Much of the impatience h course, been due to the official attitude towards producer gas plant. This is so obviously the war-time substitute for Petroleum in heavy vehicles that most continental nations Have been encouraging its development for years. In this country not only was it actually discouraged by penal regulations in peacetime, but the many well-known and reputable manufacturers who have been developing producer gas traction for a long time have been almost completely ignored since the war broke out.
No one could understand why, instead of going ahead with what could be rapidly put to use in an emergency, the Government was apparently attempting to develop, through its own technical depart-méhts, some sort of "ideal" or fully perfected producer-gas unit which might eventually emerge with the official stamp of approval.
Traction Experiments Silence has also surrounded the activities of various road vehicle operators who are well known to have been actively developing alternative propulsion fuels for some time. Several omnibus companies and cor-parations have been conducting promising experiments with producer gas and with compressed town gas. All information about present activities, ie, since the war opened, is, however, denied to enquirers, who are informed that as the experiments are now under Government auspices, nothing can be said Road operators who are losing money as a result of petrol rationing, manufacturers of commercial vehicles whose patient experiments and development work are being ignored in this crisis, and the public which is queueing up in the rain for the bus which is always crowded—all are, naturally, impatient. The general view seems to be that if the Government has something good up its sleeve, then the sooner it took the public into its confidence the better.
Meanwhile, it is emphasized in interested business circles that there is a war on. Manufacturers state that they would be satisfied with that modicum of encouragement to which they always felt they were entitled in peacetime. Given that, they would be prepared to take the risk—not considered very grave—of having to compete eventually with the Government-sponsored masterpiece.
AE.C., one of the leading commercial vehicle producers which has been investigating producer gas equipment for years, points out that the Ministry of Transport's interest in the use of alternative fuels has so far been limited to the bare announcement that "no objections" will be raised to the operation of passenger vehicles drawing trailer-mounted equipment. Goods vehicles of six or eight wheels (maximum overall length) are not allowed by law to use a trailer.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.