Page 1. Shelvoke & Drewry Enthusiasts' Club Newsletter - Autumn 2011.
SD's in service - the 'N' Series.
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Steve Jones sent in this photo of a 1978 'T'' reg 'N' series Revopak in service with the City of Westminster. He writes that almost the entire fleet in Westminster were 'N' series with the first Revopaks in service in 1971. This photo was taken at Picadilly Circus on December 18th 1985 and you may notice that a small door has been cut into the nearside door, presumably so the driver can see the kerb. Originally the cabs were painted maroon. |
AN HGV FITTER WRITES:-
It's always good to hear about SD's in operation and Derek Coulson has written:-
I served an apprenticeship with a local authority from 1976 working on all types of vehicles and plant. I was subsequently employed as an HGV fitter primarily on the Cleansing side. At the time, the workshop had two sides, Cleansing and Engineering, with a couple of service bays and an area occupied by a Plant Fitter. A separate bay had a welder and his assistant.
We had around 20 refuse trucks of which probably 8 to 10 were S&D, generally P and R registration N types, but we had a baby S & D for farms as well. The rest were mainly Dennis, but in the early days there were a couple of old Glover and Webbs and a Seddon/Jack Allen (SAM). There were some P type automatics joined the fleet towards the end of my time there - I left in 1983 to become a service engineer for a sweeper company.
I got my HGV licence and was allowed to drive trucks. S & D's were better to drive than most of the Dennis's, other than an old Paxit where we had swapped the engine from a Leyland to a Perkins 6.354, and hadn't changed the gearbox or diff - it was a flying machine.
I recall going to a breakdown - we had a Transit with a tiny crane on the back, and attended an S & D with a badly broken front spring. We didn't have a proper breakdown truck so jacked the chassis up and put a block of wood between the axle and chassis and drove very gingerly back to the yard. It was the early 1980's, wouldn't dream of it now.
The rakes used to wear out, so we had a spare that was repaired with new teeth, the welding procedure needed special rods and the fume was terrific. We got quite adept at changing the rakes. This was the days before wheelie bins, so a common job was removing metal bins that had been caught and got trapped between the teeth of the rake and body. Drivers liked the S & D's, they were substantial vehicles. They also used to be regularly overloaded, when they started tipping at the incinerator plant they were weighed and were often over 18 tonnes.
Clutches didn't last long - this was before automatics came into regular use. A regular job was to get a truck steam cleaned on an afternoon, then get the gearbox out before tea break at 8.45, change first and second gears and change the clutch and get the box back in before lunch at 12. Box it all up and test it before tea at 3.15 and take it back to the depot to test it.
I always had a soft spot for N types, and would love to see one preserved...
This photo by Jaap Mikkers shows an 'N' type still at work in Malta in 2009.
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