The study of British and Irish roads - their construction, numbering, history, mapping, past and future official roads proposals and general roads musings.
There is a separate forum for Street Furniture (traffic lights, street lights, road signs etc).
Registered users get access to other forums including discussions about other forms of transport, driving, fantasy roads and wishlists, and roads quizzes.
RJDG14 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 17:47It would also be interesting to find out what pre-Volkswagen Skoda models were like. I found an old Top Gear report on the Favorit, which was their first car to be sold in the UK during the pre-VW era, and it actually looked like a decent no-thrills car despite having been made in Czechoslovakia. At one stage I believe there were jokes about how awful Skodas were but their communist era vehicles looked pretty decent when compared with East German Trabants.
You must know that, for years and years, the running joke about Skodas was that the back wheels would fall off? They only shed that reputation in the UK after VW took over, and even then the joke took a long time to die.
If they were tightly screwed on then I doubt they would have fallen off...
In the 1980's one of our clients was Skoda Praha (not the car company) and our contact had a Skoda Rapid and when he came to meetings in the UK or France he would drive from Prague. The Rapid was rear engined and rear wheel drive and was a nice little motor that looked modern, had a top speed of 95 mph and did 0-60 in around 15 seconds. Autocar described it as the poor mans Porsche. The suspension was pretty good too, ahead of many Fords at the time. They have become quite collectable.
Skoda as a company always had a good reputation when it came to engineering which is why the German corporations such as VW and Siemens snapped up Automotive and heavy industrial section and expanded them after the Velvet Revolution.
Thanks a lot for that . It gives a great view (despite being at VHS resolution) of how the road looked around Crawford (in the 1970s?). It appears to be from this video:
Are they installing the central barrier, because it looks as though this was filmed in the late 70s which was around the time it was installed, and there appears to be some kind of roadworks with a dirt strip dug out along the middle of the central reservation?
The road kind of reminds me of sections of the A66 that I've been along.
A72 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 04:45
Not quite an old picture, but a screen-grab from an episode of Weir's Way.
That sign doesn't look right to me. Is it real or was it just put there for the benefit of TV viewers?
I think it may have been real - there were a lot of slightly off-looking hand made road signs like this back in the 1960s and 1970s - they only became neater like they are now in the 1980s. It's also a blue bordered local sign and I suspect that had it been placed there for filming it would have been black bordered.
KeithW wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:27
Skoda as a company always had a good reputation when it came to engineering which is why the German corporations such as VW and Siemens snapped up Automotive and heavy industrial section and expanded them after the Velvet Revolution.
Skoda was a huge operation, the largest company in Czechoslovakia, and made all sorts. All the Soviet Union express electric locomotives on the Soviet railways were built by Skoda, since the 1940s. Their products were extensively used around the Socialist Bloc, and were always No 1 compared to others. They made a lot of military equipment as well.
Likewise the cars. If you were very senior in Poland, or the Soviet Union, you got a Skoda car instead of the national product.
They also made some station signs, making use of the fact that the Rail Alphabet typeface is similar enough to Transport (for people not that familiar with typefaces).
That and the fact that British Rail did use Transport a bit for some station signs in the 60s.
KeithW wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:27
Skoda as a company always had a good reputation when it came to engineering which is why the German corporations such as VW and Siemens snapped up Automotive and heavy industrial section and expanded them after the Velvet Revolution.
Skoda was a huge operation, the largest company in Czechoslovakia, and made all sorts. All the Soviet Union express electric locomotives on the Soviet railways were built by Skoda, since the 1940s. Their products were extensively used around the Socialist Bloc, and were always No 1 compared to others. They made a lot of military equipment as well.
Likewise the cars. If you were very senior in Poland, or the Soviet Union, you got a Skoda car instead of the national product.
Skoda were pretty much the equivalent of Armstrong in Britain. It was founded by Emil Škoda in the 19th century in what was then the province of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire and was a major weapons producer for the Austro Hungarian armed forces as well as producing locomotives, aircraft, ships, machine tools, steam turbines and equipment for power utilities and still does so.
The Germans seized the plants when they took over in 1939. They were shocked to find the new Czech tanks coming out of the Skoda works were better than their own Mk II Panzers and kept the line going using the redesignated Pz 35(t) and Pz 38(t) in the Battle of France, the Western Desert and the USSR. The Wehrmacht reported that the Czech tanks were much more reliable than those produced in Germany. A variant of this the Jagdpanzer 38(t) was till in production when the Soviets overran the factories.
RJDG14 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 17:47It would also be interesting to find out what pre-Volkswagen Skoda models were like. I found an old Top Gear report on the Favorit, which was their first car to be sold in the UK during the pre-VW era, and it actually looked like a decent no-thrills car despite having been made in Czechoslovakia. At one stage I believe there were jokes about how awful Skodas were but their communist era vehicles looked pretty decent when compared with East German Trabants.
You must know that, for years and years, the running joke about Skodas was that the back wheels would fall off? They only shed that reputation in the UK after VW took over, and even then the joke took a long time to die.
If they were tightly screwed on then I doubt they would have fallen off...
The reputation was still there though. Skodas used to be the butt of all sorts of well-known jokes ("What do you call a Skoda with a sunroof? A skip!" and so on). The thought was "Why?" whenever you saw one. I'm quite surprised that the brand was kept on with that reputation to deal with, and it makes it all the more impressive how it's been turned around and has pretty much lost all the stigma it once had.
Chris5156 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 03:34
You must know that, for years and years, the running joke about Skodas was that the back wheels would fall off? They only shed that reputation in the UK after VW took over, and even then the joke took a long time to die.
If they were tightly screwed on then I doubt they would have fallen off...
The reputation was still there though. Skodas used to be the butt of all sorts of well-known jokes ("What do you call a Skoda with a sunroof? A skip!" and so on). The thought was "Why?" whenever you saw one. I'm quite surprised that the brand was kept on with that reputation to deal with, and it makes it all the more impressive how it's been turned around and has pretty much lost all the stigma it once had.
Cars from Communist countries were always the butt of jokes - but some were quite robust, albeit not fashionable - having had a Fiat 124, the Lada version was much more robust using thicker, better steel.
IMO Skoda is now where VW was 2-3 decades ago, solid, unadventurous, mainstream - and causing a problem about where to position VW within the group.
I certainly remember people looking at Ladas in the same way (the Lada Riva was the only one I actually remember) but all the jokes seemed to be about Skodas - they were the representative stereotype so garnered the reputation.
Berk wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 20:59
A lot of them were made by the BBC for location shooting...
...and then perhaps kept there, since I've seen many that look like this one in old photos?
In the 1960s signs were made by hand using vinyl transfers and painted backgrounds. The result was they often looked "off". This will have been a proper sign. A television props department never gets the correct detail.
Bryn Terminally cynical, unimpressed, and nearly Middle Age already. She said life was like a motorway; dull, grey, and long.
Helvellyn wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2019 15:40
The reputation was still there though. Skodas used to be the butt of all sorts of well-known jokes ("What do you call a Skoda with a sunroof? A skip!" and so on). The thought was "Why?" whenever you saw one. I'm quite surprised that the brand was kept on with that reputation to deal with, and it makes it all the more impressive how it's been turned around and has pretty much lost all the stigma it once had.
Well there were some well documented examples on British made cars too and on the Allegro it was a bit more extreme than bolts not being tight enough as the wrong wheel bearings were fitted on some and the hubs failed.
The Triumph GT6 was prone to half shaft failure as it was using the old Triumph Spitfire article which really could not handle the torque from the 2 litre straight 6 engine and when that happened the entire assembly could come adrift. This is not an urban legend, I saw the aftermath or one such failure, locally it happened at low speed.
Berk wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 20:59
A lot of them were made by the BBC for location shooting...
...and then perhaps kept there, since I've seen many that look like this one in old photos?
In the 1960s signs were made by hand using vinyl transfers and painted backgrounds. The result was they often looked "off". This will have been a proper sign. A television props department never gets the correct detail.
This is what I guessed initially - there were many road signs in old photos taken in the 60s and 70s that looked kind of similar. Do you know when new signs became neater looking like they are today? They definitely had by the late 80s.
RJDG14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 20:24
Thanks a lot for that . It gives a great view (despite being at VHS resolution) of how the road looked around Crawford (in the 1970s?). It appears to be from this video:
Are they installing the central barrier, because it looks as though this was filmed in the late 70s which was around the time it was installed, and there appears to be some kind of roadworks with a dirt strip dug out along the middle of the central reservation?
The road kind of reminds me of sections of the A66 that I've been along.
Very likely as concerns were raised about the safety of the A74 and its lack of central barriers. It was a road that rapidly became unfit for purpose due to the large volume of fast moving vehicles and accidents waiting to happen such as at grade junctions and farm tracks.
First, the continuous central barrier reduces the severity of accidents and saves lives. Second, there is the issue of the bridge at Johnstone Bridge for pedestrians. School children have to cross the road here to get a bus, and this bridge was under consideration in 1973. In 1974 and 1975 I heard nothing more about it, although I appreciate that the junction has been upgraded to an extent.
Third, 30 schoolchildren join the bus for the short ride between Lockerbie and Ecclefechan. We shall have to consider additional lay-bys for school buses because the children have to get on and off at the farm road ends. Perhaps there could even be a recommendation from the Secretary of State for Scotland that school buses should be fitted with hazard warning lights when they are stationary so that passing traffic can see them more readily.
Fourth, I want to ask the Minister about underpasses. We have advocated these for many years. More recently, the local authority has conducted a safety and operational study of underpasses for dairy farmers who have to drive their herds across this dual carriageway twice a day and find it extremely hazardous. Indeed, on occasions they might have to cross the dual carriageway four times daily, going to and from milking. Two or three underpasses at the farms most specifically concerned would be very advantageous.
I bet that would have been interesting, traffic having to slow down and stop for cattle crossing the A74. Never encountered this in the eighties, so the underpasses must have been built.
Also on the M6 a few miles south of JCT 40, there is a footbridge, which is brilliantly lit, which I presume is used by farmers to transport their livestock over the motorways, and for hikers.
. It gives a great view (despite being at VHS resolution) of how the road looked around Crawford (in the 1970s?). It appears to be from this video:
