Batley Buggy Club - The Old Days
 

After calling down at Whitcliffe with my son last week, I tried to dig out an old photo from when I used to race at Batley (Indoor - Batley Sports Centre, Outdoor - Hare and Hounds Pub) back in the mid 80s. As luck would have it, I found a copy of a photo that was used in the local paper.

Anyone recognise any faces?

Looks like Hotshots were the order of the day back then (and one is mine!!!) Think this would have been approximately 1985.
I think a couple of the cars on picture are Boomerangs, but I don't really remember?

Once mine and my son's buggies are built I hope to be back with an eager 7 year old!!

Certainly some familiar faces, but struggling with names..!
The guy in the centre, long hair and beard is Tim. ? ..who's parents had the pub at West Ardsley. where Batley had their first outdoor track..

That sounds about right - I remember racing at the Hare and Hounds but couldn't remember why it was there!!

I know a few of the younger faces - (well, 3 including me!!) and recognise some others, but with no real recollection of who they are!!
We seemed to have won a lot of trophies though :thumbsup:

Good Old Days , Trophys for first three in each final . And a trophy for concourse Best looking car [ paint job ] for those too young to remember. Concourse at the Spring Cup ??????? :)

Black and white photo doesn't do it justice, but I'd bet my grey sleevless sweater over a pink layer would win concourse every time. Oh, hang on, for the car...
Think it went to Robert Marshall's Road Runner motif he hand painted on his model that year

Rob Marshall..! now there's a blast from the past....he was a very good driver, wasn't he very involved with York club when they had a track at Sutton in Forest..? Are the Foster brothers on there as well..? Their father, Mike Foster, was instrumental in the first computer timing systems.. helped us set up a similar system at Aire Valley..

Just a fraction before my time this I think, I would have started (with a Hotshot) in about 1986.
It was Tim Fountain who's parents ran the Hare and Hounds pub :)

Rob Marshall was the son of Carol Diggens who ran race control at Batley for a good number of years.

Mike Foster was Chairman of the club when we started in 1988 and one of his sons 'Miles' was racing at that time.

Mike had written the program for a Spectrum computer for the club - 8 car heats with 12 heats maximum. Those were the days when we had to queue as a non-member until memberships became available. Members were booked in first and any places available could be taken by non-members (who had to queue to get in). I remember one day that only 6 non-members got in and the rest were turned away from a club meeting. I also remember a meeting when Dave Grunhill from the Castleford club was not a happy chappy because he was turned away.

When we first started - we ran with a coloured flag on the aerial to indicate which crystal we were using and all the counting was done by pressing the numbers manually on the computer as a car passed race control!

How times have changed - not sure it has always been for the better!!

I remember the flags for crystal colour and I'd completely forgotten about the spectrum PC. It used to have a strip of coloured sticky tape across the keyboard where each flag was logged as it passed by pressing the silly little rubber buttons :lol:
I also remember the little silver printer paper that used to look like till roll that had the race results pinned up on the wall

Is the lad second from right Jez Horne?

Before Mike got the Spectrum program we used to score using a sheet of paper with coloured dots on for the cars and ticked each car, by flag colour, as it went past...! Five minutes on a stopwatch..! No split times, tenths of seconds then..
Originally , heats could only be 6 cars, the 6 solid crystals. , until "split" crystals arrived and then it was limited to 8 cars, mainly because of manual scoring.
We also turned away non members after 80 drivers had booked in ( ten heats of eight cars ) and that was a normal Sunday club meeting..!
Those were the days when youngsters didn't have many other toys..! Certainly before computer games, which did a lot of damage to RC..
happy days...:) :)

yup thats me!the dude onleft is marcus foster.one of the young kids with blond hair is elliott horn.the kid in middle has a resemblance to robert gammon,but not too sure.

The young chap with the black Hornet is Anthony Stott and the gormless looking chap next to Tim (holding Hotshot 6) is me (Chris Wilding)