Vintage World
A marvellous roller find in Morocco
When he went on a holiday with Arena Tours, Phil Jervis perhaps did not expect to come across a couple of very rare steam rollers in Morocco. The group had travelled to Spain by rail, including a change of gauge at the Spanish border on the modern slidingaxle rolling stock and thence by ferry to Tangier.
A couple of hours coach drive from Tangier, Phil persuaded the tour manager to stop for a short while whilst he photographed a couple of steam rollers he’d spotted at the side of the road about a mile outside the little ‘blue-painted’ town of Chefchaouen at the foot of the Rif Valley. Having seen them from the coach when he approached, camera in hand, he was delighted to see the manufacturer’s name of T Green of Leeds on one of the plates – coincidentally, very close to his home town of Wakefield in Yorkshire.
The group later went on by train to Casablanca and Marrakech before flying home from the latter place.
Phil later in 2003 – their identities having been established at that time from the Green’s company records as being Nos 2084 and 2086 of May 1923. They were part of a batch of thirteen imported into Spain by Casa Metzger SA at that time but these two specifically were destined for Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa which, of course, is on the south side of the Strait of Gibraltar. In that respect, Ceuta is rather like the relationship of Gibraltar to Great Britain on the north side.
