Broughtonlocal

No easy task getting fuel from vintage pump

Published at 11:38, Friday, 12 June 2009

OUR article on the vintage petrol pump preserve near to the present filling station in Broughton prompted Dalton’s David Mossop to get in touch.

SURVIVOR: The vintage petrol pump in Broughton

He used to live in Broughton and recalls that motorists used to fill up in the rather narrow Griffin Street.

There was a pump about half-way down the street outside a building which also used to sell bicycle parts.

Tankers pumped supplies of fuel through a cellar window.

The old pump which survives today, close to the CGP Pitstop, was not for public use but was the property of a local haulage firm and coal merchant in Station Yard called the Lowther Brothers.

Ex-Army Austin wagons were used for coal deliveries.

Mr Mossop used to work for them from 1965 and remember using the old pump.

He said: “It was nothing like those we are used to on garage forecourts today,

There were to sight glasses which could each hold a gallon of fuel. You had to prime it by hand and as petrol ran out of one full sight glass it filled the other.

This process was continued until you had the amount of required for your vehicle.”

It was also used by Lancashire County Council wagons and a local taxi firm.

He finished with Lowthers in 1978 but thinks use of the old pump had been phased out by then.

It had been maintained for many years by Arnold Diggle, of Swarthmoor.

Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk