Rusting wartime vehicles saved from scrapyard by Bradford military history enthusiast

The collection of five wagons and two trailers were spotted by Stuart Wright, who organises the annual Yorkshire Wartime Experience event in Hunsworth, near Cleckheaton, every summer.

As the yard was being sold to make way for a new car dealership, its owner donated the items, which also included a 40ft container with unused engine parts still packaged from the Second World War, to be restored.

Mr Wright initially visited the scrapyard after seeing one of the vehicles for sale online.

"Military history has been a hobby of mine since I was nine years old, so I just went along to have a look at the vehicle and see if it was worth restoring," he said.

"I couldn't believe what was there."

The group of vehicles at the site included a Fordson Wot 6, a Second World War shop wagon, a Canadian Ford, and three British-made Bedford wagons, a trooper, a radio truck, and a tipper.

The container included spare engines, and parts such as doors, grills, wings and lights.

"Finds like this are so rare, it's almost unheard of," said Mr Wright.

"The container had parts still in their grease paper, 70 years old but essentially brand-new, which is amazing.

"It would have been a crying shame if all those vehicles had been lost.

"They will take a lot of hard work and effort to restore, but all the parts are there."

One of the trailers, a Coventry Climax trailer used as a firepump during the war, is being donated to Aeroventure in Doncaster, home to the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, where it is set to form part of its Home Guard exhibition.

Mr Wright said the other, a 1944 lubrication trailer, may be the only kind of that type left anywhere in the world.

The Bedford tipper, the body of which was actually said to be made in Bradford, has already been bought by a local collector to be restored, and interest in some of the other parts has come from as far afield as Finland, Malta, and Denmark.

Although he thinks it will take "at least two or three years" for the salvageable wagons and trailers to be fully restored, Mr Wright said he hoped some might figure in the Yorkshire Wartime Experience event, which featured a display of more than 400 military vehicles in July this year, at some point in the future.

"Purely and simply, the vehicles were too good to scrap," he said.

"They needed saving and the chance to be given another life.

"The whole point of this was to save the vehicles and give them a new home.

"Most can be restored, and the spare parts can go to people who already own these type of vehicles to allow them to stay on the road.

"If we can use the engines to get two more Bedfords back on the road, then that's great.

"It's about restoring these vehicles for future generations to see."

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