Attention to detail

“I may be 71, but I absolutely love cars and trucks,” wrote Reg Walton, from Gainford.

“Or possibly a more appropriate word is obsessive.” He is not alone, for Echo Memories has been inundated with calls and emails about the picture of the 1962 parade of cars parked outside the Buck Inn, in Northallerton.

READERS have identified five cars on the front row, with debate left raging over the sixth. Brian Strain, from Middleton One Row, left a voicemail message on January 2: “I think it is a Humber Hawk, and my brother John thinks it’s a Vauxhall Cresta.

You’ve caused family dissension – happy new year!”

Unfortunately for Brian, it appears his brother is right.

Derek Adamson said: “It cannot be a Humber – they had no badge on the bonnet but the name HUMBER was stretched across the front instead.”

Mr Walton, in Gainford, agreed: “The bumper bar has a dropped section in the centre, whereas a Humber always had a straight bumper bar.”

Nearly unanimously, Memories readers said it was a Vauxhall, although they were unable to tell if it was a Cresta or a Velox.

Brian Swallow said: “I am confident that it is a six cylinder Cresta or Velox (PA model). I think the latter because the Cresta was usually finished in two-tone paintwork with a pair of chrome fog/driving lamps fitted on the front bumper.”

Roy Simpson went further: “The early Crestas had a 2.2 straight six engine with a single Webber carburetter. This was replaced with an upgraded 2.6 straight six engine from 1961 until end of production in 1962.”

A word of explanation before we get lost in the minutiae of post-war cars.

The Vauxhall Velox was a family saloon introduced in 1948. In 1954, an upmarket version, the Cresta, was launched. As standard, the Cresta had a heater, fascia clock, cigar lighter, automatic boot light, and a vanity mirror in the passenger sun visor, while purchasers had a choice of leather or fabric upholstery.

In 1957, new models of the Velox and the Cresta were unveiled at the Motor Show.

These were the PA models and they featured a radical redesign with wraparound windscreen and attentiongrabbing tail fins. The Cresta (PA) still had superior features – now including a woven pile carpet.

This is the car in our picture.

John Biggs, in Bishop Auckland, has a 1960 catalogue from a local Vauxhall dealer.

A Velox on the road was £922 10d; a Cresta was £1,014 10d.

For a further £19 15s 6d, Cresta buyers could have a radio installed. For another £1 19s 6d, they could get an aerial to make the radio work.

For £3 8s 6d, they could have foglamps installed. For a further 12s 6d, they could have a switch to turn them on and off.

The catalogue offers customers a choice of two-tone colours: maroon and silvergrey; royal blue and silvergrey; kewanee green and silver- grey, and black and silver-grey. Plus there was coronado yellow and regency green, which must have looked like a canary going along the road.

“I also seem to remember a delicate shade of boudoir pink,” said Mr Biggs.

Jean Leckenby, of Darlington, and her late husband, Leslie, had two two-tone blue Crestas in the early Sixties.

“For the size of car, they were quite light. In winter, we needed two or three bags of sand in the boot to stop the car sliding about,” she said. “The biggest fault was the underneath – as a friend of mine says, they were rust buckets.”

But they were attractive.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, says: “The PA model was one of the more elegant British cars of the late Fifties, even though it was not sufficiently upmarket for it to be driven by those who considered themselves the elite of British society. Rock stars could drive them; barristers and doctors would not. This was ironic, because Queen Elizabeth for many years used an estate version as personal transport.”

BUT readers want to go further. Their eyes have been caught by the seventh car on the front row – even though you can only see half of it in the picture.

Mark Cooper identifies it as a Humber Hawk Mk V, whereas Gordon Dolby thinks it might be a Humber Super Snipe.

Brian Johnson, in Bishop Auckland, whose father was a welder on the Vauxhall production line in Luton, says: “I don’t think it’s a Hawk because it would have a different finish around the wheelarch.”

But Mr Walton in Gainford is after naming the full set.

“On the back row, the black car opposite the public house door is a Forties Vauxhall – the chrome flutes on the bonnet identify it. The van is a Bedford CA and the legendary Morris 1000 van is near the end.”

Thanks to all who have contributed, including Derek Napper, of Darlington, Ian Anderson, of Bedale, and David Walsh, of Skelton.

THE picture above of a G5 Class 0-4-4 was used by The Northern Echo to illustrate a recent article about rail enthusiasts who are building a replica of it.

The replica’s bogie, which has taken two years to build, is on display at Locomotion: The National Railway Museum, in Shildon, until early March.

There were 110 G5s built in Darlington and they worked across the North-East and North Yorkshire until they were withdrawn in the Fifties.

But no one seems to know at which station the picture was taken, although it was definitely taken in this area – probably in 1950.

Echo Memories has an inkling: we’d be interested to see who, and how many, agree.R EMAINING on the tracks, a fortnight ago we used an archive picture of a snowplough taken on January 6, 1962.

Peter Singlehurst, in Darlington, was able to identify its location.

“It is taken from Barnard Castle East signal box looking east,” he said. “This was the box next to the Harmire Road level crossing, which is off the photo to the left, with the station beyond that.

“The line to Darlington goes off the right hand side of the photo, but our two Class K1 locos between the two ploughs are on the Bishop Auckland line, which also heads out to the right of the photo, but then curves left behind the wood seen in the top left distance on the climb to Coal Road Crossing.”

KATHLEEN TWEDDLE emails, having followed the Echo Memories articles about Sir John Duck, Durham City’s answer to Dick Whittington.

What, she asks, is Sir John’s connection with West Rainton, to the north-east of Durham? Sir John rose from rags to riches in the 17th Century.

He was a controversial butcher who became Lord Mayor and proud possessor, as we have seen, of a remarkable staircase.

That staircase was in his townhouse in Silver Street, Durham City. He bought the townhouse when he was at the height of his powers in about 1680 – the same time he bought his out-of-town house in West Rainton.

It was the manor of Haswell-on-the-Hill, in West Rainton, which had been owned by the Bellasis family.

Whether Duck was after it as a country retreat or because there was coal under its pastures is open to debate.

He was a close political ally of the Prince Bishop of Durham who, on March 19, 1687, got Duck created a baronet. He chose to be styled Sir John of Haswell-on-the- Hill.

Duck died in 1695 and his estates passed to his wife’s cousins, the Nicholsons.

Over the centuries, his manor house was turned into a tenement for miners before being pulled down, probably early in the 20th Century.

Its memory survives, in the streetnames of Hall Lane and Hall Close, which have been built on its site.