Vintage truck
 

No idea what this is, but I liked it, note the three digit phone number!

It looks like an old Ford.

Can anyone really remember answering a phone with three figures! Iver 137:bounce:

That oval badge looks like a Ford to me. The 3 digit telephone, we used to be Menston 100, then a further digit 4100, then finally it got to 874100. First one, operator connected, last one, with the area code, dial from anywhere in the country. Add 044, dial from anywhere in the Galaxy (slight exaggeration).
It is so easy to forget that after STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) you could stop panicking that your money was draining away.

Menston 120 was a personal number , Menston 100 was The Doctor (Dad).

Think we are correct Farmer John, look at the data board through windshield.

Thank goodness we aren't detectives, we could miss something. I wouldn't mind that old truck.

I have an old Guide book to my home town published in 1906. In it there's an ad for a hotel and this is interesting because of the 2 digit telephone number :eek:

The hotel still exists, but I suspect the number has a tad few more digits in it these days … :sweat:

Steve,

Yes I certainly can - Blunham 298 - a small village in Bedfordshire were I spent a lot of my fomative
years. That was the Rectory. Also Blunham 238 which was friends number and their garage business, in a nearby village of Tempsford. That is a village with a lot of history. The aerodrome was used by the Dambusters/for a time and also where they flew the Lysanders from with the SOE ops. Used to be a TV programme - Moonstrike based on Tempsford. Famous pub the Wheatsheaf - one of my locals - where many famous racing drivers used to meet. Hawthorn,Bueb,Archey Scott Brown, Ron Flockhart and many many more. Still there but A1 no longer runs past the pub.
Showing my age now.
Met up with old school pal recently in Los Angeles and he reminded me we had known each other for 61 years.

Neville

Lot of History there Hawkey, I drive up the A1 regularly to RAF Cranwell to meet friends, if only that Road could talk about whats its seen over the years.

On talking pictures last night there was an old British Film about truck drivers called: "Hell Drivers."

Made in 1957 (I was 10 when I first saw it) it looks very dated and corny now, but what a cast !! Many of whom went on to become household names:
Stanley Baker (playing the hero, usually played bad guys.)
Herbert Lom (The Human Jungle, went on to become the long suffering Inspector Dreyfus.)
Patrick McGoohan (Danger Man, The Prisoner and a host of other parts.)
William Hartnell (Carry on Sergeant, The Army Game, the first Dr Who.)
Sid James (Nuff said.)
Jill Ireland ( drop dead beautiful, lots of films with her second husband, Charles Bronson.)
Alfie Bass (character actor in many films, also The Army Game and Bootsie and Snudge.)
Gordon Jackson (Upstairs Downstairs, The Professionals and many more.)
David McCallum (one of the Men from UNCLE.)
Sean Connery (Nuff said.)

I kind of like watching those old Brit films just see the vehicles and streets of those days. :bounce:

#10 - Hell Drivers.


I love the way that the 'fast driving' sequences are obviously just speeded up film.

The trucks in the film incidentally were Dodge 100 Kew which, as the name suggests, were built by Dodge at their Kew factory for the British market.

Yes that was a bit on the obvious side … (or course the laws of physics might have been different back then … I mean come on, drainpipe trousers were popular … :big_tongue:)

I agree Bob, good old monochrome British entertainment. I too enjoy seeing the old films, but always wonder what happened to the actors featured at the end of the cast list under the heading "And introducing xxx...…" You hardly ever see them again!

One well known British character actor who appeared in many war films was Victor Maddern who was a near neighbour to my family in the years around the time I was born in 1951.

Bits of the old A1 that have been bypassed still exist, often with a name board declaring that it is the "Great North Road."

Remember Hell Drivers, my mates and I thought it was neat. We watched it in the local town hall, our so called theatre. On the subject of phone numbers, my Grandmas was Stromness 276. Now I have to write it down to remember it all. John L.

In 1957 when we moved from Gravesend, with the number 5678, to the village of Higham, our phone No. was Shorne 471. Later it was upgraded to 2471. Taking ship movement messages for my Dad, they will stick in my memory forever.


JJ.

On the subject of short phone numbers;


The Purbeck quarries number was Wareham 2.
One of the managers at Portland quarries regularly called the number, via an operator of course, with the words: "Wareham 2, do you?" - A new operator would answer "Do I what?" - Reply: "Wear 'em too."

I can just imagine Alexander Graham Bell complaining "All these bloody numbers, it's a new one to remember every time, I meet someone"

Skoda Fire Engine
 

Skoda Fire Engine of 1930
Prague Technical Museum
13 July 2017

Smekal Fire Engine 1914
 

Smekal Fire Engine of 1914
Prague Technical Museum
13 July 2017

Shand Mason Fire Engine 1882
 

Shand Mason Fire Engine of 1882
Prague Technical Museum
13 July 2017

That looks like a fixed branch pipe nozzle beneath the driver's seat.
I wonder how that worked in that position..

To be honest it looks a bit kinky to me … but sh1t, I am a child of the 50's and 60's … :big_tongue:

'Almost certainly' for hosing the horses.:brain:

Looks like that -- would help keep them cool if parked close to a conflagration, assuming they were lined up with the cart that is and not turned off to the side.

Better than a beaded seat? Looks very uncomfortable.

Ancient Buick
 

Vintage Buick outside the General Motors Office at Fishermens Bend, Melbourne.
I don't know if it was originally built like that or whether it is a restoration conversion.
I don't fancy those tyres in the wet or the dry.:bye:

Not that this answers the above question, but my parents had a 1935 straight eight Buick sedan the body for which was built at Holden's Body Works in Adelaide (I think) but no idea whether the chassis and engine were built in the US or not.

[QUOTE=YM-Mundrabilla;16481.
I don't fancy those tyres in the wet or the dry.:bye:

.[/QUOTE]



Those type of tyres handled snow conditions much better than modern ones, their thin profile allowed them to cut through the snow and find hard surface, modern wide profile (tread) tyres fitted as standard from new cannot do that; you have to have winter tyres to handle deep snow. Living and driving in hilly Yorkshire (in the past) snow never stopped us


Just look at some old films and see how cars of the 1920's coped, nothing seemed to stop them (except perhaps water in the carb)


Just as an aside I keep a set of 'Snow Socks' for my wheels in winter when needed, made of some material designed in Sweden, so easy to put on and take off, no messing with chains. When your done you can put them in the washing machine and store them in the spare wheel well when dry, allowed me to go in a front wheel drive car where 4 x 4 were struggling, they also work in the sand

Personal experience from around 50 years ago - Those skinny tyres on large rims tend not to aquaplane but just cut though water on flooded roads, leaving the contemporary cars of that time floundering with their 'newer wider better' tyres on smaller diameter rims.

Buick were the first engine manufacturer to produce an overhead valve engine for use in a motor vehicle. All other engines were side valve designs. Buick marketed their famous straight eight engines as "valve in head." The valves had very small heads themselves, and some people called the engines "nail in head." The straight eight was a very smooth running engine, and was in production well into the late 1950's when Buick changed to the V8 configuration.

I got studs on medium broad tires and four wheel drive, that is the only way to reach our house in parts of the winter. And with dry powder-snow on really cold slick ice that will not do either.

The old 2CV was brilliant in snow, thin tyres cut through, low power doesn't spin the wheels.

Going by the rear side doors, this one was a conversion, I'd think. Probably converted from a Phaeton bodied Buick of the early 1930s.


JJ.

A common conversion was quite brutal, chop the back off a big powerful saloon and stick a crane on to make a tow truck, I saw one Sunbeam, the doors were upholstered in reptile skin of considerable opulence. Another thing I saw a lot of was pretty well any old car with the output from the gear box fed to another gearbox to pull mowers etc for agricultural purposes. Not quite sure of the details, there was a man called Sonny Parker who did them, the garth at his farm was full of old cars.

Maybe that is true in your place, or in the Netherlands or Denmark. Living in a country where horizontal roads are mostly fantasy, then unless you have got a differential lock (or whatever you call it in English) you will the moment one of the drive wheels spins - which will happen in every tight corner uphill - be driving a one-wheel-drive car. And in that situation on a steep hill, having the thin wheels of a 2CV or a VW Beetle, or whatever, just means less traction. If you want to drive off-road in snow, very wide rubber belts on a set of drive wheels, and skis on the steering wheels may be the best thing. With snow of any normal height here you would not get anywhere at all off the road in a 2CV. The way to get up the steep hills in an ordinary car is to keep your speed - and how do you keep your speed up in a 2CV - by turning the engine off and pushing it? But the first thing you want in Winter Norway, is a car so balanced that it lets go on all 4 wheels at the same time, that unheralded feature of the Volvo may save your life ove and over.

It was pretty flat round Shrewsbury (probably still is).

When we cleared out my late parents house there was a 'clutch' of valves tied up with string hanging on a hook in the garage. I don't know if they were inlet or exhaust or a mixture but there were not 16 in total. I reckon that the valves were about 35 mm across the face but it was a long time ago.

The overhead valve was probably good if you could keep the oil up to the rocker arm. For a long time dad could not. I don't know if it was the oil pump that was crook or the rocker bearings sloppy but the car ended its life minus the rocker cover and a big oil can inside on the floor. This would have been back in the late 1940s/very early 1950s.

The more things change the more they stay the same - we had a 2000 Holden Barina (a straight Opel from Spain I think) it screwed up the OH cam due to insufficient lubrication too. Bastard of a car - nearly as bad a our son's Volkswagen Polo. :mad::really_mad:

Believe it or not here in the British Isles we have quite a few roads which are not horizontal, it is also against the law to use studded tyres, winter tread tyres are okay. Where-as when working in Switzerland it was compulsory to fit winter or studded tyres from October to March, but that was nearly 50 years ago, most people kept two sets of wheels but things may have changed. Here in the UK we have far more vehicles than Norway, a larger population, more flats/apartment blocks with no facilities for keeping a spare set of tyres/wheels, we would all like motoring utopia, but alas it ain't going to happen, we learn to live with what the law and physical restrictions allow. :mad:

Correct, John!


JJ.