Weird transport.

[red750]

13 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

video made in 1890

? ? ? Videos in 1890? You  mean film.

[nomadpete]

I could be wrong but I doubt that they had sound tracks, or smooth blur free movie cameras.

[onetrack]

I'm not so sure that the Reo fuel tanker had the driver situated in the centre. I tend to think he sat towards the RH side. I'd like to see how the driver got in and out of the cabin, I think the entire front must have been hinged on one side.

I believe a centre-mounted driver was illegal for quite some time in Australia, but they relaxed the rule to allow steel-carrying trucks to have a centrally-located driver.

I used to own a 3 tonne Dodge ex-steel carrying truck, that was a centre-steer cabin.

But then the authorities tore up the regulation allowing centre cabs, as it allowed for "factory unauthorised steering modifications" - and all steel-carrying trucks today must only have a cut-down standard cabin, with RHD.

 

LHD was banned in Australia from around 1950 up until the 1980's when the law was relaxed. The law was introduced initially because of a sizeable increase in crashes in the late 1940's caused by an upsurge in the numbers of military surplus vehicles - that were nearly all LHD. This made a lot of LHD vehicles useless and relegated to off-road use only.

 

LHD vehicles were allowed back in the 1980's, provided they wore a large decal on the rear stating they were LHD. Now that regulation has been removed.

 

Henry Ford was the bloke who made America (and a large percentage of the rest of the world) into LHD. America used nearly all RHD up until about 1912, then Henry declared that LHD was the design that made the most sense to him, and forthwith, all Fords were LHD. All the other manufacturers promptly followed Ford, as he dominated the auto market.

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by onetrack
addendum...

[old man emu]

19 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

OME are you using a video made in 1890 to dispute the veracity of a social media presentation?

It does carry the advice that the original has been cleaned up and a soundtrack added. 

 

I found that it was independent proof that drivers of vehicles in France, in most cases, sat on the right hand side of the vehicle. I also posted pictures of the USA in the 19th Century of wagon drivers sitting on the right hand side of the waggon, a fact carried over into the Western genre TV and film productions of the 1960s. Here's one of taxis in New York in 1910:

[pmccarthy]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

When I was in Burma in the 1980's, the law was to drive on the right, but only about 15 or 20% of vehicles were left hand drive, all newer vehicles. The older vehicles were all right hand drive. A bit scary in Asian high speed traffic to be the passenger in the left seat in the middle of the road. In those days there were a lot of 50's and 60's Yank Tanks with R.H. drive conversions. All these years later, it's still a crazy place. They still drive on the right and import R.H. drive vehicles. The mix of L.H. drive and R.H. drive vehicles is probably about 50/50 now.

I was there too in the 80s and saw many little vans with platforms at the back. So many people at the back that the front wheels only occasionally bounced down onto the road, giving the driver a chance to influence the direction of travel. 

This photo is from a visit only ten years ago but shows that the state of road transport has not improved.

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

I was there too in the 80s and saw many little vans with platforms at the back. So many people at the back that the front wheels only occasionally bounced down onto the road, giving the driver a chance to influence the direction of travel. 

This photo is from a visit only ten years ago but shows that the state of road transport has not improved.

Yes, we do indeed lead shelterd lives here. My only work foray OS was to Dili in 2000, and that demonstrated to me how underutilised our road transport is in Australia. You can get a family of five into town on a stepthru. They were buying petrol from roadside vendors, who sold by the cordial bottlefull. And mum sat discretely side-saddle! Any momentarily vacant bit of road is fair game. Mudguards and headlights are optional. Etc.

[facthunter]

You can't beat the system here and make a house out of old stuff. Permanents at Caravan Parks will go. A powered site is about 350$ / week.    Nev

[onetrack]

Greece is the place to try out your driving skills. It has the worst road toll in all of Europe. You get instructions with a hire car to keep as far right as possible - even wheels off the bitumen - when approaching curves.

The simple reason for that is, when you come to a curve, you're often faced with one vehicle coming towards you (often a large bus), and at least one vehicle, or sometimes more, trying to overtake it.

You even keep way over to the right on straight sections, because taxis in particular, will conduct overtaking moves regardless of double white lines, oncoming traffic, or any other danger.

On Crete, they have windy mountainous roads and the Cretan farmers all have dual-cab 4WD utes and they all think they're Stirling Moss. Their game is to see just how fast they can get from their farm to the local Taverna. You can be going as fast as you dare on these twisty mountain roads and you'll always have a Cretan farmers 4WD grille in your back window.

 

A hire car bloke on Kos was a real character. He wanted to know where we were from. He explained carefully how Greek road rules at roundabouts state that the vehicle ENTERING the roundabout has right of way - the opposite of Australia (he knew Australias road rules!).

He finished up with, "Always stay alert, and be aware that we have people from 120 nations visiting Greece - and they all use the road rules from their home country!!".

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by onetrack

[red750]

[onetrack]

Here's a 1910 photo of a motorist at speed in Detroits streets. Note the RHD, even though he's driving on the RH side of the road. Click on the photo for full screen size.

 

https://www.shorpy.com/node/5490

 

The car is a unique and extremely rare Pungs-Finch runabout. They were a very powerful and fast car for their day, with ads claiming a "mile a minute". It appears Pungs-Finch only built around 100 cars. Only 2 Pungs-Finch cars have survived.

I don't know where you would've found roads capable of a mile a minute in those days, but I guess there must have been some flat straight smooth stretches of country.

Note the muddy streets, the rugged-up attire of the car driver (due to a lack of any windscreen), and the belching clouds of smoke behind the runabout. All part of early motoring fun!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pungs-Finch

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by onetrack

[facthunter]

Until Post  WW2 the trail of blue smoke  was part of the scene for most vehicles. They usually had no air cleaners also. 1/4 inch wide rings on cast iron pistons reduced the wear to something you could live with. Dust particles embed in softer aluminium pistons and LAP the bores.  Only race cars had aluminium /magnesium alloy pistons.  Nev

[onetrack]

The smoke trail in the early days was also related to a total lack of fuel standards. Fuels used in early cars were poorly refined, or even by-products of refining kerosene and oils, the main required petroleum products of the era. Early fuels could even contain dirt and sand from poor refining processes. They certainly contained a lot of smoke-producing by-products of refining.

 

Fuel for early cars was simply called "Benzene" or "Motor Spirit" or "Rectified Petroleum". It was sold under a dozen different trade names - "Waratah", Benzoline", "Mobilgas" - and even "Petrol" (yes, it was initially a trade name!).

 

"Bowser" came into being because the American company, Bowser Manufacturing company, produced the first bulk fuel-dispensing equipment. Petrol was dispensed in 4-gallon tin cans up until around  1920, when which is when bulk fuel started to become available.

[old man emu]

There's a 1950s joke about some chemical engineers:

 

Eng 1: "I've just made a new chemical compound. but I don't know what it can be used for."

Eng 2: That's easy. If it tastes good, put it in toothpaste. If tastes bad, put it in petrol."

[facthunter]

It was mainly because of long stroke motors built in the UK Because of the road tax formula and rapid ring wear because of poor air and oil filters.  After the war people were doing it really tough and you couldn't get US Dollars to purchase American  stuff.. Cars were on the road with SHOT motors. The ERA. Engine Reconditioner's Association had a list of mileages most cars did before needing to be reco'd. . The figures were about 1/3rd of what we  expect and get today. Engine reconditioners are  a past skill only applied to modified and restorations. Properly recoed motors don't blow oil smoke unless it's actually part of their antiquated design or they are racing a diesel Truck and then it's black soot.  Nev

[willedoo]

I've seen a lot of bad pollution in Asia, but the worst by a long way was in Medan, capital of North Sumatra. At street level, you could hardly see through it. The cause was thousands of piss-ant little underpowered mopeds with worn out rings pulling rickshaws for public transport.

[spenaroo]

ah long stroke british motors,
my midget has the triumph 1500.
burns as much oil as my 2 stroke's

[onetrack]

The old man bought a new Triumph Herald sedan in 1959 (1200cc). The rings and bores in the engine were totally shot at 50,000 miles, and it had the easiest life.

[facthunter]

Triumph were better  than  BMC . I liked the Dolomite.  but  the Stag V8 was a  dud.. Rovers were nicely built especially the 16 (about 1947).  One thing that will shorten an engines life is removing the Thermostat. and short trips.  Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

the Stag V8 was a  dud

Wasn't that an overheating problem? Apparently it can be fixed if you want to fit a bigger radiator, but it does required a bit of cut and shove.

[red750]

[facthunter]

The Stag V8 was more than an overheating problem, that could be fixed by a bigger radiator. Nev

[red750]

[nomadpete]

2 hours ago, red750 said:

My wife wants to know where to buy one

[facthunter]

There should be some for free near a low hanging bridge or on the outside of a corner you come upon suddenly. "Suite Handyman"   Nev

[Marty_d]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

My wife wants to know where to buy one

At the Photo Shop is my guess.