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For some time I have had the thought of
producing a booklet like this, for I think we have a story
to tell. Like many large companies we began in a small
way, and in Thomson's we are proud of our humble beginnings.
My father was only 24 when he set up
business not far from Carron, near Falkirk in 1908. When
he died in 1963, the country joiner's shop had grown into
a considerable industrial plant and since then it has trebled
in size.
Though now a public company-and happy
that many of our shareholders ore also T-Line caravan owners-we
are still in many ways a family concern. One or two of
our staff worked with my father in the early days, others
are second and third generation Thomson people.
The British caravan industry is concentrated
mainly along the eastern seaboard of England . We are the
only one of our kind in Scotland , something of an outpost.
But we do not feel isolated, for our products are just
as well-known south of the Border and in many foreign ports.
Manufacturing caravans is rather different
from making many other things. They are not just production
units. Whenever I see a T-Line family heading for coast
or country, I share their joy in a carefree holiday. It
makes my business a great pleasure.
DAVID THOMSON
Chairman, Thomson T-Line Caravans Ltd
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THE T-LINE threads its way back to 1908,
when Daniel Ferguson Thomson set up shop as a country joiner
and Cartwright in a small hut at the back of Skaithmuir Mill,
only a short walk from the present headquarters of the
Thomson Group at Carron.
On the other side of the mill was an old smiddy, and Daniel did everything
from work on the farms to boarding round the kitchen sink, from making
coffins to repairing roundabouts and helter-skelters.
It was meeting the fairground folk that drew him into the caravan business,
first repairing them, then making them. These living vans were massive,
elaborate affairs, solidly built of timber with lantern roof and end
door. One is said to have carried a piano.
Sandy Miller, who joined Daniel Thomson in 1914, recalls, "They had half-inch
mahogany panels, all hand-dressed, lots of carving and other decoration.
With four or five of us helping the boss, it took three months to make
a showman's caravan." Their only resemblance to a modern trailer was
that they moved around on wheels-behind horses buckling at the knees.
But there was light relief in the making of genuine gipsy wagons with
hooped canvas roofs, used by the commercial travellers of the day, known
less glamorously as hawkers.
Just after the 1914-18 war Daniel Thomson was making Model "T" Ford van
bodies for local grocers and butchers, and he designed caravan bodies
to mount on lorry chassis.
These early motor caravans were great hulking affairs that lumbered along
at ten miles an hour and frequently broke down. Like the horse-drawn
trailer, they died out about the mid twenties to reappear 30 years later.
Some early caravans had wooden chassis, until Daniel Thomson devised
his own in steel, buying lengths of angle iron which he bolted together
in "Y" form. To the chassis he fitted eliptic springs and the front axle
and wheels of a car.
The tow hitch was pin and eye, the Brockhouse ball-and-socket coupling
did not come until 1932, and as Sandy Miller recalls: "They used to rattle
something terrible, until Mr. Thomson fitted a strip of leather to keep
them from chattering." |
| T-line Story Index - Next
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| Reproduced from a 1970 publication by Thomson T-Line Caravans
Ltd called The "T-Line Story" |
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