T Register News
T Register email newsletter for January – and Captain Castor issue 9
The January T Register email Newsletter has now been sent out and the latest edition of Captain Castor has been published.
If you are a UK MG Car Club member and wish to receive the Newsletter, got to http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/newsletter/ and fill the form in at the bottom of the page.
You can see the latest issue of Captain Castor at http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/captain-castor-issue-no9/. Captain Castor has been out and about during the Christmas Holidays, sampling the delights of winter classic car meetings – well getting rather wet anyway …
T Register Rebuild Seminars 2017 are go
The T Register’s Rebuild Seminars’ date is now fixed for Saturday 25 March at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon and the programme is now taking shape.
You can see the latest list of topics and speakers on the 2017 Events page.
Changes in DVSA recording chassis numbers
Bill Silcock has told us that the DVSA recording system has been modified and now will not accept the ‘/‘ character as part of the chassis number, so on your MoT certificate your chassis number will appear without this character.
Further, the letters that sometimes appear after the chassis number (Bill’s chassis number includes ‘EXLU’ as the car was repatriated from the States) get lost, and he received a letter from DVSA asking for clarification because the chassis number recorded at the MoT testing station did not agree with that on the V5 document.
Bill contacted the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs’ DVSA liaison Officer and sorted the issue out, so the DVSA record for his car is now as it should be but without the ‘/‘.
If anyone else runs into a difficulty like this please let the T Register Secretary know so that we can help sort out the issue for you.
Changes to the T Register’s online Regalia shop
There have been changes to the online Regalia shopping cart system on the T Register’s website.
The system we have used for a number of years is now showing its age and Paypal (the system for payments) have changed a large number of parameters, and given the shopping system’s age, it is not worth updating it.
However the T Register is delighted to announce that a brand new online shop will be arriving soon. We have decided to utilise the main MG Car Club’s online shopping cart system but it will be late January before this is up and running. For the future, using this system will allow us to sell tickets online for T Register events, something which we are not able to do at present.
For now, the Regalia web pages are still up and running, but ordering items will give you a printout of your order for sending off to Barry Knight our Regalia Coordinator together with payment. Full details are on the Regalia pages.
We’ll keep you up to date with progress.
T Register 2017 events
A provisional list of T Register events for 2017 has now been published. Some of the information is sketchy at this stage, but they will be fleshed out when more information is known.
T Register News no 24 October 2016 and hard copy subscriptions for 2017
The T Register News for October is now available. It contains a full report of the Autumn Tour, a story from Will Handley from California on how his journey to the GoF in Redmond, Oregon and back involved numerous encounters with bush fires, and encouragement to join in forms of competition other than racing in your T Type.
If you wish to receive the T Register magazines as hard copy through the post in 2017, there is a subscription service for this at £12 pa including postage. There is an invoice an invoice to fill in and send off to the T Register Treasurer if you want this service.
There will continue to be no charge for downloading the magazine.
T Register email newsletter for November – and Captain Castor issue 7
The November T Register email Newsletter has now been sent out and the latest edition of Captain Castor has been published.
If you are a UK MG Car Club member and wish to receive the Newsletter, got to http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/newsletter/ and fill the form in at the bottom of the page.
You can see the latest issue of Captain Castor at http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/captain-castor-issue-no7/. Now that the chilly weather has arrived, Captain Castor has been giving advice on correct headgear for driving your open top T Type …
TD Press demonstrator is for sale
Fancy owning a piece of MG history? The TD #0351 Reg no FMO 265 which was used as a press demonstrator is for sale. It was owned by Tony Southwick in New Zealand who sadly passed away a short while ago. It was exported to New Zealand in 1994 and Tony bought it 2011.
This is the car with the first scuttle hoop and was road tested by Autocar in January 1950. It was also the car used for the filming on the trip to Val d’Isere for a Nuffield publicity film: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/safety-fast/query/safety+fast
the making of which described by Gordon Wilkins in a January 27th 1950 article for Autocar.
It acted as a camera car in that event driven by Wilkins (camera man Bernard Till) while its red sister car registered FMO266 was the one appearing in the film driven by Ian Appleyard and photographer Louis Klemantaski.
If you’re interested, contact Paul Walbran in New Zealand.
T Register email newsletter for September – and Captain Castor issue 5
The September T Register email Newsletter has now been sent out and the latest edition of Captain Castor has been published. For the latter, see the post below.
If you are an UK MG Car Club member and wish to receive the Newsletter, got to http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/newsletter/ and fill the form in at the bottom of the page.
You can see the latest issue of Captain Castor at http://www.mgcc.co.uk/t-register/captain-castor-issue-no5/. He’s been giving definitive answers on that knotty problem of just what was the origin …
In memory of Bill Weston
There is an obituary of Bill Weston published in the September issue of the T Register’s email Newsletter, and in the T Register’s news pages in September’s Safety Fast, written by Ron Gammons. James Thacker saw Ron’s article and wrote of his memory of Bill and the influence he had on him whilst he was a teenager. So here’s his memories.
I was very sorry to read in the T Type newsletter pages in this month’s Safety Fast! about the sad passing of Bill Weston.
I remember attending my very first MG Silverstone on 29th May 1965 in my TC HAB 397, chassis no 7124, together with my sister Gill with whom I shared the car. There was a 5 lap scratch race for TC, TD and HRG cars. W.J. (Bill Weston) won that T Type event having a close race just ahead of P. (Pete) Ross and I.D. (Ian) Matheson, all in TCs. These were very impressive full race TCs with cycle wings and unsilenced side exhausts. Others in the race included Paddy Willmer, Ron Gammons, Jim Pielow, Alan Scott, Roy Brading, Ken Cheeseman, P. Hollick, Roy Brading, Harry Whitehouse and others. They really captured my imagination, especially the really quick cars drifting round the old club circuit Woodcote corner with a suitably controlled application of opposite lock balancing the car on the throttle, and with the exhaust noise reverberating off the grandstands. A wonderful spectacle …
As the obituary stated, Bill competed in many other races at MG meetings, and on that day in 1965 he drove with equal enthusiasm and skill in two further 5 lap scratch races (placed 1st in the T Types, and 2nd in T Types and MGA 1500s with drum brakes and other cars); in a 10 lap handicap race (placed 5th); and a 30 minute high speed trial. In my mind he was clearly the driver of the day at the peak of his game and these short races on the old club circuit (lap times about 79 seconds for a T type) were enjoyed by a considerable crowd of spectators in the grandstands and elsewhere aided by an informative and enthusiastic commentator. A long way removed from today’s often long distance events on the GP circuit (lap times around two and a half to three minutes) some of which are just another round of a national championship for MGs and other makes, watched by only a mere small handful of spectators.
Bill Weston’s driving on that day clearly made a great impression on me as an 18 year old and within two years I had bought my cousin’s TF (my sister had since married and moved to Belfast) and I had begun competing in speed events in the first year of the T Register championship in 1967 for two years and then with various Sprites and Midgets from 1969 onwards in circuit racing – and I am now my 50th season of motorsport!
There was photo in Motor Sport Magazine of Bill Weston’ s TC while in the Shelsley paddock at around that time showing two different stick-on registration numbers on each of the TC rear wings. He wrote in to the magazine to say that one number was the TC number and the second one was the tow car number. A perfectly reasonable explanation. He added that the TC
had embarrassed quite a few more modern cars with its speed. I am not surprised.
As far as I can make out, 1965 looks as if it could have been Bill Weston’s last MG Silverstone as his name is missing from the following years together with quite a few of that era including Mattheson, Ross (appeared once more in 1967) etc, as many of this first generation of T racers were perhaps on the cusp of retiring just as the incoming post war baby boomers including Dave Clewley, Gerry Brown, Pete Cresswell, Paul Langdell, Glyn Giusti, Chris Jones, Nick Taylor, Neil Hoskison Keith Beningfield, David Spencer-Sline etc were just starting. Even though I had changed to Sprites/Midgets I always watched the T racing and it peaked in that fantastic race at Silverstone in the mid 70s which was likened in the Autosport report to a Formula Ford championship race with half a dozen cars driven by most of the above people, fighting for the lead for the entire race. I was watching on the inside of Woodcote just feet away from the apex and it is arguably the best motor race I have ever seen especially as I knew all the drivers well.
I attach a photo of our TF at Turnastone garage while my wife, Matty and I were in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire on Saturday evening 27th August 2016; (it is a long story but I sold the car in 1972 and bought it back in bits in 2005). It had been raining hard so it is a very rare photo of the hood being up. The forecourt pumps look as old as the car which was made in 1953. Note the ‘works’ JB number as the car was owned by the MG Car Company from Nov 1953 to July 1954 being a Police Demonstrator car. The Turnastone fuel pumps are still calibrated in gallons so perhaps now we are coming out of the EU the garage may possibly l be permitted to sell fuel in imperial measurements again …
James Thacker