Parnall
I am with Louis on this one - I have an irrational love of this machine (and the earlier models with controls on the front which have also been rescued by Darren) and have had since I first saw Keith's around 10 years ago and am so pleased to see it well on its way to full functionality again.
Its a shame that these machines were not more popular back in the day as they were about the same price as a better twin tub (like a Hoovermatic or Supertwin) and would have been a great deal less work to use. But Parnall always seemed to be a smaller scale manufacturer so probably did not have the manufacturing capacity - there was also a fully automatic version of this machine, although it was considerably more expensive - about on a par with the Hotpoint and Servis top loaders.
I believe Parnall to have been the only machine manufactured in the UK to have a suds saving capability, although they approached it rather differently to North America in that the hot suds were retained in the machine and the washes completed consecutively before moving on to rinsing and final spin. I imagine that most users would have rinsed the first load (at least the first rinse) in the sink while the second load was washing just to save time.
Louis, if Mike does not have a close up of the heater and timer controls I can do one for you at the weekend.
It is such a pleasure to welcome friends back for another weekend (although this was a "working" weekend rather than just a "knees-up" like we had back at Halloween) sharing knowledge, stories and generally enjoying each others company which is what it is all about. The only shame is that somehow the clock accelerates and what seemed like a nice long weekend is past in the blink of an eye.
And also so much fun having the Electrolux dishwasher back again, it got several runs over the weekend.
And don't I look ancient - OK, maybe I am - in that picture with Richard (with a smile like that he should be selling toothpaste not dishwashers!) - next time I think I will have to instigate a policy of prior veto before pictures get posted - "Oh that God the gift would gie us ....."
Al