Transport

"When I was a boy, we walked ten miles to school in the freezing snow..."
I guess many of us have heard stories similar to this at some time, and wondered how true the stories were. Well, my stories may not be as dramatic as some of those, but transport was certainly different back then.

Nobody in my area had a car, although there were cars in town. Buses were a major means of travel from the main part of town to several places nearby. Buses, to us, meant the double-deckers used for normal travel between towns close by, while single-deckers were charabanks, or "sharras" and these were used for longer trips to holiday resorts like Blackpool. Double-deckers had a rear entry door for passengers, where a conductor was stationed to collect fares and assist passengers in boarding. A typical fare to a neighbouring town on a bus would cost from a ha'penny to threpence. Nowadays, most families have at least one car for basic transport, but they are very different from those we saw then.

Top speed for most passenger cars back then was about 60mph, but this was rarely able to be used. And speed was not the only thing lacking. There was no power assistance for either steering or braking, so driving was quite tiring; air conditioning was achieved by opening windows, which were quite small anyway; if the car failed to start because of a flat battery, a crank-handle was used, with the risk of bruised knees or worse; there was usually no radio (not that it mattered very much as there was so much noise that it wouldn't have been heard anyway); and arm signals were used to indicate turning or stopping - turn-indicator lights and stop-lights didn't exist. All very well until it was pouring with rain!

In earlier days, cold weather often made it difficult to start a car as the fuel didn't vaporise properly, so cars were fitted with a hand-operated "choke". This small knob on the dashboard was pulled out to enrich the fuel/air mix fed to the engine until the engine was warm, then pushed in to return to normal operation. Later, starting in the 'fifties, the automatic choke replaced this.
Some later automated warning features are: exceeding speed limits; cruise control (maintains a selected speed); lane-change warning; proximity-warning; tracking and tyre-pressure warning; school, traffic and hidden camera warning; as well as more mundane things like low petrol or oil levels and engine overheating.
My eyes glaze over just thinking about the electronics that are hidden under the bonnet!

Cars all had manual gearboxes and the driver changed gears with a gear-stick mounted on the floor. But a change of gears involves uncoupling one cogwheel and re-coupling another smaller or larger one. A manual clutch pedal (or lever) was used to separate them while this took place, and this was one more skill for drivers to master. Poor use of the clutch created a jolt that could damage one or more of the gears. Later, some of the changes were synchronized automatically, and then fully automatic gearboxes came. The clutch was no longer needed, and the gear-change lever was simplified to present options for forward, reverse, park and neutral, as well as positions for restricting the use of higher gears for hills etc.
But even more recently, self-driving cars have been developed, so (theoretically at least) all the driver needs to do is select their destination and say "go"!

Trains in my younger days were steam-driven, so they needed someone to "stoke" (put coal in the furnace) as well as a driver. Passenger trains also had a "guard" who travelled in the "guard's van" at the rear, to check all doors were closed and let the driver know when it was safe to start moving. Carriage doors opened outward and later, after several accidents, special locks were fitted to ensure they were not opened while travelling.

There was quite a variety of train locomotives ("locos"). Some were quite small, and could navigate tight bends easily, but only hauled light loads. Others were huge, sometimes "articulated" (able to bend in the middle) to allow them to navigate those bends, and hauled immense loads of goods.

Some passenger train locos became quite famous, bearing names of famous people or places. As kids, one of our hobbies was to collect the names and number of those we had sighted.
Later, diesel-powered and then electric-powered locos replaced steam-powered ones, and now, steam locos are pretty well only kept in use for sentimental reasons.