Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[JohnDale]

Life in the 60s traffic jams

http://holidaywest.weebly.com/index.html

Lots of cars to identify, have fun,cheers,JD
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1958 Ford Zephyr Mk2 Convertible
1976 Ford Granada Ghia.

[Ellis]

Excellent photos.

Spot the foreign cars!
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Starting Handle Expert

1964 Jaguar Mark 2 3.4 litre
1962 Land Rover Series 2a 88"
2002 BMW M3 E46 Cabriolet

[vitesse]

Makes you appreciate how much life was less stressful/complex in the sixties.

Imagine going into work on a Monday morning and somebody asks what you got up to at the weekend? You reply "Oh I sat and watched the traffic jams on the A30 in Staines".

Mind you thinking about it I used to go and sit near a main road in the 60's and write down car makes and number plates when I was a nipper!!!!!

[Riley Blue]

Not less stressful for the drivers of the overheated cars on the A38! I remember listening to radio and TV reports of traffic jams on that route, it must have been an absolute nightmare at the time as it seemed to be jammed on a daily basis in the summer months.

[mikeC]

Fascinating!
I remember the street vendors walking up and down the queues on the Exeter By-pass - jolly good ice creams they were, too
I also recall being stuck in one of those West Country queues; my father decided to cut off down a side road, and after many miles of narrow lane running, we re-appeared on the main road about half a mile from where we left it

[Ashley]

To get home from school in the fifties I had to cross the A38 at Claypits, which was about ten miles from Gloucester heading to Bristol. All through the summer, heavy traffic streamed though, it was extremely unsafe, so I had to wait at Claypits Garage to be collected.

There was an enormous pile of smashed up cars parked at the side and a stream of utter morons wanting punctures repaired cluttered around the pumps. These idiots with their entire families, I kid you not, had set off from the midlands in family saloons with completely bald tyres, some had even put and old inner tube in the tyre to protect the new one from the road! The garage owner, who was a really nice bloke, used to go ape. He'd point to all the smashed up cars, explain how he was collecting two or three some weeks and often burst tyres were the cause or had made things worse. Some didn't have enough to pay for new tyres even.

In those days Exeter was about eight hours from Claypits, but there were three lane sections heading for Bristol where they could have some really good crashes.

Driving is a perfect misery now, but at least fewer kill themselves.

[Uncle Alec]

Enjoyed that.
I grew up (for the sake of this thread I am assuming that I have grown up) in Liskeard; the standard thing to do on a non-fishing no-new-girls-around school holiday day was to go and gawp at the horrendous traffic jams that built up as a result of Liskeard town centre being a giant chicane on the A38.
And Cheltenham Bus Station! You couldn't go anywhere in Britain in those days without going through Cheltenham Bus Station. Leeds - Glasgow via Cheltenham.