From Dodwell Motors and Gilman Motors to Metro-Dodwell and MD Motors 

Dodwell Motors Detail Image 2 York Lo

York Lo: From Dodwell Motors and Gilman Motors to Metro-Dodwell and MD Motors As a result of a series of acquisitions by the Inchcape group in the late 1960s, Metro Cars, the distributor of Austin automobiles covered earlier merged with Dodwell Motors and Gilman Motors to form Metro-Dodwell, the largest auto dealer in Hong Kong in the early 1970s. Below […]

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Metro Cars (新英華汽車) and Austin automobiles in HK (1953-1970)

Metro Cars, Austin Automobiles Detail Image 1 York Lo

York Lo: Metro Cars (新英華汽車) and Austin automobiles in HK (1953-1970) Left: Metro Cars building in Tsuen Wan in the 1960s; Right: ad for Austin’s A40 model in 1959 (WKYP, 1959-4-14)  Before the onslaught of Japanese automobiles in the 1970s, British cars dominated the roads of Hong Kong and Austin was a particularly popular brand in the 1950s and 1960s, represented […]

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Imperial Airways – including first scheduled flight into Hong Kong 1936

IDJ: Imperial Airways (Far East) Ltd Many people in Hong Kong have no concept of how airlines developed in the territory despite air services being their primary means of transport overseas. Airline services arrived late in Hong Kong relative to the rest of the world. Not until 1936, when the UK based Imperial Airways was slowly extending its routes from […]

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Dorabjee Naorojee Mithaiwala, baker, hotelier and founder of the first cross-harbour ferry service (later the Star Ferry Company)

Star Ferry, Golden Star, Commons Wikipedia

This article about Dorabjee Naorojee Mithaiwala was written by Sooni Shroff-Gander and first published in the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, edited by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn. The publisher, HK University Press, has kindly granted permission for it to be posted here, but retains copyright over this material from 2012. HF: Regrettably I have been unable to find any image of […]

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Yates and Thom, Blackburn, UK – Makers of the original Peak Tram engines

HF:  Yates and Thom, (formerly W and J Yates), 9 Canal Ironworks, Blackburn, UK, were makers of engines for mills, collieries and waterworks. And the original engine for the Peak Tram which was opened for public service on 28 May 1888. Construction had begun іn September 1885. Initially a static steam engine was used to power the haulage cable “built […]

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Chevalier R Pescio – Tunnelling the Peak – proposed tramway 1906-1910

Chevalier Pescio Map Article

HF:  Chavalier R Pescio was a man with vision. Especially when it came to trams and tunnels in Hong Kong. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 11 August 1909 contains this article which notes “rents in the Colony of Hongkong are abnormally so, more than in any part of the world in proportion to the accomodation offered”. Even then […]

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