1950s Family Transport

There were far, far fewer cars on the road in the 1950s.

Grandad had a Ford Prefect which he used for taking deliveries from his shop (see 1950s Shopping entry). He would take us up on the moors or sometimes to Blackpool on Tuesday afternoons, as Tuesday was Rochdale's half-day closing.

Dad worked in Manchester and used to take the bus there and back but that took ages, so he eventually bought himself a moped. Grandad Burke had at one time had a motorbike and sidecar and at his house there were a few mopeds - Cyclemasters.

The Cyclemaster was a very small engine in a round box which fitted to the rear wheel of an ordinary bicycle. It just about managed to keep you going on the flat, definitely made you go faster downhill and when you had to go uphill, you had to pedal a bit to help it out! In fact that pretty much describes most mopeds of the day.

Anyway I remember one day when I was about 6 that Dad was late home. Very late home. We had no telephone and neither did anyone else in the family. Mum was getting frantic thinking he had been knocked off the bike. Eventually she went down to the phone box and telephoned a neighbour of Grandad's and he came up and took us down to their house.

They couldn't find out anything from the police and he took us home again where we saw Dad, waiting at a bus stop - having realised that we must have gone to Nanna and Grandad's. His moped had broken down and he had had to push it home from Manchester, which had taken him the best part of 4 hours. That was the end of the moped!

When Frank got to 16 he bought a Raleigh Runabout moped, a Raleigh Whiz as we used to call them. Even then in 1971 it took it all it's time to reach 30 on a level road! Good fun, though I still have scars on my hand from falling off it after hitting a brick!

Anyway, after the moped breakdown incident, Dad came home a few days later beaming with pride, honking the horn of a "sit-up-and-beg" Ford Pop. The Ford Popular came in a glorious range of two colours - black or beige. His was black. The only photo that shows anything of it is this one, taken at Royton - this photo not only shows more of the car than exists anywhere else, but more of our house than exists on any other photo!

The Pop didn't have any indicators so Dad bought a kit and fitted them and they were so dim that a lorry driver once had hysterics when Dad signalled to turn left... Most older cars either had no indicators or had trafficators - a semaphore system where an orange pointer zipped up out of the side of the car to point to the direction you wanted to turn.

The Pop was followed by a more modern one, in white, with indicators! Again this is the only photo that exists and here Dad is proudly polishing it. The only two incidents I remember with this car are:

One - being at Grandma Burke's and some young teenager crashing into it on a scooter. Dad rushed out and the lad, who had been having a go on his mate's scooter, offered immediately to pay for any damage. The headlamp bezel - the ring of metal around the lens of the headlamp - was the only casualty and Dad took "ten bob", ten shillings or 50p for the damage. It was probably a good quarter of the lad's weekly wage at the time.

The second incident was when we were going on holiday to Great Yarmouth one year. The rain was horrendous and it was a feature of the way the windscreen wipers worked that the faster the car travelled, the slower the wipers moved. We ended up having to crawl along just so Dad could see where he was going.

This photo was taken a few years ago at a car rally. I asked the owner of a Ford Pop (like Dad's white one) if I could take a pic of the dashboard and he let me sit in it to do so. The little stalk on the top of the steering wheel hub is the indicator switch. The gear lever is long - they went directly into the gearbox instead of having linkages and so came from the floor under the dashboard. The speedo goes up to 80 miles per hour. The car doesn't...

Seat belts were not fitted as standard until the later 1960s and it didn't become compulsory to wear them until well into the 1970s. There were no airbags and steering columns were mostly rigid spears of metal. There was no drink-drive limit. It was against the law to drive whilst drunk - but have you ever met a person who was drunk who admitted they were?

Many drivers involved in a crash suffered chest injuries from the steering column. Cars were built from thicker metal and the bodywork of the car did not crumple to take the impact of a collision as much as today's cars do. Dad liked his Fords and went on to have Cortinas and Zephyrs in the later 1960s and into the 70s. But that's for another day!

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Ford Mondeo Mk IV

At last! I managed to get my hands on one of the new Mondeos from Ford this week. First time I've managed to drive a James Bond car - Daniel Craig drives one near the beginning of Casino Royale!

My own car is a MkIII Mondeo and I had a MkI for years - it had done 195,000 miles by the time I swapped it in!

So how did I find the MkIV? I was quite taken with it actually, although I did have a couple of niggles. For one, it felt cramped inside! Now that, I think, is only due to the fact that it had bucket seats whereas mine has fairly flat seats and the new ones, shaped more are wider. What it means is that if you want to adjust the driving seat to move it up and down (electronic) or to adjust how reclined it is (a manual knob) you can only do that by opening the door because there just isn't room to shove your hand down between the seat and side of the car to get at the controls.

But the model I had was full of features. The media player was a multi-CD player which took mp3 CDs. This meant I could have taken enough music to have driven right round the country without having to change a CD. The onboard computer has an easy to navigate screen between the speedometer and rev counter that allowed me to use controls on the steering wheel to select any track from any folder from any CD - or do the sensible thing and just start at track 1 on CD 1 and let it do its own thing!

The power outlet is set to the left hand side under the stereo unit and caused no problems with gear shifting and trapped fingers - definitely a point scored over Vauxhall's Insignia! The gear lever has a nice solid chunky feel to it and reverse now has a lift-ring before swinging the stick to the left and forward. The 6-speed box coupled with the 2 litre diesel engine was smooth and reliable, though an experimental quick start made me purse my lips at the delay before the engine started to rev - had I been trying to nip out into fast traffic I'd have been frightened at the lack of movement for a couple of seconds!

But I don't drive hard and fast much these days and definitely not at the beginning of December! As I drove out of Blackpool almost every lay-by had a small group of hopeful traffic cops, none of whom were in the slightest embarrassed at my stolen VCR never having been found and returned after all these years...

So once on the motorway I whipped it up to 70 and engaged the cruise control. As the speedo reached 70, my SatNav showed 67-68 which is not so bad. My own car shows 67 on the SatNav at 70 on the speedo and the VW Golf I had last week showed only a measley 64 mph!!! That's why so many people are driving about at 25 these days!

At 70 (or 68 depending on which you believe) the Mondeo is so smooth you think "Surely I'm only tootling along?" The clock goes all the way up to 160 and at 70 you believe the car would do it without any problem. Certainly the once or twice I dipped the pedal to go past someone doing a mile-an-hour less than me had the car leaping forward rewardingly. I nipped past them and let it slow back down to the cruise control - a very nice car to drive!

The cockpit had independant left and right temperature control. I set them in tandem and it kept me happily at a constant comfortable temperature whilst outside the temperature dipped and rose with the weather.

Had I had any passengers in the back seat, they even had face-level ventilation from the side strut between the front and rear doors.

I drove from Blackpool to Taunton on Tuesday, from Taunton to Brighton on Wednesday, from Brighton to Oxford last night and then back to Blackpool today. After starting with a full tank I just put in a coupe of gallons at Warwick services on the way back then filled up when I got home. I'd used 76.44 litres to do the entire trip of 720 miles and I make that almost 43 miles per gallon which isn't bad at all! Bear in mind I've driven on cruise control at 70 (or 68!) most of the time so I haven't been taxing the engine at all!

The petrol cap was a surprise - Ford have gone for a simple push from the outside and it will spring open. There is no unscrew cap inside, it has the new style spring-loaded flap that you push open with the nozzle from the pump. I presume that the petrol cap locks as you lock the car to avoid tampering. Locking was another of my niggles - the buttons on the key are not the small circular buttons that I have on my MkIII. They cover the entire width of the key and as you grip the key to pull it from the ignition - you lock the car. I did it every single time I took the key from the ignition. The first time I set the alarm off by opening the door. After that I learned to unlock the car after taking out the key! The actual key is a flat blade too, unlike my circular shaft with a broader end. The ignition slot can't be seen at night - no light shines on it and it was fiddly putting the key into the slot. I never thought there was anything wrong with keys dangling from the dashboard myself...

Other snippets? Locking the car swivels the wing mirrors inwards automatically which is a nice touch and this morning I got in a deep frozen car with thick ice on all windows - the heated windscreen and rear screen were clear in a short time and all side windows not long after.

The hire guys just came round to collect it. As I opened the door they started singing Christmas carols. I told them to bog off... I want to keep it...!

Fleetwood Tram Sunday 2009

Sunday 19 July 2009. Last Sunday we went up to Fleetwood to have a look at the cars, buses and trams at the annual transport event that is Fleetwood Tram Sunday.

Despite the name, trams take a back seat these days, if you'll forgive the pun! However one of the stars of the show was undoubtedly this - the newly restored Wild West Loco tram with trailer caboose, still in the original ABC Weekend Television livery. It had been a favourite sight during the Illuminations since the 1960s and has been sadly missed since it was withdrawn from service, badly in need of restoration. Now it's back and it looks just wonderful!

It was nice to stand watching the parade at 11:30 and take part in the huge round of applause that was given to the RNLI Lifeboat crew, who were pulling the lifeboat along Lord Street. Fleetwood, as a fishing town, has a deep respect for the sea and has lost too many sons to it over the years.

Congratulations too to the local Chinese community whose 2-man Chinese dragon made a colourful addition to the parade!

There was also a funeral jazz band with a leader inspired by the James Bond film Live and Let Die!

And so to the displays of vehicles. The first was a little unusual - a horse-drawn fire engine from the district of Fulwood in nearby Preston. It had a steam-powered pump and pressure mechanism.

The cab of a Leyland Atlantean double-decker bus. When first introduced in the late 1950s they were quite a novelty with the engine at the rear allowing the driver to occupy the same internal space as passengers. It was quickly realised that this would also allow for one-man-operation and was the start of the end of bus conductors.

The owner saw me taking the picture through the window and invited me onboard to get a better shot. Those tiny gear levers had a very distinctive clicking noise as gears were selected. Atlanteans remained in production from 1958 to 1986. Some would have stayed in operation for many years after that.

A classic Bedford lorry. The model was used for almost every conceivable body type from flatbeds to petrol tankers. I had thought this was the usual lorry that we are used to seeing at Fleetwood but a check back at last year's photos made me realise it was a different firm and registration.

A 1960s Hotchkiss lorry. The F registration denotes August 1967 to July 1968

This undeniable brute of a machine is a 1939 Scammell Pioneer. They were used extensively by the army during World War II, hauling gun and howitzer carriages and pulling tank transporters. Many of them were lost, left behind when the British Expeditionary Force converged on Dunkirk for evacuation. With a top speed of 24 miles per hour, the row of fuel cans suggests that they were a trifle thirsty when in use! Standard equipment included tracks that could be fitted over the two rear axles, turning the vehicle into a half track. They continued to be used by the army until the 1980s.

An old Austin London taxi cab. Taxicabs log up an incredible amount of miles during their working lives, so any that survive have only done so with a lot of love, sweat and maintenance!

Mind you, this particular one had travelled a few thousand miles just to get here!

An Albion Claymore lorry. They were built from 1954 to 1966, the original Abion company having been bought out by Leyland Motors in 1951. Albion had started out in Glasgow making cars from 1900 to 1915. From 1909 they concentrated on commercial vehicles, supplying many 3-ton trucks to the army during World War I, many of the surviving machines being converted to charabancs after the war. Albion also made several models of buses.

At the front is a Raleigh Runabout moped - dubbed by us when my brother, Frank, had one as a Raleigh "Whiz"! I had a go on it once and for several years afterwards sported a nice white scar on the palm of my hand after hitting a half brick that someone had left in the middle of the road...

A 1952 Triumph Renown. Made from 1949 to 1954, they were the last of the large Triumph saloons for a while, their place being taken by the Standard Vanguard as the Standard Motor Company had bought out the Triumph name and decided to use it only on sports cars such as the TR series. These were so successful that the Triumph name was brought back in 1959 for saloon cars with the launch of the Triumph Herald and it was the Standard name that was to die out first.

A Bullnose Morris Oxford. Built from 1913 to 1926 and named for the home city of William Morris, the Bullnose referred to the distinctive domed radiator. It doesn't look much like I would picture a bull's nose, but it had originally been decribed as a Bulletnose and you can see a bullet shape much easier than you can see the snotty bit of a male bovine...

So here are a couple of interiors... This is the 1950s Ford Prefect. The horn is in the centre of the steering wheel and the little white stub on top can be moved sideways either way to turn on the indicators which were ultra modern flashing lights rather than a semaphore arm coming out of the side of the car which had been common up until that time. The pull switch marked S is the starter. The ignition key (in the dashboard rather than the steering column) did not operate the starter motor until later and had only two positions - on and off. In winter it was still common to have a starter handle to manually stick it through the bumper into the engine and hand crank it to turn the engine to help it start.

The door handle is above the window winder - no electrically operated windows in those days - and the door handle is dangerously easy to catch by mistake, but at least the doors open outwards hinged at the front, not like the older stagecoach doors that opened at the front so that if opened by mistake the wind would catch them and depending on how fast you were going would either crease the metal involving costly repair, or snap the hinges so the door fell off altogether leading to a draughty ride and an even more costly repair! Note the separate handle to close the door which is a simple leather fob.

This is the early 1960s Wolseley 16/60 which was the first car certainly that I remember with an indicator stalk coming from the steering column. It had a neat little lamp with a green cover on the end of the stalk too, which flashed with the indicators as a reminder that they were on. The dashboard has a nice bit of (real!) walnut wood and the glove box has room for not only a pair of gloves (you'd be lucky to get those in some modern cars - why would you need shelves in a glove box for Heaven's sake???) but also a bottle of slightly soapy liquid and cloth, which was used frequently to wipe the inside of the windows to demist them. Heaters were not very strong as yet!

My Grandad had swapped his Ford Prefect for a Wolseley 15/50 and that in turn for the 16/60 like this. In fact apart from the engine size the only difference that I could see at my tender years (8 or 9 at the time) was that the 15/50 had been two-tone green and black whilst the later one was all black in colour! Happy memories of "helping" Grandad deliver the groceries from his shop. Before long the supermarkets would start to open and they had a devastating effect on his little shop, spelling also the end of personal service and forcing everyone to pick up and carry their own goods to the till! Now we have to operate the tills ourselves without discount, training or wages. I'm not sure how companies expect people to be able to pay for shopping once no one has a job because of automation...

This line-up of Rover cars from the P4 series brings this entry to an end. A 75, 95 and 110, these models were ridiculed in the early days for their short bonnets and long extended boot at the rear. The design would later become the norm for family saloon cars. They were undoubtedly high quality though, one magazine review considering that only Rolls Royce made finer cars. Whilst different models came and went during the 1949-1964 production run, these were more akin to the Mark-I, Mark-II designations of other manufacturers and the basic body design didn't change much.

Some experiments were undertaken with different power plants. A prototype was produced with a gas turbine engine in an open top P4 tourer body and can still be seen, designated JET 1, at the Science Museum in London.

Fleetwood Tram Sundays Index

Ford Zephyr MkIII

I've been uploading more photos to Flickr from the Fleetwood Tram Sunday event and reached this one of a superbly kept Ford Zephy 6 MkIII estate car.

Being working cars, estate cars tend not to remain in such good condition so I'd guess this is a fairly rare example.

It brought back some wonderful memories for me though because back in 1971, aged only 17, I bought a Ford Zephyr of my own.

This was a saloon model - a Zephyr 4. The number represented the number of cylinders - the Zephyr 6 had a six-cylinder engine whereas the Zephyr 4 had a 4-cylinder 1700cc engine.

Delving way back to those days, here's a photo of my Zephyr from a colour slide taken at Hollingworth Lake near Rochdale. It was in Lancashire then, it is now part of Greater Manchester, though I still think of it as Lancashire.

The main external difference between the Zephyr 4 and Zephyr 6 was that the front grill was divided for the Zephyr 6. On the Zephyr 4 it was a single wide grill. The top of the range Zodiac had twin headlights and the rear window struts were much narrower so it had better rear vision.

The Zephyr had a bench front seat that could easily fit three people and had a gear lever coming from the steering column with a handbrake lever coming from under the dashboard. It had style, it had class, it had rust. Eventually the rust around the suspension points under the bonnet got so bad that when closing the bonnet the hinges didn't so much close as they bent the metal they were attached to and sunk downwards. This meant that the front end of the bonnet would close ok but the rear end would finish up halfway up the windscreen. This was the reason I eventually had to get rid of it. It remained for many many years my favourite car of all time and still ranks up there. But perhaps two cars surpassed it in my affections. One is mentioned here and the other? Maybe that will have to wait for another day!

Fleetwood Tram Sunday 2008

Sunday 20 July 2008. The annual transport festival along Fleetwood's main street takes place so we go down for a mooch about and to drool over a few cars and other wheeled bits and bobs that jolt my memory.

Given the title of this entry, which is also the title of the event, I'd better have a photo of a tram here I suppose. However, seeing as I live in Blackpool, I can see the trams any day. What makes this day special for me are all the old cars, buses and lorries that make their way to Fleetwood for the event.

It's years since I've been to Fleetwood Tram Sunday. Usually it clashes with the band's gig at Croxteth in Liverpool, but this year for whatever reason Croxteth was a week earlier. The organisers at Fleetwood said their event is always the third Sunday in July so I've registered the band's interest in appearing next year if the two events don't coincide!

Three lorries from the same Kirkham firm, a 1937 ERF with three-way tipper, an early Ford dropside and a Thames Trader flatback. I love the added interest given on the two older lorries that the firm's telephone number was only two digits - "Kirkham 59"!

A 1955 AEC Mercury G4M flatback lorry. This could be either a MkI or a MKII as, unfortunately for me, AEC switched over from the MkI to the MkII in 1955. If anyone knows, please leave a comment. AEC were also bus manufacturers and the distinctive grill can be found on their buses from the same period.

A 1938 Bristol K5G with bodywork by Roe designed for working on low bridge routes and in the livery of the Keighley and West Yorkshire fleet. Was Ramsden's Yorkshire's most popular beer, I wonder?

An interior detail of the above Bristol K5G bus. The bell push at the rear platform was primarily for the conductor to operate, though if he or she was upstairs when you got up for your intended stop, it was usual for passengers to press the bell themselves. The customary signal was for one ding to stop the bus and the conductor would give two dings when it was safe for the driver to move away from the stop. On these buses, the driver was of course in a segregated cab and not in the same compartment as passengers. I found out recently that in certain parts of the country, the Isle of Man, the bell push is still the province of the conductor.

A 1964 Ford Consul Cortina MkI, first launched in 1962 and later during 1964 to have a slight facelift and drop the "Consul" part of its name. It was the first car to have front dashboard ventilation with vents in the rear window pillars allowing the air to leave the interior, drawing in fresh air at the front. My Dad had an early one and we gawped in wonder at the horn button which was on the end of the lights/indicators switch stalk from the steering column instead of the usual middle of the wheel placement.

A superb, if slightly garish, 1960s Vauxhall Velox. Alex Dyson's dad used to have one of these but I can't remember if it was this rather startling shade or not... Alex? Leave a comment? I always thought these were amongst the best looking of the UK's 1960s cars though, along with the MkIII Zephyr as used in TV's Z-Cars.

Wolseley 15/50. Grandad had a Wolseley just like this one but in two tone black/green with the colours separated by the chrome flash along the side of the car.

A Ford Cortina MkII on the left. It launched after a four-year run of the MkI in October 1966 and by 1967 was the most popular new car in Britain. Like its predecessor, it had a four year production run before the launch of the MkIII. It was the only one of the five Marks not to have been owned by my family, as Dad had a MkI and I had, in turn, a MkIV, MkIII, and MkV. My own favourite of them all would be the MkIII.

Another model that I had owned at one time - though my particular specimen was nowhere near as tidy looking as this one! The Triumph 1300 was what I considered a gentlemen's car, with walnut trim om the dashboard and a very smooth gear change that didn't want to be rushed! Launched in 1965 and in production until 1970 it replaced the earlier much-loved Triumph Herald.

The Humber Sceptre MKI was introduced in 1963 and had a relatively short production run with the MkII coming out in 1965. It was one of the top models within the Rootes range, competing with the likes of the Sunbeam Rapier.

In the days before the more convenient "Mk" or Mark system for Fords they had a much more unwieldy system of model numbers. This is a Ford Prefect - yes: not just a character in a radio seeries/book/TV series/film about interplanetary hitch-hikers... This is the Ford Prefect 100E which can be described as the equivalent of a MkIII, though variants were manufactured with slight differences in other countries such as Australia. This was the first more modern bonnet-interior-boot variant as the two previous designs had stagecoach boots with near-vertical hatches giving access to the luggage space. The Prefect had a stablemate as a cheaper option, known as the Ford Anglia which had the distinction of carrying on in its old form as the Ford Popular when its shape changed. Very strange idea...

A 1934 Wolseley Nine. It had a 1018cc engine and hydraulic brakes with wire-spoked wheels. It had a short production run, being upgraded as the Wolseley Wasp in 1935.

Ford's replacement for the Anglia was the Ford Escort. Launched in November 1967 it quickly became a very sought after car and by the time the MkII came out in 1975 it had sold over 2 million units. My Dad bought a black one in 1968, exasperated at his Zephyr 6 MKIV which had suffered a series of breakdowns. He bought the Escort brand new whilst on holiday and then on the way home it somehow dropped all of its gearbox oil and he sold it as quickly as possible when the dealer denied all responsibility.

A Seddon flatback wagon. The 1953 may be its year of manufacture or not... It looks reasonable but I stand ready to be corrected!

And finally, some good old-fashioned steam power! I've seen plenty of Sentinel steam wagons, but this is the first time I've seen a bus variant. It was kept busy giving bus rides along Fleetwood seafront during the day!

Fleetwood Tram Sundays Index