75 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

    1. Hic, tris. An interesting selection, as ever.

      I have the feeling that Pics 6 and 8 both refer to Great Yarmouth.

      Pic 14: I have a Citroen 15 SIX exactly like that! Unfortunately, it is plastic, and in 00 Scale.
      But black. They have to be black.
      Police commissar Maigret wouldn’t have anything else.

      Pic 18: Jimmy Edwards. Whack-oh!

      Pic 19: Is that an advert for a Morris Minor convertible?

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      1. Great Yarmouth they are, DonDon. And that’s amazing that you should mention Maigret. I just started “Maigret and the Tramp” last night.

        Yes, Morris Minor. What all the smart young things are driving!!

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      2. Yes, DonDon, Pic 19 is a convertible Morris Minor Tourer. A split-screen model from the early fifties and rare today. From the styles of the gentlemen’s bathing costumes in the background it must have been very early, possibly 1951, when this raised headlights model was introduced.
        Pic 3 looks like a Buick Special Sedan from around 1955 and the dog looks like a Rover?
        What about the black posts with white tops in the background? Like snow poles you see on highland roads.
        Pic 10 is a Morris 12 Series II from the mid 1930s.
        Pic 13 is an AEC Regal, but I shall defer to Roddy’s greater knowledge as to the coachwork etc.
        Pic 15. Fewer, surely…
        Pic 16. Bedford CA van, Austin Cambridge A60 and Vauxhall Viva HB.
        Pic 5. Ford Consul MkII on the left, with 3-tone paintwork. On the right is a BMC/Austin/Morris LD van with an Austin A35 hiding behind the bus.
        As for the said bus, I have no idea what it is (some sort of Bedford OB? Where are you Roddy?) but I doubt it will get many miles to the bag of coal…

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  2. Apologies to the purists who would probably want to leave the contents of pic 12 in original condition as it is, but at my age I don’t give a jot about all that tosh and would love to build the Jeep in the box. Would I look like a dick driving around West Fife in it? More than likely. Would I give a shit? Not on your life.

    A basic google search unfortunately will tell you that they can’t be had unfortunately and if you could get an original then you’d be seriously in the money.

    https://www.militarytrader.com/military-vehicles/jeep-in-a-crate

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    3. I always wanted a Zundapp KS 750, which performed a similar function to the jeep. There’s always the lottery…

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    5. Pic 12 is an example of a CKD – Complete Knock Down – kit. In the immediate post-WW2 era, British motor companies struggled to keep up with demand from overseas and resorted to sending whole cars in parts form to be assembled in local plants as a temporary expedient. Overseas factories would then go on to manufacture the whole vehicle and develop their own versions in the longer term.
      Kits were easier and cheaper to transport than fully built cars.
      This is how several Japanese companies began production in the early 1950s – assembling Austins and Hillmans from CKDs, for example.

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  3. My less than peerless skills inform me that Pic 3 shows actors Brandon de Wilde (who? looks more like Marlon Brando) and Paul Newman in the 1963 film “Hud”.

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    1. DonDon: Brandon deWilde…..pronounced da-will-da…….started as a child actor who went on to a major career in stage, film, and TV. He was killed in a car wreck in Denver in 1972 at the age of 30.

      In 1953, he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Joey in the film “Shane”, with Alan Ladd in the title role. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as Joey yells “Shane, come back” to Shane who is bleeding from the gunfight and rides away to the mountains.

      “Shane” was filmed on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in Grand Teton National Park, with the rugged east face of the Teton Range to the west. This is one of the seriously pretty places in America, and in the last scene with Joey, Shane rides west, directly toward Grand Teton Peak. This spot is about 30 miles from the South Entrance to Yellowstone, and so it’s just a short drive north to Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake.

      Wiki: “The final scene, in which the wounded Shane explains to a distraught Joey why he has to leave (“There’s no living with a killing”), was a moving moment for the entire cast and crew, except Brandon deWilde. “Every time Ladd spoke his lines of farewell, deWilde crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, making Ladd laugh. Finally, Ladd called to the boy’s father, ‘Make the kid stop or I’ll beat him over the head.’ DeWilde behaved.”

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        1. Danny, thanks for that. Shane is one of my favorite westerns, and while the names Van Heflin and Jack Palance come to mind easily, I never could remember Joey’s real name.
          We read the novel (probably abridged) when I was at school, aged about 12.
          From that day to this, whenever I go into a saloon, I always sit with my back to the wall and with a clear view of the entrance.

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  4. It doesn’t require peerless googling to discover that no. 16 is Brook Street, Dundee. Still, I thought that Munguinites might like to see what it looks like today, so here’s the closest I can get to that view on Google Maps Street View: https://is.gd/4T2No8.

    It’s in the Blackness area of the city – here it is on Google Maps, centred on the Co-op on the left: https://is.gd/AHI4ns.

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      1. If that’s actually Polepark Street rather than Brook Street, I stand corrected. There are rather a lot of streets in Dundee that change their names a certain points along their length, and it’s not always clear to me exactly where the cut-off points are.

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        1. It’s the junction of both, so we are both correct. 🙂
          My granda used to call that area ‘the burn’ though, due to the Scourin Burn that used to flow there. Now underground, but there is a secret entrance to get down to is.

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              1. Indeed. Bourn or bourne, a stream, particularly the kind of intermittent streams that flow on chalk downs. The cognate in German is Brunnen, as in Schönbrunn, the Hapsburgs’ summer palace in Vienna (whose water came from an artesian well). I guess they decided they could dispense with the extra syllable at the end for good and sufficient reasons, but German is not a language I know at all well, so I’m not going to get into it.

                However, the word “bourn[e]” can also mean a limit, a boundary, from French “borne” – a limit, a boundary, a terminal (as in a battery terminal). It has a variety of senses in French. My dictionaries tell me that “bourn[e]” can also mean a destination, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it, heard it or used it in that way.

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  6. The locomotive is the Highland Railway Jones Goods, first 4-6-0 in UK, I think from 1894. It took part in the events of the early 60’s when all the old preserved locos from the pre-grouping companies were used for a final flourish before becoming museum pieces. Can anyone name the colour, at least as officially described ?
    Slow as a mangle but then it’s 50 years older than I am and I’m not exactly quick.

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    1. Cairnallochy, the colour was described as ‘improved engine green’ but is, as can be seen, a shade of yellow! HR103 can still be seen at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum of Transport – a place well worth a visit.

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    2. Well done, Cairnallochy. Spot-on, except that HR evdently called it the ‘Big Goods’ class, maybe modesty on the part of David Jones who was the company’s Locomotive Superintendent and largely responsible for the design. Other users happily called it the Jones Goods.

      The livery as described in my History of Railways: “The livery he [Jones] applied to HR locomtives was one of the most elaborate of Victorian colour schemes, the basic pale green livery lined in white, black, and red and edged with a darker green, while the tender underframeand running board were a shade of red-brown.”

      The dominant colour in the photo appears to me to be more of a golden yellow but that’s the official description. Surprisingly, the small HR was the first to introduce this type of 4-6-0 design that was to become one of the most common in Britain for passenger and goods traffic. He HofR adds that Jones was strongly influenced by a Scottish locomotive design for Indian railways that had first appeared in 1880. The picture is dated 1894 but Jones’s 4-6-0s were still going right up to 1940 when the last was withdrawn.

      Slow, yes, but the design was a compromise of coping with steep gradients and the nature of HR traffic – enough reasonable speed for passenger work but must-have strength to haul heavy goods cargo as well, especially on these Highland gradients.

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    2. The genius who made a mail order catalogue out of toilet quality paper, first you read it, then you wipe your bum with it.
      For some reason it sticks in your mind…

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      1. Conan……Yes! Once a mainstay of every outhouse in rural America, people complained when Sears Roebuck started printing their catalog on glossy paper, which wasn’t nearly as functional for the purpose.

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  8. The Hoover ad reminds me of another 1950s sales pitch I came across recently. It’s for a product called the K&A Mop Bucket and features a sketch of a good-looking, well-groomed woman. Headline: “A gift Mother will appreciate 365 days of the year!”

    Copy goes on: “See Mother’s eyes gleam at this labour-saving gift. She’ll thank you every day of the year!

    “The K&A is better because it CAN’T SCRATCH, CAN’T TIP OVER, or leave HEAT MARKS. And it’s built to LAST A LIFETIME. Add years to Mother’s life – give her the WORLD’S BEST mop bucket – the K&A MOP BUCKET. 5 YEARS’ GUARANTEE.”

    In the bottom corner there’s a sketch of the famous bucket with a mop placed in it and a note attached: “To Mother – with love from the family.”

    A mop and bucket for ma’s birthday? Were advertising copywriters exceptionally brave back then? Or were things just very different? Try it today and you’d get a K&A Mop Bucket over your head. And I recoil immediately at the thought of what she’d do with the mop. Owwww!

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    2. I see it time and again in these old ads, when I suppose women did all the housework and were, perhaps, grateful for a labour saving device.

      But to modern day ears, it does sound really weird.

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      1. He could certainly sing a bit in his youth. Choirboy looks and voice to match. Trained singer, I’d say, judging by breathing technique and easy handling of high-tenor sequences.

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  10. No.1 is the new “Queen Class” on the Caledonian Sleeper. With complimentary Foot Warmers, Beef Tea, Claret and Anchovy Sandwiches!

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    1. That’s it! I was wondering if they got it out of storage for Oor Wullie when he went to Embra to see the the How Now Brown Vow last week. It was the West Coast Lines’ Royal Train and in use from 1869 to 1941- presumably with upgrades along the way, although that bed doesn’t look too comfy. Looks as if it could do with a ‘lee-cloth’ as we had in my yachtie days to stop you falling out when changing tack.

      Maybe this is why Queen Vicky commanded that the speed of her train (this one) be limited to 40mph. She also ordered the installation of toilets as she could not put up with having to wait for the next stop and having to get out at the station. Eddie VII made his contribution by adding electric lights, and Geordie V resisted livery change, insisting on retaining the two colours of the old LNWR when LMS was the operator. Geordie VI was also a regular user but I can’t find any record of any changes he might have made.

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      1. I’m sure Kate Middleclass would want something more luxurious with tartan sheets just to show that she was bang on with the people..

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  11. Pic 1 – A sleeping compartment on what was almost certainly a Royal train and likely a British one – Victorian/ Edwardian era? A cut-above even today’s sleeper compartments😀

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    1. That reminded me of an incident from my distant past when I worked in an office where one function was supply of stationery, pens, pencils etc. It was decided to have a new system with requisition books, and a draft was made up for the printers.

      At the time, we had a student working there. He left before the requisition books came back from the printers. We discovered that he had amended the print order to insert an extra line to the instructions printed on the cover:

      “As bureaucracy is a self-sustaining mechanism, new requisition books can be obtained by submitting a requisition.”

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    3. I wondered why she was there at all and what was the reasoning of the creative director behind the ad? She’s not particularly phwoar! quality nor that she could be an Aero devotee. (‘Eat Aero and look like me’ ad hook.) Can’t see punters rushing off to buy large quantitues of Aero on the strength of this. Perhaps our resident choc expert can help. Marcia?

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  13. Wonderful! And thank you Andi and Marcia – yet another example of the joys of MNR and the endless education of/for Munguinites. I can now see why no ‘phwoar factor’. No need. Elegance and glamour were more than enough in that post-war era of real austerity. The Aero Girls were forerunners of the Tennents Girls we loved so much on 60s and 70s beer cans.

    But what a story the Aeros make – and Pamela Synge with the same ear-rings at 93! Singer, dancer, artist, model, musician… what stories she could tell, and what a tragedy these memories are now inaccessible. AOY always makes my day and today’s has been underlined and written in bold caps. Thanks again, Andi and Marcia.

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  14. NO 13, Doncaster Corporation, AEC Regal III with Roe body (39 seat), new in 1953.
    !
    Further info courtesy of Doncaster Omnibus & Light Railway Society (DO&LRS)
    “Number 22 was one of a trio of 30-foot long AEC Regal III’s purchased specially for the jointly operated Doncaster to Sheffield route. Numbers 22/23/24 were amongst the last Regal III’s built They had 9.6 litre engines and D162 crash gearboxes and were sprightly performers.
    When the Sheffield route was turned over to double-deck operation (with mechanically similar AEC Regent III 9613A’s) the Regal III’s were rebuilt at Roe’s carriage works, at Crossgates in Leeds, to allow for one-man operation. Number 22 was thus rebuilt in March 1958.
    Number 22 was withdrawn from service in October 1965 but was reinstated as a PSV in December 1965. After being withdrawn for a second time, in October 1972, number 22 was placed on permanent loan by the Transport Department to DO&LRS, who had already adopted it some time previously as a special events vehicle. In the early days of its preservation it was rallied far and wide, travelling to the south coast and to eastern Scotland.
    Initial restoration (by the Transport Department) was to the Bamford cherry red livery but it has now been restored to the scheme carried in 1958 when it was rebuilt as a one-man bus.
    In 2005 the ownership of number 22 passed outright to DOLRS.
    !
    Nearside view after having been rebuilt for one-man operation.

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/XZRf6m5_NXfU07BfnLiYQleJTGtdV5gPPZAQVxB09wpXBRvvvbA8eVXyBqjUNHVNEEI2yDdlbehEh40HTLfbIliPFbfTx1kTsk8SdLNDnnFRXv3cOtEhgqOC62jbntc7I_MHlg

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    1. It’s a nice colour for a bus. Reminds me of the old Edinburgh buses.

      Dundee’s were green, which is a good colour too, then they changed them to blue (hideous) and then, would you believe, white, which soon turned dirty cream.

      Now they are green again, thank heavens.

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