Once In a Red Moon
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First Non-stop Coach Run Between London ,and Moscow Reduces Journey Time to Below 45 Hours : High Standard of Comfort Given by Quantity-pro
duction Vehicle By John F. Moon, A.M.I.R.T.E.
TIHIS evening is ideal for arranging an outing," ran my horoscope for Friday, October 2, as published in of the popular daily newspapers. soothsayer who compiled this pearl sdom could never have known how he was, for that evening I embarked Thames-Duple coach at Victoria h Station for what was to prove to record-breaking non-stop journey to :ow.
grets? Only one. I must be one le world's worst coach passengers, a 10-minute ride on a conventional ;ending me off-colour for the same )er of hours. With this in mind, 1 ted 7s. 6d. in anti-sickness pills— :y completely wasted, as not one ne necessary.
is is about the highest tribute I can to the comfort and general riding le coach. It was a standard that d previously experienced only in isive air-sprung American vehicles, then over appreciably better road ces than had to be covered during of the Russian journey.
sically, the vehicle used for the ley was a standard coach. Indeed, a few weeks before the trip, it had in the Ford demonstration fleet. £1,275 chassis was modified only to extent of incorporating heavy-duty rear springs to cope with poor road surfaces, and the provision of four 28-gal. fuel tanks to reduce the number of refuelling stops. The chassis had an Eaton two-speed axle, with ratios of 4.5 and 6.25 to 1, and was powered by the standard 6D 100 b.h.p. oil engine.
The Duple body was gutted by the makers and the original seats were replaced by 20 Chapman Mark 1-66 reclining seats fitted with adjustable footrests. There were four pairs of seats on the off side of the body and six pairs on the near side.
Immediately behind the off-side seats, Duple's had installed a toilet compart
ment, inCorporating a Delaney Gallay portable toilet as used in certain B.E.A. aircraft There was also a porcelain washbasin with a hand pump for drawing fresh water from a 25-gal. tank, and an 18-gal, tank for waste water below the basin.
A Trico-Folberth E.F.1A rubber-bladed fan had been installed in the toilet and two Ronson Supertrim electric shavers were located on the outside of the toilet compartment.
The full-width rear seat had been replaced by a compact "kitchen compartment." In the centre there was a Duette twin-burner hot plate lent by Calor Gas (Distributing) Co.. Ltd., fuelled by a 32-1b. cylinder of gas housed in the luggage compartment.
On each side of the hot plate, cabinets had been installed, that on the off-side being insulated for the storage of either hot or cold food, and the other for glass, cutlery and so forth.
This tiny kitchen was staffed throughout the journey by A. J. " Oscar" Roberts. a B.E.A. steward who volunteered for the duty and was using some of his -holiday to accompany us. Oscar managed to work miracles in the somewhat confined and at times unstable quarters, and was never at a loss to provide food and drink at all hours of the day and night.
Other modifications made to the bodywork included a Smith's all-wave radio with public-address equipment and special strengthening in the luggage boot to take the weight of two spare wheels, tools, spares and vast quantities of Ford publicity material.
The party of 17 included two representatives of Excelsior European Motorways, Ltd., Bournemouth. These were Vernon Maitland, a director, and Jock Williamson, one of their drivers. Both had had much experience of the road to Moscow, as Excelsior have been running normal tours there for the past year or more, and took turns at driving.
Indeed, Excelsior were partly instrumental in the project for the trip. Some months ago, Ford had offered them a demonstration coach which they had thought about trying on the normal Moscow run. Peter Wright, Ford's commercial vehicle home sales manager, was later inspired by the thought of attempting the run non-stop, but in view of his previous discussions with Mr. Maitland, enlisted his aid in organizing such an attempt.
The third driver throughout the recordbreaking run was Bert Smith, a Ford demonstration driver. These three took two-hour shifts of driving throughout the outward run. Other Ford staff included Mr. Wright, Fred Lewis, editor of Ford Times, Bill Patten, .publicity department, and " Ben " Bennett, who divided his time between taking eine and still pictures of the journey. The remaining nine members of the party were all technical journalists.
Before making the trip, all the necessary visas had been obtained for us by Excelsior Motorways and all that was left for us, as passengers, to do was to obtain suitcases of such a shape and size that they would fit on the luggage racks in the coach. The start was timed for 8 p.m. and, after Press photographs had been taken, the journey began at 8.47 p.m. B.S.T. All our subsequent timings were based on British Summer Time.
The 73 miles to Dover were covered in fine style and the coach pulled into the Eastern Docks 2 hours 10 minutes after leaving Victoria, Oscar having served an excellent dinner on the way. Embarkation had been carefully arranged on the "Princess Josephine Charlotte" R22 so that we would be the first off the ferry on arrival at Ostend. The coach was embarked at 11.40 p.m., 10 minutes before departure time.
The only other heavy vehicle on board was an M.A.N. six-wheeler returning to Austria from Birmingham. where it had delivered some forging machinery. The cross-Channel journey was uneventful, although various unfavourable comments were passed about the lack of ventilation below decks and, after a 4 a.m. breakfast, the ferry tied up at Ostend at 4.50 a.m., five minutes after which we drove off first, despite the attempts of the M.A.N. driver to beat us to it.
Once clear of Ostend, we were on the Brussels autostrade and cruising at 68 m.p.h., with the result that we entered the Brussels outskirts at 6.15 a.m., the 68 miles from Ostend having been covered in 70 minutes. By skirting Brussels further time was saved and after passing through Liege at 7.36 a.m. and observing some of the remains of the illfated Maginot Line, we reached Aachen and the West German frontier at 8.15 a.m. The 85 miles from Brussels had been covered in 119 minutes.
Delays at the Belgian and German check points in Aachen occupied 23 minutes, which gave us a chance to take pictures and collect breakfast.
A short length of autobahn was used from Aachen, but despite the good surface it was obvious we were going to need a fair amount of practice at eating and drinking in a coach moving at more than 60 m.p.h. Oilskins would have had some value when drinking coffee at such a speed.
From the autobahn, minor roads were followed to Dilsseldorf. which was entered at 9.55 a.m. and, 13 minutes later, we crossed the Rhine and made for the Autobahn Nord, which was joined on the outskirts of Essen at 10.28 a.m. This autobahn led almost directly to the East German-Polish border at Frankfurt-amOder.
A stop of 16 minutes was made on the outskirts of Hanover to refuel and take up lunch. The 219 miles from Aachen had taken only 4 hours 33 minutes to cover, the coach rarely travelling at less than 65 m.p.h. (the German autobahn is favourably graded so that the minimum speed of the coach at any time was 60 m.p.h.).
The 66 miles from Hanover to Helmstedt, which is the West German side of the boundary between the two parts of Germany, were covered at an average speed of 65 m.p.h. Although there was a long queue of cars and coaches waiting to cross into the Eastern zone, it took us only 1 hour 5 minutes to get through into East German Marienborn—a long time but appreciably less than other traffic was taking.
At Marienborn we collected a guide from the head office of the German Democratic Republic's tourist organization and we left the frontier post at 3.37 p.m.
As in West Germany, we encountered extensive roadworks on the autobahn between Helmstedt and Frankfurt, and at times these operations necessitated reducing speed to 20 m.p.h., but having crossed the Elbe river (the point where American and Russian solders met in May, 1945) at 4.06 p.m., we reached the Polish frontier at 6.10 p.m., the :51 miles from Helmstedt to Frankfurt-amOder taking 2 hours 31 minutes.
There was a 10-minute delay occasioned by a reception party waiting to greet a Polish delegation, some members of the party holding rather patheticlooking bouquets for presentation to the visitors.
We left the East German post at 6.29 p.m. and crossed the Oder into Slubice, the Polish frontier town. By this time the German guide had been replaced by a Pole, and we set off into the Polish' darkness at 7.07 p.m. Pole was thought to know Slubice, ock Williamson knew it better and :4:1 him a short cut through the town, he (the guide) had never seen e Having left the town, the coach ) be taken through narrow, winding , little more than country lanes with !ace which, although not as bad as ad feared, would not have stood rable comparison with a billiards ore reaching Poznan at 9.45 p.m. we asscd our first 24 hours since leaving ria, during the course of which 739 had been covered on the road plus les between Dover and Ostend.
stopped in Poznan for 10 minutes we collected more food and drained ,ater tanks, and then encountered yr better roads between Poznan and tw. On this stretch some excitement aused by a fox hunt, the fox careeriadly down the road ahead of the while the driver, encouraged rously by the Polish courier, zigd after it until, eventually, a hit was !red with the fog lamp, which put
o the fox and the fog lamp.
.saw was entered at 1.30 a.m. on unday morning, and 2 hours 29 m later and 117 miles farther east ived at Terespol, the Polish frontier Here it looked as if our arrangehad fallen down, because the post :serted, but the Polish guide made effective telephone calls and man
o persuade the necessary officials to :ycle from the frontier railway I to see us through.
lost over an hour at Terespol, and 5.12 a.m. before we were able to he River Bug into Russia.
the Russian tourist organization, ist, had really pulled out the stops. ussian border had been kept open all night and they had even dragged ge man out of bed at 2 a.m, in case nted fuel,
were wiser than we were, because used the offer and ran into trouble s a result. We left the Russian post St at 6.10 a.m. and, although the etween Brest and Minsk was not ide, we soon had the two Intourist whom we had collected at Brest, at the speed which we were able ) up.
At first I was puzzled by the number of police to be seen at road junctions. Later I found that Intourist had, at the request of Mr. Wright, marshalled the police to preclude the possibility of our crashing headlong into a wandering farm cart, Sunday being market day.
Other special arrangements made for our benefit were a relaxation of the 45 m.p.h. speed limit which applies to all tourist traffic in Russia. and the lifting of the ban on travel during the hours of darkness for similar traffic.
An 11-minute stop was made in Minsk and we left that somewhat sombre city at 10.08 a.m. and headed for Moscow. The Minsk-Moscow road was built in 1939-40 and is over 35 ft. wide: not really mainroad standard, but approaching the average width of the southern section of Britain's AS and quite sufficient for the meagre amount of traffic which normally uses it.
By 4 p.m. B.S.T. (6 p.m. local time) the organizers were beginning to get a little worried about our fuel supplies, particularly as there seemed to be hardly any filling stations east of Brcst. However, at 5.10 p.m. we spotted one. intrigued by its use of the word "petrol" in addition to the unpronounceable Russian equivalent, and sufficient fuel was taken in two Le the tanks.
Unfortunately, there was some confusi.m ONer the change-over tap, with the result that within sight of Moscow the
fuel system became aerated. Rapid work temporarily vented the system in four minutes, and by the skin of our teeth we managed to enter the Moscow city boundary within 45 hours of leaving London, the exact overall time being 44 hours 57 minutes.
The 628 miles between Brest and Minsk had taken 11 hours 22 minutes, an average speed of slightly over 55 m.p.h.. and half the time taken by the fastest Russian train between the two towns. The actual running time on the road was 33 hours 29 minutes, giving an average running speed for the 1,713-mile journey of 51.16 m.p.h.
Before setting out, we had
been told that the object of the journey was to try to show that a low-cost massproduction coach could cover such a journey non-stop within 61) hours, Most people to whom I spoke in England thought we were mad.
Half-way across Germany it became apparent that our average speed was going to bring us into Moscow within much less than 60 hours and Mr. Wright confided to me that actually he had drawn up what even he considered to be a crazy schedule which aimed to cover the distance in under 48 hours. That this impossible schedule was exceeded by 3 hours 3 minutes without any trace of discomfort speaks volumes for the chassis, the body and the skill of the drivers.
On the return journey I drove the coach for 65 miles between Moscow and Minsk, and found it pleasant to handle, although the steering was susceptible to ridged roads and strong cross-winds. As a passenger I regretted only the absence of pockets behind the seats for the stowage of cameras, papers and so forth, and the difficult action of the balanceddrop windows.