Driverless Trucks, Cars, Railways, Roadworks, Gridlock, Grannies and Solar Flares.

Driverless cars have been in the news recently, with lots of hype from the politicians, though the actual reality might be more sobering, unless you need a stiff drink after riding in one.

Driverless trucks are also on the horizon, and if these follow the performance of Jeremy Clarkson's driverless car, they'll create carnage enough to turn the average Islamic terrorist green with envy.  We can expect massive mayhem before they get the bugs out. And since different truck makers are developing different systems, we can expect a different set of bugs in each range of vehicles. It's amazing what a simple punctuation error in a line of code can do (and that's before the hackers get in).

Nevertheless these vehicles will definitely come about,  because there's big money to be made, especially in trucking and taxi-driving, where the elimination of paid employees will massively increase profits (and could maybe be passed on as reduced costs to the consumer, perhaps, one day). So apart from death, mutilation, massive redundancies and a penny off supermarket yogurt, what other benefits will this transport revolution bring?  Let's take a look...

Coming of age.
Coming of age is traditionally marked by getting your driving license. But what happens when you can ride alone in a car from say age ten upwards? Is the school run going to get even more gridlocked as the school bus becomes becomes obsolete, with each student dropped off by an owned or hired car?  Will kids be able to take themselves off wherever they want  in the school holidays, like they used to do on bikes before cycling became a kamikaze pastime?

Liberated grannies.
Another increase in cars on the road can be expected from senior citizens who are unable to drive due to medical conditions.

Gridlock
So we will see a vast increase of cars on the road from sections of the population who would normally use public transport, or wouldn't travel at all.  A significant factor in this growth could be that cars need no longer be owned by the user.  Once the system is up and running, a few clicks on your smartphone should summon up a car to take you from anywhere to anywhere else.

Beeching rides again (but not by train)
Will driverless cars and trucks spell the end of the line for passenger and freight trains?

As far as non-car owning  passengers are concerned, traveling from one small town to another will become easier, more convenient and probably cheaper by hired car than by train. But city-to-city and small town to city may be another matter, if the tendency for cities to become gridlocked increases due more urban car use.

As for freight trains, removing drivers from trucks will considerably reduce road haulage costs, though it won't do anything for energy usage.   Rail transport has an intrinsic energy advantage over road because the rolling resistance of steel wheel on steel rail is a fraction of that for tire on road.  But this advantage only become economically significant for moving large loads over long distances - things like bulk iron ore, construction aggregates and transcontinental container runs. So don't expect the Trans-Siberian to go out of business anytime soon.  

Another place where freight railways will still be needed is in mountainous countries like Austria and Switzerland, who don't want any more trucks of any kind crossing their mountain passes, and compel through traffic to drive onto trains of flatcars and travel through Alpine base tunnels.  Nevertheless, in most countries with short and medium hauls, road freight will gain a competitive advantage over rail by going driverless.


Roadworks all the way
One of the results of transferring freight from rail to road (apart from adding to the gridlock) will be the hugely disproportionate damage to roads caused by the increased truckloads.  Damage to road surfaces increases as the fourth power of the axle weight!  - a fact that the road transport lobby is rather coy about (if trucks were made to pay their true cost of operation in road taxation then most heavy freight would probably still be traveling by rail.)

No parking
Town center car parks will be less used by commuters (if not by shoppers) as automatic cars set down their passengers and then move off to their next call.  Rush hours will be characterised by cars moving in and out of town in almost equal numbers, both morning and evening, probably adding to the gridlock. 

Suburban 'park-and-ride' schemes will become redundant for the same reason. Cars will come and go when they are called, from home to station and vice versa, and then disappear to do something else


Flaremaggedon
All this futuristic transport system will have at least one Achilles heel, in that it is all dependent on global positioning satellites.  A repeat of the Carrington Solar flare event of 1859 would probably knock the whole system out and bring the developed world's transport to a shuddering halt.

Victorian Christmas Card Makers themes 1

 

R.A.F. Coastal Command in World War II

Sunderland AX-R 202 Squadron Gibraltar

Catalina





On Patrol

Dad in Pilot's uniform

Training at Derby

Sunderland Crew

Sunderland Crew

Canada

Charlottetown, Canada

Dad came back, but many didn't...

Click for larger image

"Death was seldom swift in a violent encounter, but a lingering lonely end in a dinghy, expiring perhaps of thirst, or perhaps of exposure, or perhaps of injuries compounded with despair."

RAF Benevolent Fund



Royal British Legion

A Miner's Son's Childhood in 1920's Lancashire

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The little girl, Nellie Loveless, died from complications of whooping cough soon after this photograph was taken in 1923. The little boy, her brother Walter Loveless, survived the poverty and malnutrition of the twenties and went on to serve as an RAF pilot in WWII. He died in 2005.

Here is his account of his childhood in a Lancashire mining town in the 1920s.

"We lived at 65 Bolton Road, Atherton, which was a two up, two down house with a small scullery but no bath. There was a large cobbled communal back with two entries between six houses. There was a little pen and vegetable plot. Also Granddad kept hens and grew green vegetables.

I went to Bluebell Little Infants’ school. The headmistress was Miss Sambrook who was a staunch Tory and British Empire Loyalist. At election time people often wore colours of their party but Miss Sambrook would only allow blue ribbons into the school (Tory) and banned “those nasty yellow ribbons” (Labour).

There were no school meals or milk, but during the miners strike of 1926 I remember being supplied with a bowl of soup and chunk of bread after the strike had been going on for six months or so.

Dad used to go picking coal on Pretoria tip almost every day. During school holidays I remember taking sandwiches (bread and jam) and a pit can full of water for his dinner. The coal was for our own consumption, but on good days enough was picked to be able to sell some.

The miners were on strike for about twelve months and towards the end the TUC called out other unions in sympathy, mostly transport etc. This was the General Strike which only lasted about three weeks before it collapsed. The miners were on strike because their wages were being cut to below starvation level. Eventually they were forced to go back because of the terrible conditions existing after 12 months of privation. They went back on the reduced wages which had been offered originally and which had caused the strike.

There were occasional disturbances and Atherton was full of policemen who had been drafted into the town from non-mining areas. I cannot remember if there were any troops in Atherton, but the Home Secretary of the day Winston Churchill did mobilise the troops against the miners. My Dad, even during the 1939 – 1945 war, detested him and never forgave him.

It must be said that the Atherton mines, Seven Feet, Gibfield and Chanters were owned by Fletcher Burrows and Co Ltd. Both the Fletchers and Burrows families lived in Atherton and were caring employers, years and years ahead of the other mine owners. Accordingly, they found the odd week’s work for most miners in strict rotation. It was ‘made work' but nevertheless very useful. They had the miners working on the cricket and football fields, improving and enlarging them etc. So much so that they were both superb grounds and easily the best in the leagues in which the teams played.

They also levelled old pit tips and landscaped them (all done by pick and shovel), the most striking example being the ‘Top Field’ and the fields behind it. This is where Hesketh Fletcher School and the surrounding playing fields now are.

During the strike and after my mother took in washing and went cleaning for Dr Crawshaw. My job when I got a little older was to collect and deliver the washing. I also used to go door-to-door selling lettuce and celery etc grown by my granddad. The customers were mostly up Bolton Road.

My grandad and his brother sometime in the 1870s had walked and worked on the way from Dorset to find work in the pits. Although it was so long after the Tolpuddle Martyrs, anyone with the name Loveless was an outcast in Dorset and accordingly was unemployable, the only job being farm labourers. As a countryman, he had a wealth of knowledge about animals, herbs etc. His first job down the mine was looking after the pit ponies.

Regarding herbs, he used to make a special salve (ointment) from herbs. I can just remember him taking me round the fields collecting some of the ingredients. This salve was famous all over the district and people used to come to the door to buy it. It was mostly used for boils and abscesses. These were the scourge of people because of a completely inadequate diet. It seems that this salve drew out all the poisons and infection.

When the pits were working normally again in 1927 (though there was still short time working) my dad was offered a ‘Fletcher’s house’ by the mining company. Fletcher’s houses had been built by the company for sale to their employees. It was a small estate all on its own behind Bolton Road. Subsequently it was completely surrounded by council houses in the 1930’s. They were completely modern (by 1920’s standards) and had a bathroom, three bedrooms, two rooms downstairs, largish kitchen, pantry, front garden, back garden.. Adjoining the back door was a coalhouse and next to that an outside toilet. It cost 15 shillings per week which was stopped out of my dad’s wages. It was heaven. My granddad had come with us and had retired.

There were open fields in front which were used as playing fields (being council land) and at the back was the back field which was enclosed by the other houses on the estate. Having to pay this 15 shillings however proved to be a terrible burden later on.

In the meantime, I had gone to Bluebell Big School (now St Phillip’s) and ended up in Mrs Whittle’s class. It was a school which had a poor record and most of the pupils came from desperately poor families, many from the slums in the notorious valley. I don’t think there was a pupil in the school who wore shoes – everybody wore clogs.

It had never sent anyone to the Grammar School and Mrs Whittle was determined to rectify this. She decided that I had the potential together with a girl from another class, whose father was a foreman in a foundry. At this time my dad was a member of the W.E.A. (Workers’ Educational Association) and used to attend weekly lectures at the technical school on Monday nights. Mrs Whittle also attended these. She persuaded my dad that I should sit for the ‘Scholarship’.

Leigh Grammar School football team 1933. Walter is at the left of the second row.

It may not seem remarkable now, but for a pitman’s son to go the Grammar School was virtually unheard of then. They must have put their heads together, because when told that we could not afford this she found out that certain funds were available from the British Legion (my dad being a member after doing four years in the Great War).

Consequently I was given homework every night and my dad made sure that I did it. I did not want to go but had no alternative. I started at Leigh Grammar School in September 1928. The famous Depression started in 1929 and really got a grip in 1930, and hardly improved the whole time I was there. There were a lot of fee-paying scholars and they had to leave when they were 14. Regardless of the deprivations I had to keep going until I got the matriculation certificate.



During the 1920’s and up to about 1938 the working class people could not have existed but for the Co-operative Society. This period was its hey-day. There were two co-ops in the district - Leigh Friendly and Hindsford & Atherton. Between them they had eleven grocery shops, several draper’s shops, shoe shops, clothes shops, coal rounds, milk rounds and bread rounds. Nobody paid cash, everything was on the book and you were supposed to pay each weekend. This never happened, as you paid as much as possible and there was always something left on the book.

However there were four Quarter Days in a year when you had to pay up all outstanding amounts. From about twelve years old it became my job to go and pay each week, and eventually I started to dread Quarter Day because I had to tell them that we could not pay up, and ask could we carry something forward to the next quarter.

For every payment made you were given a ‘check’ with the amount on. These you stuck on to a special sheet. At the end of the quarter you added them all up and took them to be checked in order to get your dividend. Then on a set day known as ‘Divi Day’ you went along to collect it."

- Walter Loveless

After Wings Parade, Cranwell 1940
Walter is in the centre with pipe.

Wartime Telegrams - a Restricted Menu of Messages

Click images to enlarge.

During the World War Two the Telegraph Companies were faced with the problem of heavy traffic and very restricted bandwidth (submarine cables) . Consequently, servicemen and their families were given a restricted menu of messages which were converted into codes of three digits or fewer.

The first two images show the choice of messages, and the third the results as delivered.

Note the blue pencil through messages that cannot be sent concerning bereavement and war damage. This is presumably pre-emptive censorship.

Texts for EFM telegrams Western Union Telegraph Company

Replies cost 2s 6d per message, the equivalent of about £3 nowadays

Although the message range was restricted, the telegrams had still to be passed by the censor and the office of origin was often suppressed.