People's strange misconceptions (transport, and otherwise)

[Calthrop]

Weird, and blatantly wrong, "information" -- presumably, believed by them -- which people come up with: am wondering whether folk here have examples of such, which have come their way.

This prompted, by a conversation which I had today. I live in the north-eastern parts of Birmingham, just off the north-west / south-east-running, Chester Road. Was at my nearest bus stop on Chester Road, waiting for a no. 28 bus travelling in westerly direction. Was joined there by a chap whom I slightly know as a fellow-bus-user. We were talking desultorily, about the 28 bus service's shortcomings. This gentleman indicated the grass-covered central strip bisecting the, here dual-carriageway, Chester Road; and spoke of how -- by implication, in the "first-generation" urban tram era (which ended in Birmingham, in 1953) -- a "then" city tram route had run exactly along said grassed-over strip. He claimed that the tram rails were still in situ there, under the grass; and went on to speak of how easy and desirable it would be, given the will on the part of those in charge: for said tram route to be "recovered" and brought back into use, to supplement the (genuinely) often woefully inefficient no. 28 bus service along this stretch.

This was total nonsense. (1) Birmingham's first-generation tram system, even at its peak, never ran along this stretch of road. (2) "Rails still in situ" -- not how it works, for stretches of any significant length: had they been there, they would have been lifted after route's closure. However: at the risk of coming across as condescending -- this guy is an amiable, but pretty simple, soul. I saw no point or advantage in trying to "set him straight": he would most likely have continued to be sure that he was right, and that it was me who was talking rubbish; attempts at correcting him, would probably have led at best, to strained relations; and his notion about "buried" tram tracks which were never in the first place there, does no significant harm to anyone else. I just non-committally "ummed and ah-ed"...

Any other instances of such -- usually, trivial and harmless -- strange notions heard voiced; would be welcome. (Am thinking mild oddities, rather than matters political .)

 

[Purple Train]

I did once have to reassure someone that a train couldn't fall off the rails if it was icy.

 

[AndrewE]

. This gentleman indicated the grass-covered central strip bisecting the, here dual-carriageway, Chester Road; and spoke of how -- by implication, in the "first-generation" urban tram era (which ended in Birmingham, in 1953) -- a "then" city tram route had run exactly along said grassed-over strip. He claimed that the tram rails were still in situ there, under the grass; and went on to speak of how easy and desirable it would be, given the will on the part of those in charge: for said tram route to be "recovered" and brought back into use, to supplement the (genuinely) often woefully inefficient no. 28 bus service along this stretch.

This was total nonsense. (1) Birmingham's first-generation tram system, even at its peak, never ran along this stretch of road. (2) "Rails still in situ" -- not how it works, for stretches of any significant length: had they been there, they would have been lifted after route's closure. However: at the risk of coming across as condescending -- this guy is an amiable, but pretty simple, soul. I saw no point or advantage in trying to "set him straight": he would most likely have continued to be sure that he was right, and that it was me who was talking rubbish; attempts at correcting him, would probably have led at best, to strained relations; and his notion about "buried" tram tracks which were never in the first place there, does no significant harm to anyone else. I just non-committally "ummed and ah-ed"...

Any other instances of such -- usually, trivial and harmless -- strange notions heard voiced; would be welcome. (Am thinking mild oddities, rather than matters political .)

Is this a thread in its own right which can be replied to?

I would say that (in conurbations with tram networks) lots of main roads were laid out in the '30s expecting the tram rails to extend into them and there are still lots of roads with a central reservation which never had trams (besides all the ones which did.) I am not surprised that someone without a specialist interest has misunderstood or misremembered just which roads did have trams along the central reservation.
And I'm also sure that loads of track really was just abandoned and buried - and not just where tarmac was simply dumped on top of a tramline with sets in between the rails. (Not cobbles, note, which are rounded river or beach stones. There's another "misconception" for you!)

Regarding public transport misconceptions, I would offer "Rush-hour trains or buses must make loads of money, they are so crowded!" when the opposite is true.

 

[Calthrop]

Is this a thread in its own right which can be replied to?

Of course -- am hoping for, and welcoming, replies.

I would say that (in conurbations with tram networks) lots of main roads were laid out in the '30s expecting the tram rails to extend into them and there are still lots of roads with a central reservation which never had trams (besides all the ones which did.) I am not surprised that someone without a specialist interest has misunderstood or misremembered just which roads did have trams along the central reservation.
And I'm also sure that loads of track really was just abandoned and buried - and not just where tarmac was simply dumped on top of a tramline with sets in between the rails. (Not cobbles, note, which are rounded river or beach stones. There's another "misconception" for you!)

I'm actually not very learned about urban trams -- possibly I'm being too hard on my (very definitely non-gricer) acquaintance. Had imagined that with urban trams, as with "pukka" railways, "when abandoned, would as a matter of course, have been lifted" -- but you know what they say about assuming...

Regarding public transport misconceptions, I would offer "Rush-hour trains or buses must make loads of money, they are so crowded!" when the opposite is true.

Sophisticated economics-type stuff is seldom if ever, as straightforward as the non-sophisticated are apt to reckon.

 

[D6130]

Back in the early 1970s I was forever trying to convince my schoolmates that the large cast-iron parking brake wheel on the right hand side of the driving cab of class 303 EMUs - clearly visible through the panoramic windows of the leading and trailing saloons - was not in fact the steering wheel! If that was the case, I argued, why did the driver sit on the other side of the cab?

 

[simonw]

Of course -- am hoping for, and welcoming, replies.


I'm actually not very learned about urban trams -- possibly I'm being too hard on my (very definitely non-gricer) acquaintance. Had imagined that with urban trams, as with "pukka" railways, "when abandoned, would as a matter of course, have been lifted" -- but you know what they say about assuming...

Sophisticated economics-type stuff is seldom if ever, as straightforward as the non-sophisticated are apt to reckon.

Pictures appear from time to time of tramlines being "dug up" during road works. I think it may well often have been cheaper just to tarmac over them than dig them up.

 

[Calthrop]

Pictures appear from time to time of tramlines being "dug up" during road works. I think it may well often have been cheaper just to tarmac over them than dig them up.

I come to feel more and more, like a glasshouse-dwelling stone-thrower -- still-and-whatever, there never was an actual functioning tram route along that stretch of the Chester Road !

 

[oldman]

I like an excuse for some investigation. It seems there was a tram which crossed Chester Road to a terminus at the frontier with Sutton Coldfield (see NLS map), known as the Chester Road Tram Terminus. The map shows a waiting room but I suppose that may have vanished. Looks like your acquaintance thought it ran along Chester Road and invented the bit about the central reservation. There's a bit more with a picture of the crossroads here.

 

[cool110]

Pictures appear from time to time of tramlines being "dug up" during road works. I think it may well often have been cheaper just to tarmac over them than dig them up.

Happened in Blackpool when they built the North Station extension, found the original 1902-36 rails under Talbot Road.

 

[Springs Branch]

A couple of railway ticket-based misconceptions . . .

1) As a young and not well-travelled teenager, I was under the apprehension you could only buy a ticket to stations more or less along the route normally served by direct trains from your origin.

So if you wanted to travel from, say, Wigan to Llandudno you would need to buy a ticket from Wigan NW to Warrington BQ, then where you changed trains, go to the booking office at Warrington and buy tickets from there to Llandudno. A bit like you did on buses (back in the day).

This misconception was dashed the first time we went on a family day trip to Llandudno.


2) A niece and a nephew (from different branches of the family) lived at different times in suburban London. Co-incidentally, both used South West Trains (as it was); both had Oysters, but for short local journeys not involving barriered station neither bothered to touch in or out.

When their wise uncle warned them this wasn't the best idea on a regular daily basis, both responded I was being silly because (a) there are never any ticket inspectors, and (b) if they did get caught, it was not worth SWT's effort chasing them up for a pound or two fare, so they'd probably just get let off with a warning.

Needless to say, within a relatively short time both these apprehensions were proved to be misapprehensions.

 

[zero]

The first time I took a tube in London, I looked at the tracks and thought that the District line's trains ran on the regular rails while the Circle line's trains ran on the third and fourth rails.

 

[D6130]

The first time I took a tube in London, I looked at the tracks and thought that the District line's trains ran on the regular rails while the Circle line's trains ran on the third and fourth rails.

Mind the gap!

 

[DelW]

I like an excuse for some investigation. It seems there was a tram which crossed Chester Road to a terminus at the frontier with Sutton Coldfield (see NLS map), known as the Chester Road Tram Terminus. The map shows a waiting room but I suppose that may have vanished. Looks like your acquaintance thought it ran along Chester Road and invented the bit about the central reservation. There's a bit more with a picture of the crossroads here.

A little way south of the Chester Road that same tram line originally ran along the busy Erdington High Street. In the 1930s that was bypassed by the parallel Sutton New Road, a dual carriageway with a wide centre reserve, down which the tram tracks were diverted. So not too far away from Chester Road, there was once a stretch of dual carriageway with tram lines down the middle, which might have contributed to the misapprehension.

The centre reserve has been used for car parking for many decades, possibly since the trams ended in 1953, but I doubt if there are any rails left insitu below it.

 

[Calthrop]

I like an excuse for some investigation. It seems there was a tram which crossed Chester Road to a terminus at the frontier with Sutton Coldfield (see NLS map), known as the Chester Road Tram Terminus. The map shows a waiting room but I suppose that may have vanished. Looks like your acquaintance thought it ran along Chester Road and invented the bit about the central reservation. There's a bit more with a picture of the crossroads here.

A little way south of the Chester Road that same tram line originally ran along the busy Erdington High Street. In the 1930s that was bypassed by the parallel Sutton New Road, a dual carriageway with a wide centre reserve, down which the tram tracks were diverted. So not too far away from Chester Road, there was once a stretch of dual carriageway with tram lines down the middle, which might have contributed to the misapprehension.

The centre reserve has been used for car parking for many decades, possibly since the trams ended in 1953, but I doubt if there are any rails left insitu below it.

Much interesting and knowledgeable lore here, about one-time trams in north-east Birmingham "and onward" -- thank you, gentlemen. It's brought home, that the idea of one-time central tram tracks along Chester Road itself is -- while erroneous -- not completely "weird and wild and out of nowhere". I take it that my acquaintance's mistaken account of such things, was passed on to him by older generations -- he is clearly nowhere near old enough to have known first-generation Birmingham trams at first hand ! (Nor have I experienced same -- was born in 1948, but have dwelt in Birmingham for only the last couple of decades.)

@oldman -- thank you for linked article re "abortive tramway": a marvellously bonkers narrative, starring snooty Sutton Coldfield -- "Trams would lower the tone of Sutton, so the devious Corporation succeeded in keeping Sutton tram-free by pretending to want to build their own network" (!)

A couple of railway ticket-based misconceptions . . .

1) As a young and not well-travelled teenager, I was under the apprehension you could only buy a ticket to stations more or less along the route normally served by direct trains from your origin.

So if you wanted to travel from, say, Wigan to Llandudno you would need to buy a ticket from Wigan NW to Warrington BQ, then where you changed trains, go to the booking office at Warrington and buy tickets from there to Llandudno. A bit like you did on buses (back in the day).

This misconception was dashed the first time we went on a family day trip to Llandudno.

What a nightmare it would have been, had things truly been thus ! One is inclined to wonder, though: what the situations concerned, were like in the early days of railways. There come to mind the infamous break-of-gauge doings at Gloucester -- different gauges to the north, and south, of that city; with accompanying inconvenience and chaos (as in the famous and beloved picture thereof). Would there have been any possibility then for a passenger travelling, say, from Birmingham to Bristol: to get one ticket covering the whole journey; or would re-booking at Gloucester have been a "given"?

 

[cb a1]

Flashing your vehicle headlights a couple of times will make the traffic lights change to green.
Rationale is that the traffic signals can somehow detect the flashing lights of blue light services and give them green.

 

[jfollows]

I think a lot of people think that trains are automatic and don’t get driven, and that train signals either don’t exist or are all controlled centrally.

 

[cool110]

Rationale is that the traffic signals can somehow detect the flashing lights of blue light services and give them green.

Some parts of America used to have that system, although you would never get the right speed by hand.

 

[BrandanM]

I'm sporadically involved, in quite a peripheral way, with steam traction engines and quite a number of the general public assume that the coal/water consumption ratio is the other way round.

 

[Ted633]

Flashing your vehicle headlights a couple of times will make the traffic lights change to green.
Rationale is that the traffic signals can somehow detect the flashing lights of blue light services and give them green.

I think it's more to do with traffic lights that are operated by sensors on top of the light that 'look' for approaching traffic (instead of using the strips in the road) and that flashing your lights will help them to see you. Never heard of doing it to imitate an emergency vehicle.

 

[DelW]

I think it's more to do with traffic lights that are operated by sensors on top of the light that 'look' for approaching traffic (instead of using the strips in the road) and that flashing your lights will help them to see you. Never heard of doing it to imitate an emergency vehicle.

Unfortunately for the theory, those use radar (microwave) detectors so flashing lights will have no effect whatsoever.

Sometimes they fail to detect a vehicle that has approached too slowly or stopped too far back. In that case pulling forward sharply may trigger them, otherwise they won't change until they time out (assuming a time limit is set).

 

[Merle Haggard]

Unfortunately for the theory, those use radar (microwave) detectors so flashing lights will have no effect whatsoever.

Sometimes they fail to detect a vehicle that has approached too slowly or stopped too far back. In that case pulling forward sharply may trigger them, otherwise they won't change until they time out (assuming a time limit is set).

I read about that somewhere else recently. There's lights that allow you on to the A45 from a very minor road I often use - they have the sensor on top. I've found that approaching them faster than I normally would (and obviously stopping!) seems to make them change more quickly. But it might be confirmation bias...

 

[Falcon1200]

As a child, after a Sunday swim at the Hinksey Pools, Oxford, I insisted that we spend some time on the nearby footbridge over the Oxford/Didcot route because 'the (semaphore) signals show that a train is coming', only for nothing to appear. Only later did I realise that the local signalboxes were switched out on Sundays!

 

[Gloster]

People think that signalmen, particularly in mechanical boxes, just send off trains willy-nilly and can switch them from one direction’s line line to another without further ado. Also that they somehow have the power to divert trains round obstructions or to remove said obstructions instantly for their train.

 

[D6130]

Nearly 50 years ago my family and I were on holiday with our touring caravan at a site near Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset. One fine sunny day I expressed a wish to take a train into Bristol for a day's spotting and track-bashing, so my father gave me a lift to Highbridge station en route to the local supermarket. Wandering onto the Up platform with me for a few minutes, we soon heard a Down stopping train for Taunton announced. 0bserving that the automatic colour light signal at the end of the Down platform was showing green, my father said "Shouldn't that signal be red....otherwise the driver of that train won't know that he has to stop here?"

 

[Calthrop]

Nearly 50 years ago my family and I were on holiday with our touring caravan at a site near Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset. One fine sunny day I expressed a wish to take a train into Bristol for a day's spotting and track-bashing, so my father gave me a lift to Highbridge station en route to the local supermarket. Wandering onto the Up platform with me for a few minutes, we soon heard a Down stopping train for Taunton announced. 0bserving that the automatic colour light signal at the end of the Down platform was showing green, my father said "Shouldn't that signal be red....otherwise the driver of that train won't know that he has to stop here?"

Non-railfans do often fail to "get", just how organised and thoroughly planned: railways' doings are, and have to be.

 

[BrandanM]

A surprising number of drivers believe that the car dashboard oil warning light is merely a low level indicator rather than a low pressure alert which could be lit up as a result of other causes besides too little oil.

 

[dgl]

And in a lot of cases the oil warning light comes on when you are already too late. Some cars do have an oil level sensor and will actually warn you about low oil level as well as pressure.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

I was sitting at the back on the lower deck of a Routemaster bus that was bowling along Kensington Gore about 25 years ago when of a group of American lady tourists asked the conductor: "Excuse me, are you actually driving the bus right now?"

 

[BrandanM]

And in a lot of cases the oil warning light comes on when you are already too late. Some cars do have an oil level sensor and will actually warn you about low oil level as well as pressure.

I had a Citroen Xsara a while back that had an LCD scale in the dash indicating the oil level. Quite handy, but I never entirely trusted it 100% and would occasionally still check the dip-stick.

Unfortunately the dip-stick was one of those which strangely had a plastic/nylon tip on the end of the wire which eventually snapped off half way down the tube, but that's a bit off-topic

 

[LYradial]

As a somewhat immature 18 year old university student with a holiday job on the buses (conductor) I started with the misconception that people were honest and civilised. It didn’t last long