%3d%3d -
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To provide some light relief in these testing times, this month’s column see an old favourite return and there’s a copy- and-keep list of the Laws. But there is also more analysis on the Emergency Measures Agreements which are keeping the railway running.
Who runs the railway 2020
Passenger costs challenge testy Treasury
Innovation follies of 2020
Informed Sources Laws 2020.
New train TIN-Watch
In the May 1997 Informed Sources I published a three- column table with 17 footnotes. It compared the managing directors of the 25 privatised passenger rail franchises with their British Rail opposite numbers from 1995.
With railwaymen – and they were all men - still running most of the railway, the obvious question was could this dominance last? Would managers from outside the industry, with their entrepreneurial flair, take over?
Readers wanted to know, too. ‘Who runs the railway’ became a regular feature in the early years of privatisation as we sought to answer this question.
As the period covered got longer, the work need to update entries and research the backgrounds of new appointments increased, However, if I shirked my duty for too long, readers would ask what had happened to ‘Who runs’, so it was back to the grindstone.
Then came a parallel problem. As the franchise structure evolved and franchise ownership changed over time, each year required more columns. Fitting the table across a two page spread in Informed Sources, not to mention over 70 footnotes became a very tight squeeze.
But readers cannot be denied and ‘Who runs the railway 2020’ appears this month. I have deleted 1990s entries, which are now over two decades old. The table starts in 2000, and provides snapshots at five year intervals.
In 2012, I added a table of Network Rail Route Directors. For 2020 we have the new devolved railway and I commend the comparison of the earlier years with 2020 if you want to understand Andrew Haines’ philosophy.
Colour coding is used to identify managers’ backgrounds. Blue for those with railway careers, red for bus bandits and green for incomers from other industries.
Colour coding led to me referring to the top management echelons in successive tables as ‘a sea of blue’, a phrase which has become shorthand for the dominance of railway professionals running the industry. This year’s tables reveal the sea of blue to be as broad and wide as ever.
Costs of Emergency Measures challenge government
On July 1 Transport Secretary Grant Shapps Tweeted, ‘As the country cautiously moves out of lockdown, it's good to see @NationalExpress resuming coach services by deploying Covid safe practices. Helping Britain to get moving once again!’. But his Department’s message for potential rail travellers was ‘don’t’. Or, rather, ‘Consider all other forms of transport before using public transport’.
So while the return of coach travel was welcomed and quarantine restrictions lifted on holiday makers returning from abroad, having sat tight-packed in an aircraft with no social distancing, train travel, for all but essential workers, continued to be discouraged..
Not until 13 July did the message at stations and on train operators’ web-sites start to change reflecting the theme of the government’s new advertising campaign ‘travel safely this summer’. The aim of the campaign is to get people out of their houses and start putting money into the economy.
Why this belated change? Well, the Emergency Measures Agreements (EMA) with the Train Operating Companies, under which DfT takes all the revenue and covers each TOC’s costs, is proving very expensive with all those near-empty trains. DfT needs people to start travelling by train so that fares can start to off-set the cost of EMA.
Based on my analysis in the May column, the EMA payments are costing the Government around £25million a day. To provide some context I have worked out the cost per journey for those almost-empty trains. Some of the long distance operators are in three figures.
Which brings us to the speed with which the passenger business can recover from the current situation. Senior railway managers are unanimous that the industry has to start growing revenue.
Costs are essentially fixed, at least for the present, so the marginal cost of extra passengers is small. The longer the industry depends on hand-outs, the greater the risk of service cuts and withdrawals.
My final piece of analysis tries to estimate how long it could take to wean the railway off the EMA life support. The general view seems to be 18 months to two years.
No one knows how rapidly commuters, business and leisure travellers will return to a railway which has, until recently, been the subject of a high profile campaign portraying it as a high risk form of transport. I estimate that if the passenger business can achieve a compound quarterly ridership growth of 40% we could be off EMA by the first quarter of 2022.
That said, it seems likely that a substantial proportion of passengers will not return to their regular commute until next year, some for fewer days a week and others not at all.
For leisure travellers, particularly over longer distances, mandatory face coverings may be a deterrent and reinforce perceptions of risk. And the longer it takes for revenue to recover, the more time there will be to attack the fixed cost- base.
Mixed bag of ‘innovations;’.
As you may have noticed, I am a sceptic when it comes to ‘innovation’, not least because I have been around for a while and remember stuff. There’s a classic example in the latest round of innovation funding just announced by the Department for Transport and Innovate UK.
According to the press release ‘Inventors have come forward with a host of ambitious projects to transform rail travel’. £9.4 million is being shared between 25 projects. Obviously some of the 25 are worth pursuing, but one that triggered my inconvenient memory was ‘the first railway footbridge made entirely from fibre reinforced polymer (FRP)’.
So this will be the first railway FRP footbridge since what was claimed to be the first FRP composite bridge installed at a mainline station in the UK, replaced the steel footbridge at Dawlish station in 2011.
And that was the first all FRP footbridge to be installed since the 2007 footbridge at St Austell which was also claimed to be the first structure on the UK rail network to be entirely constructed from FRP materials.
Given that when you walk round the Infrarail exhibition suppliers of structural composites are thick on the ground, funding the third ‘first’ railway FRP footbridge in the last 13 years really merits the attention of the National Audit Office.
Next to catch my eye was a proposal that initially sounded bonkers but was at least backed by some solid theoretical research. Steamology Motion Ltd is offering zero-emission power for existing rail freight locomotives based on a hydrogen-fuelled steam turbine generator.
Steamology’s proposed system burns hydrogen in oxygen to produce the steam which drives a turbine. This, in turn drives an alternator to produce electricity.
Academic studies of this concept have looked at power stations, with energy provided by liquid hydrogen. What Steamology calls its W2W (Water 2 Water) system uses compressed hydrogen and oxygen gas in tanks.
A demonstration is proposed using the turbine power generator as a range-extender to charge the battery packs of a Vivarail Class 230. You have to admire Adrian Shooter and his team for leaving no options unturned when it comes to power, although pure diesel is now off the agenda.
Since the team behind Steamology also produced the holder of the world speed record for steam powered cars, I can’t begrudge it a modest £400,000 to build a demonstrator.
Adhesion continues to fascinate researchers and what intrigued me in the list was the cryptically named ‘Improved railway operations through train-mounted water addition’.
CoCatalyst Limited’s proposal, known as Water-Trak, is based on spraying a small amount of water onto the contaminated rail-head to improve traction and braking.
So you’re going to improve adhesion by wetting the rail? Well yes.
A recurrent criticism of much current research work is that it is re-inventing the wheel. What the team behind Water-Trak has done is rediscover the wheel.
Back in the 1970s work on adhesion at British Rail Research included studying the effect of water on the coefficient of friction between wheel and rail. This used a rolling rig to measure adhesion between wheel and rail. Tests showed that spraying water on damp rail increased adhesion.
Laboratory tests were followed in 1979 by the installation of a trackside water-spraying system at Bearsted Bank, near Maidstone. This was a known leaf-fall problems-site.
Adhesion on the test section and was compared with an adjacent untreated section of track. Where the untreated section recorded adhesion values down to 0.04, the lowest figure on the test section with the water spray was 0.11.
And there it rested, Until in 2013, CoCatalyst was involved in a Rail Safety & Standards Board study of low adhesion. This lead to a joint study with Sheffield University revisiting the BR work.
A trial installation followed with the water sprayed from the vehicle. The Water-Trak equipment was installed on a Class 117 DMU.
Tests at Long Marston validated the concept and the latest tranche of funding covers installation of Water-Trak on the Porterbrook Hydro-flex Class 319 demonstrator. In partnership with Northern Rail the aim is to track test the system during this year’s leaf fall period.
So there you are. While funding the innovative third composite footbridge leaves my general cynicism unshaken, Water-Trak suggests that if you kiss enough frogs you may find a prince.
Informed Sources Laws 2020.
Some phrases published in this column have become common parlance in the railway industry – boiling frogs and bionic duckweed for example. Also frequently quoted is Informed Sources Third Law – ‘Always mistrust schedules based on the seasons’. Other Laws have been quoted over the years, but there have been suggestions that I make them up as I go along.
So this month I have written down all 11 Laws with an explanation of how they came about. For example, the Third Law resulted from years of reporting on the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) which was always going to enter revenue service ‘in the Spring’ or ‘in the Autumn’ but never ‘on 3 April’ or even ‘the first week in October’.
An even on today’s railway, tying deliveries of pretty well anything down to within a month is an achievement. One of Informed Sources’ central missions is to hold delivery promises to account – and the Third Law rarely fails.
Anyway here they are and I hope you find the stories behind them entertaining, if not informative.
New train TIN-Watch
Very little to report this month. The only bathtub curves around are Japanese Sentos: reliability growth with most manufacturers is emulating shower trays.
Last month I suggested that with fewer services being run, Depots would have the chance to carry out modifications to their new fleets. An Informed Source at the sharp end reminded me that I had overlooked the impact of social distancing on Depot throughput. This obviously affects the amount of work that can be done, which, in turn, has been reflected in longer times on depot for overnight servicing. Fewer trains serviced overnight is then reflected in availability.
So while the reduced timetable has indeed meant fewer trains are coming in for servicing, the restricted depot capacity, due to social distancing means that the it would not have been possible to have coped with the full timetable anyway. This reduced availability could be a limitation when it comes to restoring timetables.
Roger’s blog
Even though I’ve been getting out and about, I still haven’t seen a train properly, that is, a train running past in full view, since lockdown,. So while my Modern Railways colleagues have used outdoor locations for their contributions to our Zoom videos and podcasts, I have been sat in the conservatory. I must try to get out too for next month.
As well as helping to keep in touch with readers, our video reports are fun to make. This month’s Zoom conference was the first to suffer from what on TV they call ‘bloopers’.
Our method is to start with a trial run, where we each say our piece, and see how long it takes. Then we start recording with the aim of fitting the contributions from the Editor, Ian Walmsley and me into 5-6 minutes.
We got off to a good start when the timekeeper, who shall remain anonymous, forgot to trigger the timer for the trial run. Then in ‘live runs we took turns to interrupt the procedure with extraneous noises from smart phones, timers and computers.
Meanwhile there are various webinars in the coming weeks, including a virtual demonstration of the Water-Trak system mentioned above.
As a bit of lock-down light relief I have been running a weekly Bookshelf Challenge on twitter (@Captain_Deltic). This is based on the card game Ex Libris where you have to identify a novel by its first and last lines.
I started with ‘I tried to run a railway’ which was much too easy. Then I thought I might throw people off the scent with book about steam traction, but that was also too easy. Geoffrey Freeman Allen’s ‘British Railways after Beeching’ was also identified straight away. So, as I write this I am pondering the final challenge in the series – perhaps something technical.
Finally, some signs of a return to some form of normality. As we recover from Covid, the programme of the Fourth Friday Club awards events and conferences has been rescheduled as follows:
Rail in the North of England Conference, York, 2 October
Railway Industry Innovation Awards, London, 23 October
Golden Spanner Awards, London, 27 November
Rail in Wales & the West Conference, Bristol, 22 January 2021
Rail in the Midlands Conference, Birmingham, 26 February 2021
Golden Whistle Awards, London, 26 March 2021
Entries are invited for the Railway Industry Innovation Awards, with a deadline of 31 August – the entry form is at https://www.keymodernrailways.com/article/railway-industry-innovation-awards-2020-entry-form.
More details about all the Fourth Friday Club events can be found at https://www.keymodernrailways.com/fourth-friday-club.
Our rolling stock show, Modern Railways RVE, will take place on 5 November in Derby, and visitor registration is now open at www.rve-expo.co.uk.
That’s all for now, except a reminder that you don’t have to enter for the Golden Spanners, every fleet on the network takes part – like it or not!
Roger-
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Network Rail are working to reinstate confidence into passengers as more people begin to use the railway again, following Boris Johnston’s announcement on Friday that travel advice is changing with restrictions being lifted.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Network Rail have been working hard to keep its stations and facilities in the most hygienic and best possible condition for passengers, station users and staff.
As well as ‘business as usual’ cleaning regimes, including regular deep cleans, additional deep cleans have been carried out in toilet areas, while sanitiser and anti-viral treatment have been used on common touch-point areas such as doors and handrails.
The number of station staff has also increased to offer information to passengers, encourage the use of face coverings and help people travel safely.
Numerous other measures have also been introduced.
Vending machines have been fitted at Network Rail’s managed stations, 20 of the biggest stations in the country, including Waterloo, King’s Cross and Birmingham New Street, so passengers can buy face coverings, gloves, anti-bacterial wet wipes and hand sanitiser.
Network Rail have also begun a 21-day cycle of Zoono, an anti-viral treatment that guards surfaces for up to 30 days, to all touch point and hygiene areas, and additional touch-point cleaning no less than four-hourly on a continuous cycle, guarding against risk of contamination.
One-way systems and floor stickers have also been put in place to help passengers navigate stations in a controlled way as well as 250 hand sanitiser stations across their managed stations.
Queuing systems to limit the number of people in and out of toilets where required and cubicles, urinals, sinks and dryers have also been marked out of use, and new signage installed, to uphold social distancing.
Seating in stations and waiting rooms have been altered to support distancing.
Andrew Haines, Network Rail Chief Executive, said: “I would like to thank passengers for following Government advice over the last few months. By only travelling if absolutely necessary, you have helped us to operate a reliable service for critical workers, such as doctors, nurses, carers and supermarket workers – who have needed to travel, and to keep the country connected by moving goods such as food and medicine by rail freight.
“Now, as lockdown continues to ease and the nation turns towards recovering from this pandemic, I look forward to welcoming more people back to the railway. We have significantly stepped up cleaning regimes and made sure there are more staff on hand to help with information so you can travel safely.”
Image: Network Rail
From: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/network-rail-introduces-further-safety-measures-as-more-passengers-return-?gator_td=tZVjAKFZLmdXa%2bQdZ0OkeuEEify48pchy9Reey%2f%2fW3eU6eSV%2biaKyvUMkXvuN4TRsz7TGFCpmSbzcZhWJv6FfbdtgTgYPZS22m6VaX%2fhedchcYyymoU5GuSYw6ugBDmfIqe1H0duHnW5a5nyCSz0zSHsZ74aOaDhFZcYygTFwlvLsB1zsLmjGUplhEPfwpRfLidnVmQiDXheONkbEfQHSA%3d%3d-
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Crossrail could need even more money and time | Construction Enquirer News (constructionenquirer.com)Main budget could rise again as integration work set to cost another £140m-
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Government opening door to privatising London Underground, says union | London U... (theguardian.com)RMT warns of industrial action as review of TfL’s finances will consider ‘alternative operating models’
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Stagecoach Group plc – Preliminary results for the year ended 2 May 2020 - Stage... (stagecoachgroup.com)Stagecoach Group News Releases
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Had a great visit to Beaulieu Motor Museum last week. They have a special display on which includes Ari Vatanen's WRC winning Ford Escort RS1800 from 1981. He came second in the Lombard RAC Rally behind Hannu Mikkola's Audi Quattro to clinch the championship. The last time I saw this car was 34 years ago whilst standing in the freezing rain in a Welsh forest after 3 nights without seeing a bed. Today's Rally GB is a pale imitation of the RAC Rally of those days. This is the itinerary from 1981:-
Leg 1 Sunday 22-Nov-1981
SS1 Weston Park 1
SS2 Sutton Park
SS3 Donington Park
SS4 Trentham Gardens
SS5 Knowsley Park
SS6 Grizedale South
SS7 Grizedale North
SS8 Comb
SS9 Wythop
SS10 Greystoke
SS11 Wark
SS12 Currick
SS13 Kielder
SS14 Splashetts
SS15 Rooken
SS16 Rawhill
SS17 Craik
SS18 Twiglees
SS19 Castle O'er
SS20 Kershope North
SS21 Kershope South
SS22 Lambton
SS23 Witton Castle
SS24 Hamsterley Forest
SS25 Hamsterley 2
SS26 Guisborough
SS27 Langdale
SS28 Wykeham
SS29 Dalby
SS30 Calderdale
SS31 Cropton
SS32 Kilburn
SS33 Boltby
Leg 2 Tuesday 24-Nov-1981
SS34 Oulton Park
SS35 Weston Park 2
SS36 Burwarton
SS37 Knill Wood
SS38 Radnor
SS39 Brycheiniog
SS40 Halfway
SS41 Crychan
SS42 Clynsaer
SS43 Esgair Dafydd
SS44 Lady Megan
SS45 Llidad
SS46 Brechfa
SS47 Trawscoed
SS48 Llanafan
SS49 Myherin
SS50 Hafren
SS51 Panperthog
SS52 Dyfi
SS53 Gartheiniog
SS54 Blaen-y-Clyn
SS55 Hafod Owen
SS56 Mawddach
SS57 Maesgwm
SS58 Beddgelert
SS59 Great Orme
SS60 Penmachno North
SS61 Penmachno South
SS62 Clocaenog 1
SS63 Clocaenog 2
SS64 Clocaenog 3
SS65 Clocaenog 4
Rally total: 746.74 km (not including road sections of 2,100kms!!))
What you can't see from this is that after starting Sunday morning the crews had no rest before hitting Kielder Forest in Northumberland just after dark on Sunday night, looping into Scotland and tackling the Yorkshire stages (Dalby was about 28 minutes alone) through Monday. Then a short rest before starting leg 2 before dawn on Tuesday straight through to finish on Wednesday afternoon. In those days the co-driver (who had no pace notes on UK rallies) would drive the car on the long road sections while the driver slept. Only 54 of the 151 starters finished. Epic.-
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Clarkson, May And Hammond Have Signed A Huge Deal With Amazon For A New Car Show... (theladbible.com)Top Gear trio Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed a huge deal with Amazon to present a new car show.
Many already suspected that the return of the trio would be an online only affair, although very few probably thought it would go to Amazon rather than streaming heavyweights Netflix.
This is a massive move for Amazon Instant/Prime, since they took over LoveFilm the service has been going along steadily but they’ve hardly stood head and shoulders with Netflix. That could be about to change now.
The programme will air for the first time next year and be produced by former Top Gear executive Andy Wilman, the man who was credited for turning the stunt-filled motor show into the programme that so many people are familiar with.
It will however cost you £79 a year to watch it, as it will launch as part of their Prime service of subscription TV and movie content.
This deal will commit the trio to three seasons of the show that as of yet still remains untitled.-
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Amazing New Multi-Perspective Video Lets Viewers Experience a Hot Lap in the New... (media.ford.com)A new interactive video enables viewers to experience the all new Ford Mustang from multiple perspectives as it speeds around the legendary Silverstone race track in the U.K.-
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Top Gear: Chris Evans replacing Clarkson? It’s going to be a car crash
original story from the Metro at
http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/17/top-gear-chris-evans-replacing-clarkson-its-going-to-be-a-car-crash-5249799/
Gary Marshall for Metro.co.ukWednesday 17 Jun 2015 10:52 am
Top Gear: Chris Evans replacing Clarkson? It'll be a car crashChris replaces Clarkson
It’s official: Chris Evans is the new host of Top Gear, and Captain Slow and the Hamster won’t be joining him. As Mr May might put it: ‘Oh, cock.’
The problem isn’t Evans. He’s a great presenter, a properly funny man and a car nut to boot. An Evans-fronted car show will probably be quite good. But no matter what the titles say, it won’t be Top Gear – because Top Gear isn’t a car show.
Top Gear used to be a car show. It reported on exciting things such as traffic jams and tachographs in trucks, and it featured Noel Edmonds road testing cars and exciting driving questions from the chief instructor of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. It ran for about two hundred years and it was watched by about three people.
Top Gear started to get better in 1988 when Clarkson joined, but it didn’t become must-see TV until it was canned, brought back in a completely different format and based around a trio of presenters: Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Jason Dawe. The chemistry wasn’t quite right, though, and Dawe was replaced by James May. What happened next involved stunts, controversy, huge ratings and worldwide success.
The reborn Top Gear programme wasn’t about cars. It was about three middle-aged men cocking about, and the weakest bits of the programme – the Stig’s laps, the star in a reasonably priced car – were the bits that most resembled traditional car shows.
The bits that really worked were the bits you don’t get on Fifth Gear: Clarkson’s big mouth, James May’s irritation, Hammond’s cars getting shunted.
And without them, it’ll be rubbish.
Chris Evans is the new Top Gear presenter - replacing Jeremy Clarkson, James Mays and Richard Hammond It just won’t be the same (Picture: Splash)
It won’t be unwatchable, I’m sure. But it won’t be what Top Gear was either. The new programme will be the Sugababes of car shows, a completely different line-up trading on past glories to an increasingly selective audience.
You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Just look at Top Gear USA, which took the format to America in 2010.
It had three men having eccentric adventures. It had a Stig. It had stunts, and challenges, and a star in a reasonably priced car. And it currently has five out of ten stars on IMDB, because it just isn’t the programme it’s trying to copy.
If UK Top Gear was Sugababes, Top Gear USA was a Sugababes tribute act featuring three burly blokes in oil-stained overalls.
The TV programme Top Gear was most often compared to wasn’t a car programme, though. It was Last of the Summer Wine. Like Top Gear, LOTSW was hugely popular. Like Top Gear, LOTSW was essentially about three men cocking about. And like Top Gear, LOTSW was at its best with a particular line-up, in its case Peter Sallis, Brian Wilde and Bill Owen.
Owen died, and the programme continued for another decade – but it wasn’t the same. The magic was missing.
Like Top Gear?
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/17/top-gear-chris-evans-replacing-clarkson-its-going-to-be-a-car-crash-5249799/#ixzz3fx4HTKFX-
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Safety Network has articles and information about all kinds of safety, including motorsport and road safety. It's pleased to join with thecarmagonline.co.uk-
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The Mini Scamp is a "kit car" first built in 1969. Shortly after BMC Mini Moke production stopped in Longbridge.
The first Mark 1 kits which were styled similarly to the Mini Moke were produced by Robert Mandry in Reading, Berkshire.They used the mechanical parts of a Mini and body made from a steel box section frame fitted with aluminium panels. Options included a van, estate or pick-up body and four or six wheel chassis. In 1974 the company moved to Woking in Surrey.
The Mark 2 version of 1978 had a squarer body and stronger chassis, not using the mini rear subframe.
In 1987 moved again to East Grinstead, Sussex, when ownership changed to Andrew MacLean.
The Mark 3 version started production in 1989.
This was followed by a version built on either a Suzuki SJ chassis or the Daihatsu F50/F55.
I would highly recommend buying one of these! I own 2 and they are fantastic bits of kit, built like tanks, insanely fun to drive, very quick and are very easy to maintain due to their custom body work that almost gives you access to all areas of the engine back to front.
By David Whittle-
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V6FEG Do they all look the same or is there a high level of modification options?
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Buying /Importing an American Car
A few years ago, I wanted to buy my dream car. I’d had already been fortunate enough to have a 1973 Ford Mustang convertible which, considering it’s age, had an amazing power roof mechanism. I’d also had a 1994 Mustang Coupe as my daily driver but I always missed not being able to take the roof off.
I spent ages trying to find a supplier who could help me buy my dream car. I had lots of dealers try to sell me something they already had but no listened to when I asked for help in buying my perfect spec brand new. That was, until I found Wayne at Europa SVT. He listened to me and helped me to get a brand new car made to my spec. He gave me lots of invaluable advice about cost options, special features and the whole import process.
I ordered my 2006 Mustang Convertible and had lots of updates on e-mail form Wayne about exactly where my car was in the build process; then testing process; then shipping. Communication with the US dealer was passed on to me and I felt as though I always knew what was happening in the birth and early life of my new dream car.
Wayne picked the Mustang up from the sea container in Southampton with a trailer and took it to his shop /workshop in Buxton where his mechanic modified the lights etc. and put it through the SVA tests. When I picked it up it, all paperwork was done and it was ready for me to drive. With just 6 miles on the clock it was everything I could have wished for. Wayne had dealt with all the import costs including shipping and import taxes. He kept me informed all the time and I really benefited from his extensive knowledge and USA contacts. He’s so calm and organised.
The car is still a head turner. Every time I drive it, I hear people commenting on how beautiful it is. It was less than £30k all in and yet it gets the attention of a Ferrari, Porsche or Lamborghini worth 3 times the price.
I’d definitely recommend contacting Wayne if you want a car, advice about getting a car, parts, supplies etc. https://www.europasvt.com/-
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