Bronze pedals

[123rover50]

We had a mob here over Easter checking out the sacred site with all the Landies and one mentioned that he and another club member back in the early ninetys had found a graveyard out Injune way with several old Landies in it. He has the brass grill badge he took off one and remembers the bronze pedals too but at the time being young and not conversant with 80,s thought nothing off it. The brass badge has the raised edge like the alloy one. Not the earlier plain edge one.
When did the pedals change from bronze to steel ?

Keith

[russellrovers]

We had a mob here over Easter checking out the sacred site with all the Landies and one mentioned that he and another club member back in the early ninetys had found a graveyard out Injune way with several old Landies in it. He has the brass grill badge he took off one and remembers the bronze pedals too but at the time being young and not conversant with 80,s thought nothing off it. The brass badge has the raised edge like the alloy one. Not the earlier plain edge one.
When did the pedals change from bronze to steel ?

Keith

bronze was preproduction 1948 --- only jim

[wrinklearthur]

Les Well's 80" had bronze/brass pedals and a folded ribbon shaped brass badge.

I'll leave the colour out this time.
.

[incisor]

were the bronze / brass pedals the same shape as the ones used in later years eg 55 etc etc?

[wrinklearthur]

were the bronze / brass pedals the same shape as the ones used in later years eg 55 etc etc?

Same shape pedal plates IIRC, but without the rust pit holes.
.

[123rover50]

Had a reply on the UK forum. Tom Pickford says they were prepro but some may have been carried over to early production.
Also some prepros that went to the Groundnut scheme in Africa may have come to the Groundnut/Peanut scheme in west Queensland when the former folded.
I remember reading about the latter but cant remember where.

[incisor]

Lunch Party, Kongwa Tanganyika (Tanzania) 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr



Jimmy Majani Urambo 1951 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr



Jean Young and Margery, Kongwa Tanganyika 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr


Jean Young and Margery, Kongwa Tanganyika 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr


Gladwell Road Urambo, Tanganyika 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr


Main Road Kongwa Tanganyika (Tanzania) 1950s by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr


Road Urambo, Tanganyika 1951/1052 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr

[bobslandies]

Jean Young and Margery, Kongwa Tanganyika 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr


Jean Young and Margery, Kongwa Tanganyika 1950 by ART NAHPRO, on Flickr

DSA411 is the earliest vehicle in the photos (likely pre-1500 production) - see the mirror bracket on the upper vertical of the windscreen frame - could swivel when the frame was up or down.

Some Pre-productions have the rear view mirror on the d/s front guard.

Also see the early grille.

Saw bronze pedals over thirty years ago (I did not know their significance), also a bronze badge (tried to get that but to no avail).

Bob

[bobslandies]

The East African groundnuts scheme was postwar Britain’s equivalent of the Millennium Dome. In pursuit of a laudable objective, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was poured diligently into a sump of official incompetence. Started in 1947 by the Labour government, to grow peanuts in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) as a contribution to both the African and the British economies and to alleviate a world shortage of fats, the scheme was ill planned, failed to allow for the area’s soil and rainfall, and employed unsuitable agricultural methods, including the wrong kind of machinery for the terrain. Nor had local traditions and attitudes been taken into account. The scheme’s most successful crop was a bountiful harvest of official gobbledegook.

The plan called for the clearing of five million acres of land in the first five years and the creation of a new deep-water port and railway in Tanganyika, and was expected to create 32,000 jobs for African workers. The project was suggested originally by the United Africa Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, but was soon handed over to the government’s Overseas Food Corporation. The prime mover was the colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, but the principal responsibility rested with the minister of food, the Old Etonian ex-Communist John Strachey. Both men’s reputations were ruined.

By 1949 it was clear that things were going badly wrong. In the House of Commons in July 1950, Maurice Webb, now minister of food, admitted that the scheme had been pushed forward at breakneck speed and the methods used had not been adequately tested. The accounts were in chaos, too, though he did not put it quite like that, but he said it would be wrong to abandon the scheme or ‘retreat in any fundamental way’. The best course was to drop ‘the purely food producing idea’ and reshape the scheme as ‘a broad project of colonial development with a wide and varied agricultural content.’

The Overseas Food Corporation appointed a working party, which reported at the end of September that the scheme was costing six times as much to produce the crops as the crops were worth and that the administration in Tanganyika needed to be ‘much smaller and more flexible’ and released from ‘the burden of preconceived objectives and targets’, as well as ‘undue or premature publicity’. Plenty of time was needed to foster the growth of viable economic units suited to the local conditions, which evidently needed to be shielded from both the public eye and any particular expectations.

The writing was on the wall and the effective abandonment of the groundnuts scheme was announced in the following January. The debts were written off to the tune of £36.5 million. No one seemed eager to acknowledge responsibility.

(Source: Britain Abandons the Groundnuts Scheme | History Today)

I had proposed to say a word about Queensland, but since that has not been raised, I will put it on one side. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Very well, I will say a word about Queensland. As the Committee well know, Queensland is the Overseas Food Corporation's subsidiary concern, and there, I think, we have some success to report. They succeeded in reaching their target of 70,000 acres under crop in their second year—66,500 acres under sorghum and 3,500 acres under sunflower. That harvest is now in full swing. About half the sorghum has been harvested and has produced 20,000 tons, the yield being about 1,460 lb. to the acre. This, of course, is a much better yield than last year. Most of the crop will be shipped to the United Kingdom, and it will make a modest, but I think, 2065 as Minister of Food, a very welcome, contribution to our supplies of animal feedingstuffs.

Progress is being made in the development of the pig-rearing side of the scheme. One pig unit is already set up and a second is nearing completion. Each unit consists of 200 breeding sows, and the anticipated production is 12 baconers of eight score deadweight per annum. Already there are nearly 1,300 pigs in the units. The baconers will be sold for export to Britain.

A development which was not anticipated in the original plan has been the move into livestock production in Queensland. Some of the land which was included in the estates purchased by the Corporation is not suitable for sorghum cultivation, but it is useful for grazing. In addition, the sorghum stubble offers a useful source of cattle feed at a time when natural grazing has fallen off, and this has enabled the Corporation to purchase numbers of mixed store cattle at a satisfactory price at a time when breeders have little keep. The cattle can be carried through the winter on the stubble, and finished on the new grass in the spring. This year, because of the large quantity of lodged grain, cattle were very quickly fattened on the stubble. Last season 13,000 cattle were purchased and grazed in this way, of which nearly 3,000 were sold. This development offers the prospect of increasing the supplies of meat to this country, and its future development is being watched with confidence.

(Source: OVERSEAS FOOD CORPORATION (Hansard, 18 July 1950))

Very good article here on the Queensland debacle:

Capella - Queensland-British Food Corporation

Bob

[123rover50]

Thanks Bob, good story. I had heard parts of it.
Rumour has it they imported a Tickford privately too as well as the early 80' utes. I will get a photo of his brass grill badge and post it up.