I'm so old I remember my father coming home from a hunting trip with a deer strapped to the front passenger fender of our old Chevy Deluxe. When cars had fenders - something like this:
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"...." that TVs and wireless sets used valves not semiconductors, and had simple controls on their fronts, not remote-control boxes needing a Degree in IT to use...
...... but can recall the "transistor radio" suddenly being among the Very Latest Things to buy!
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"...." that if you travelled by train (between "railway" not "train" stations) it was likely to be steam-hauled.
Actually that was not originally true for me. I am a 1950s-built native of South-East England, where most passenger trains were already electrically-powered, and had been for decades. The goods trains still used steam locomotives.
Steam traction on service trains in the UK ended in 1968. The modern passenger trains are all multiple-unit types, Diesel or electrically powered. Freight trains still have separate, Diesel locomotives.
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Yesterday I spotted a packet of Farley's Rusks, a brand of simple biscuit for very young children beginning to grow their teeth. I last saw them in the very early 1960s and had no idea they are still made.
Similarly I wonder if they still make Minadex and Virol? (Sweet, vitamins-fortified tonics primarily for children; respectively orange- and malt- based syrups.)
@ArishMell Minidex! Oh yes, a firm favourite of my mother’s for us.
There are a few scheduled loco hauled passenger services on Chiltern, Transport for Wales, LNER (only just) and of course all the sleepers. Scot Rail continues to run HSTs for the time being.
For a change from my usual cereals, and needing something warm for an early start on a couple of cold mornings recently, I bought a packet of Readybrek. I soon discovered I needed double the instructions for one dishfull. Its idea of one helping is just five table-spoons of the dry cereal. Anyway, I liked it, then thought, it's a bit like Farex but for all ages!
.... Those loco-hauled services are quite rare then. I didn't think any still run in scheduled services. I am only surprised British Railways (or the government of the day) didn't work towards all-electric rather than a protracted, intervening Diesel era.
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Another electronics memory: the reel-to-reel tape-recorder. Apparently these were very popular in the late 1950s - early 1960s.
Our Dad had a 'Grundig' one whose two reels were on a chassis designed to straddle the record-player, and be driven by the latter's spindle. I'm not sure how the microphone was connected but the tape's output was fed into the radiogram's amplifier.
@ArishMell I too, enjoyed the taste of Minidex - I suspect it had a lot of sugar in it.
I am only surprised British Railways (or the government of the day) didn't work towards all-electric rather than a protracted, intervening Diesel era.
All down to money and of course, in the 60s, cheap oil. On the continent, many countries were able to invest in hydro-electricity, which swung the equations in a different direction. The capital outlay for electric traction with overhead wires is enormous and only pays back over an extended period (i.e. when another government gets the credit).
@FreddieUK {Scroll screen down a bit to hide another of those wretched 1-second video loops!}
It's only just occurred to me that the dex syllable might be short for dextrose - a type of sugar!
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As well as cost, we also have an odd legacy difficulty with electrifying the railways: two different systems. They use third-rail from London to the South-East and as far West from London (Waterloo) as Poole and Weymouth; the rest overhead wires.
Then to add to the expense, whoever was paid to design electrifying the lines NE from Bristol did not specify the tried and tested "scaffolding-tube" pattern overheads, but concocted massive fabricated-steel davits you could about suspend the train from!
I can recall the hybrid "electro-diesels" locomotives that served stations beyond Bournemouth when the electrified route ended there. These ran powered from the "mains" to Bournemouth then used their Diesel engines for the un-electrified 30 or 40 miles to Weymouth.
They could also take the boat-train services from London to the Channel Islands ferries based in Weymouth Harbour, as the short harbour branch-line ran through streets where a conductor rail might have been problematical anyway. (Usually the main-line loco was detached and a shunting-engine towed the train the mile or so to the ferry terminal.) It gave the tourists on the trains a rather unusual feature to their holidays!
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Bournemouth...
In keeping with this nostalgia thread generally, and still transport-related, Bournemouth and its neighbours occupy narrow, steep valleys, so never had trams.
They did though, have trolley buses.
Although our family never used them, I can just remember seeing them, resplendant in yellow livery complete with a council crest beyond the imagination of today's branding-consultants. That was in the early 1960s, and I think Bournemouth was the last British town to scrap theirs.
