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Things you don’t see outside any more

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Welly

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I think there were several reasons for the decline of UK trolleybuses.
1. Many local authorities used to generate their owm electricity. Costs increased when they had to buy electricity from the former CEGB.
2. Car parking was making it increasingly difficult for trolleybuses to overtake badly parked vehicles.
3. It was expensive to reroute trolleybuses when councils wanted to introduce one way roads & other traffic mismanagement schemes.
As often happens, great god motor car was considered more important than pollution or inconvenience to public transport users.
May I add that the Stalybridge trolleybuses did not have any form of heating at all so in winter the passengers preferred the diesel buses!
 
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Western 52

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I've not seen any of those stick on plastic car sun visors with people's names on them for years. They seemed common in the 80s.
 

birchesgreen

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I've not seen any of those stick on plastic car sun visors with people's names on them for years. They seemed common in the 80s.

I've often fancied getting one, with "BARRY" and "TRACY" on it (not our names). Luckily i have never become that drunk to actually go through with it...
 

Altrincham

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Things you don’t see outside (or anywhere else) anymore are these little fellas…

A6687F2D-7088-41BF-BFFC-5AF4D456D30E.jpeg
 

Altrincham

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Oh wow, that brings back memories! I've often thought that Gordon Murray modelled the figure winding up the credits on Camberwick Green on these wee fellas...
Absolutely, yes. The winding of the blackboard before the music box started.

To this day, I still look out for one of these whirligigs at garden centres. The others of these that I remember are the wood-cutter and the golfer.
 

RSimons

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On my last couple of visits back to the UK (from Canada) I was struck by the absence of 'Stop' signs on the roads. Here it is 'Yield' signs that are almost completely missing.

For the grandchildren, I am writing a description of things that I remember from my childhood - things like dentifrice, clockwork toys and those little pennants people plastered all over their car windows to show off where they had been.
 

Gloster

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Which reminds me of those little shield-shaped patches that you sewed on to clothing such as windcheaters or on duffel bags (that is another) to show where you had been.

In addition to duffel bags there were those plastic bags with the names of you favourite First Division football team printed on them.
 

D6968

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For the grandchildren, I am writing a description of things that I remember from my childhood - things like dentifrice, clockwork toys and those little pennants people plastered all over their car windows to show off where they had been.
Class 31’s 162 and 271 have car stickers in their engine room windows proudly displaying what heritage railways they’ve worked at. It’s an impressive list!
 

Gostav

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I think there were several reasons for the decline of UK trolleybuses.
1. Many local authorities used to generate their owm electricity. Costs increased when they had to buy electricity from the former CEGB.
2. Car parking was making it increasingly difficult for trolleybuses to overtake badly parked vehicles.
3. It was expensive to reroute trolleybuses when councils wanted to introduce one way roads & other traffic mismanagement schemes.
As often happens, great god motor car was considered more important than pollution or inconvenience to public transport users.
For former socialist countries, the advantage of trolleybus is that it doesn't need fuel, which is an important strategic resource. I don't think the UK need to worry about that.
May I add that the Stalybridge trolleybuses did not have any form of heating at all so in winter the passengers preferred the diesel buses!
Another interesting thing is which year Britain no longer had petrol bus? As far as I know, some Russia had petrol buses until 1990s and China had a lot of petrol buses until 2000s. Also due to poor power of petrol engine (126hp or even 100hp for a 14m articulated bus!), trolleybus had more advantages in terms of acceleration.
 
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Steddenm

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Ionica Telecom microwave receivers that were octagonal on people's homes.

Although saying that I've seen some new build houses in Countesthorpe in Leicestershire which have a lookalike receiver. Anyone know what these are for?
 

ATW Alex 101

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Maybe not so much a bad thing but one thing we don’t see too much of these days is the “boy-racer” scene, think “Max Power”.

Around 2005-2006 it was quite common to see cars such as the Vauxhall Nova and Citroen Saxo etc. That had been done up with racing stripes, loud exhaust and a body kit and they would just be cruising around with thumping music blasting out of a subwoofer that filled the boot space. Often they would meet in supermarket car parks at night.

Nowadays, it seems any young lad with a job and a wage goes straight for a powerful German car what with more availability of finance and HPI etc. coupled with the fact insurance for such cars is generally not much more than a standard 1-1.2 litre car. If there is any music being played in these cars its often something rubbish like Ed Shereen or other generic (not so) popular music.
 

Foxhunter

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Another useful one would be: "Let passengers get off before you get on!"

Used to be that anyone wanting to get off at the next stop was standing in the aisle by the door / platform when the bus arrived at the stop. Nowadays, when boarding, you're never quite sure if, after stopping, someone upstairs takes this as their cue to leave their seat to get off. (Not complaining, this is clearly safer, but slower, and can lead to unintentional boarding before everyone has got off). I'm not clear on when or why this change of behaviour took place, there was a long gap in my bus usage between youth and, er, seniority.
 

Killingworth

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Used to be that anyone wanting to get off at the next stop was standing in the aisle by the door / platform when the bus arrived at the stop. Nowadays, when boarding, you're never quite sure if, after stopping, someone upstairs takes this as their cue to leave their seat to get off. (Not complaining, this is clearly safer, but slower, and can lead to unintentional boarding before everyone has got off). I'm not clear on when or why this change of behaviour took place, there was a long gap in my bus usage between youth and, er, seniority.
Possibly because some have been advised not to stand up while the bus is moving - and a large proportion of bus users are elderly and travelling on free bus passes. These did not exist when some of us last used buses regularly in our youth!
 

swt_passenger

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On my last couple of visits back to the UK (from Canada) I was struck by the absence of 'Stop' signs on the roads. Here it is 'Yield' signs that are almost completely missing.
Stop signs are vastly outnumbered by Give Way signs. AIUI the stop sign is only really used where there are significant visibility problems, so as road and junction design is generally improving the number should always be reducing?
 

Killingworth

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Stop signs are vastly outnumbered by Give Way signs. AIUI the stop sign is only really used where there are significant visibility problems, so as road and junction design is generally improving the number should always be reducing?
There are many on the local roads near where I live. I can't avoid them to get anywhere, although one is often treated as a Give Way and is the source of lots of horn sounding and near misses.
 

Altrincham

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Used to be that anyone wanting to get off at the next stop was standing in the aisle by the door / platform when the bus arrived at the stop. Nowadays, when boarding, you're never quite sure if, after stopping, someone upstairs takes this as their cue to leave their seat to get off. (Not complaining, this is clearly safer, but slower, and can lead to unintentional boarding before everyone has got off). I'm not clear on when or why this change of behaviour took place, there was a long gap in my bus usage between youth and, er, seniority.
I’ve noticed that change in behaviour too. Another change in behaviour on the buses that I’ve noticed is people don’t seem to be keen on holding their arm out anymore to signal to the bus driver that they want to get on.
 

Meerkat

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Maybe not so much a bad thing but one thing we don’t see too much of these days is the “boy-racer” scene, think “Max Power”.

Around 2005-2006 it was quite common to see cars such as the Vauxhall Nova and Citroen Saxo etc. That had been done up with racing stripes, loud exhaust and a body kit and they would just be cruising around with thumping music blasting out of a subwoofer that filled the boot space. Often they would meet in supermarket car parks at night.

Nowadays, it seems any young lad with a job and a wage goes straight for a powerful German car what with more availability of finance and HPI etc. coupled with the fact insurance for such cars is generally not much more than a standard 1-1.2 litre car. If there is any music being played in these cars its often something rubbish like Ed Shereen or other generic (not so) popular music.
Still a big annoyance, except its less often but bigger now. Every now and then they will meet up in big numbers and tour round, popping and banging, then find a supermarket car park to muck about in. Thanks to social media they can get hundreds of them in from all round the region. They've clearly got money as most of the ones I saw last time they went past were tricked out modern Golfs.
 

PG

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I'm not clear on when or why this change of behaviour took place, there was a long gap in my bus usage between youth and, er, seniority.
Somewhere I've got a Scottish Bus Group leaflet from the late eighties about how to use buses safely. One of the things mentioned was ringing the bell and waiting for the bus to stop before standing up. However until very recently some of the former SBG companies were still using vehicles that only had three bell pushes in total so the advice didn't square with reality. These days near enough every second seat has a bell push within reach so it's feasible to ring the bell and remain seated until the bus has stopped.
 

pdeaves

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Street cleaners. Not those little machines with whirly brushes underneath, but a trolley 'fed' by (usually) a man with tong things to pick up rubbish.

Thalidomide and polio victims struggling to make their way around the shops.
 

birchesgreen

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Street cleaners. Not those little machines with whirly brushes underneath, but a trolley 'fed' by (usually) a man with tong things to pick up rubbish.
We still have one around here, don't see him very frequently. He probably has to do all of Brum by himself!
 

Meerkat

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Street cleaners. Not those little machines with whirly brushes underneath, but a trolley 'fed' by (usually) a man with tong things to pick up rubbish.
We have those in our local town, though their main role is to empty the bins.
 

gswindale

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At house roof top level: rows and rows of old style television aerials, smoke from chimneys and multi telephone cables.
Define old style TV aerials - I'm looking out my window now and the majority of houses I can see do have them.

No chimneys, but these are 1970s houses...
 

birchesgreen

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TV aerials are rather common, what you don't really see much anymore are the old style aerials (were these for VHF 405 line transmissions?) I remember there were a few around when i was a kid but i suspect they've mostly gone now. They were X-shaped from memory.
 

Meerkat

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Where I am (clearly with different council policies!), bin emptying seems to require a quite substantial truck to drive to each one.
These are the public bins, many of which are in pedestrianised areas.
 
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