Love this idea! There isn’t right now… but there could be!

I dunno why this is so fun, maybe the nostalgia of a lost internet era.

Maybe because of something else listed in the About page 🤭🤭🤭

Ha! I wasn’t following you, it’s a coincidence… honest!

Well, this just put a huge smile on my face, FYI. Thank you!

Screenshot of a mock-up road sign from the Simulator, showing a motorway gantry sign with Welsh translations for each place name. "Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, A470" are on the left and "Cardiff (W), Bridgend M4" are on the right.

The M4 and M48 have just landed in the Simulator - essential Sunday night clicking for fans of South Wales, obscure motorway trivia and simulated road signs. Jump in at sim.roads.org.uk

Spectacular as always. Wondering if the unopened jar of Tesco cornichons in the fridge will fetch a premium on Vinted.

Birmingham - Preston - Penrith - Carlisle Motorway M6 : Penrith By-Pass Section : Official Opening : 7 November 1968. The brochure issued by the Agent Authority - Cumberland County Council - for the official opening of the Penrith By-Pass section of the M6 Motorway that took place on 7 November 1968. The even seems to have had a relatively low key official at the event; R.C. Brown MP, a Joint Parliamentary Secretary in the Mininstry of Transport. This section of motorway saw construction commence on 1 November 1966 with a Contract period of two years and three months and it appears that they achieved the works in just under two years. The Contract included the section of the M6 from a temporary junction with a realigned A6 at Hackthorpe in Westmorland and running north to the west of Penrith to another temporary finishing point at Catterlen; from here the B5305 became the link east to the existing A6 at Stoneybeck. Later the northern section onwards to Carlisle and the Border would be completed along with the southern Shap section. The work included the two level junction seen on the cover where realigned sections of the A66 and A592 creating a southern by-pass to the town met the Motorway. Interestingly the brochure mentions that a bypass to Penrith was first mooted in 1930; a pre-war traffic figure of 4,000 through vehicles (per 16 hours) had risen to 25,000 per 24 hours by 1962 and, when the M6 opened, these figures had risen to 30,000 vehicles per 24 hours. All this traffic passed directly through Penrith's relatively small town centre where the main street was the A6 trunk road, the main West Coast road link between England and Scotland. The brochure gives details of the construction work, including the various bridges that included two major crossings of the West Coast Main Line railway; one of the bridges mentioned here, at Clifton, has just been replaced in a major project to manage a now life expired structure.

The brochure for the Official Opening of the Penrith By-Pass Section of the M6 Motorway on 7 November 1968; an isolated section when completed awaiting the Shap section to the south & onwards to Carlisle in the North. @roads.org.uk @sabre-roads.org.uk @showmeasign.online

↘️ flic.kr/p/2s6B7m8

Come this weekend, some of you will be taking to the motorway! Why not tee up
MJT Motorways with @jasonhazeley.bsky.social ready for those long stretches of grey.

With any luck I’ll be back on the M40.

Potentially one from every decade there!

Screenshot of a graphic from the Simulator, showing a Smart Motorway gantry sign at junction 6 of the M6, Spaghetti Junction.

The M6 has just arrived on the Simulator, ready for you to take a virtual drive to Carlisle (or Rugby). I've also added the M69 so you can get to and from the north when you reach the M1. Just open the Simulator to give it a spin: sim.roads.org.uk

Leeds was full of these when I was a kid, all painted the same muddy brown. You could always spot them because the post was so much thicker than it needed to be, stepped on the way up, and the outreach bracket was hung from a diagonal brace. Some tilted back with the weight of the wires removed.

The forever bottleneck, part 1 The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.

You can read the full story about the M4 in West London - without brick-related anecdotes but with a whole lot more trivia - starting with the first part here: roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-foreve... 5/5

Photograph of a view along the wall of the Chiswick Flyover showing the taper down where the ramp used to be, highlighted by different types of mortar. Photo from Google Streetview.

It didn’t work. The bricks matched OK, but the mortar did not. Sixty years on you can still see where the wall used to taper down to the ground when it formed a ramp. 4/5

At their insistence, and at some cost, the Ministry of Transport stored a large number of bricks nearby so that they would weather at the same rate, and then used them to extend the walls upwards when the time came. This pleased the Royal Fine Art Commission no end. 3/5

The Royal Fine Art Commission were deeply worried about this, because it would mean putting brand new bricks on top of bricks that had weathered for five years. 2/5

Things that didn’t fit into my recent M4 posts, #1: when the Chiswick Flyover was built it was known the western ramp was temporary and its brick walls would be extended upwards to support the road at its final upper level. 🧵 1/5

I think the tower is Barratt now isn’t it? Doesn’t have quite the same ring!

Photograph of a road viaduct under construction, with beams being lifted into place to form the deck. An array of sliproads cross up and down between the top and bottom decks.

Black and white photograph of the Chiswick Flyover and Great West Road with work in progress to build foundations for the M4's viaduct.

Black and white photograph looking up at the Brentford Viaduct under construction. An apparatus called the "octopus" - a sort of large crane - stands on top of the incomplete structure and is winching huge concrete beams up from a lorry on the road below.

Some pictures from the construction of the M4 Brentford Viaduct circa 1963. On Friday I posted part 2 of my history of this pioneering, highly experimental project that got so much right - and one very important thing very wrong. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-foreve...

That’s amazing! Perhaps faring better in a warmer climate?

Collyhurst Road, junction with Eggington St, in Manchester captured by the Corporation's official photographer in 1964; the black & white image shows a marvellous traffic sign "Bends of 1/2 Mile" and is on a striped post behind safety railings. Houses line the street and on the corner of Eggington Street on the left someone about to pop-in to the corner shop. In the distance a 'School' traffic sign with red triangle and a railway bridge spanning the road. A large mill chimney is in the distance.

Collyhurst Road, junction with Eggington St, in Manchester captured by the Corporation's official photographer in 1964; marvellous traffic sign & someone about to pop-in to the corner shop. @showmeasign.online @sabre-roads.org.uk @roads.org.uk #Manchester #1960s

(Image/Manchester Archives)

That’s astounding - you’d never guess what was there.

Thank you so much, I’m delighted by this!

That’s so good to know, thank you!

Some people, by the way, think an extended 6,000-word essay in two parts is too much detail for the story of one old motorway project.

Those people are not my target audience 🤷‍♂️

Graphic showing a red-coloured map of the M4 passing through West London, overlaid with the text "The forever bottleneck, part 2: The M4 in West London may have been bold and innovative, but if you've never built a motorway before you're bound to make some mistakes."

Just published, the second part of my deep dive into a surprisingly experimental road project - the M4 in West London, with its lane drop and associated permanent traffic jam. open.substack.com/pub/roadsorg...

A grey metal rectangular box with the City of London coat of arms shield on it (a red cross on a white background with a red sword pointing upwards in the top left quadrant). Above the shield is a hole where the arm of the street lighting would have been inserted. This probably dates from the 1970s.

A modern version - the box containing the operating gear of the lantern is now designed in the shape of the coat of arms shield itself (see description in previous image). Protruding from the top is a long decorated arm upon which the lantern would be positioned.

It’s Saturday Morning Municipal Street Lighting Nerd Club. The City of London has tended to affix much of its street lighting to buildings, and here are two examples of the kit it has used. I’m not sure the rather odd and ornate extension on the newer one on the right ever saw any action…

Also, if I can open a bank account on your banking app, I should be able to close it without visiting a branch.

I got a lot of stick for that at the time!

The forever bottleneck, part 1 The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.

The bus lane is long gone now, but the traffic jams aren't because the motorway still narrows down. Yesterday I published the first of a two-part series uncovering the secrets of the M4 between Chiswick and Langley, home to this unfixable bottleneck. 4/4 roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-foreve...

Black and white photograph showing a view along the Great West Road from above, with an unfinished motorway being built above the road and between industrial and suburban buildings.

Why does the M4 do that? There is a reason, and it involves engineers who had never designed a motorway before, a government Ministry that wasn't asking the right questions, and a project that was so full of experiments that one of its bold new ideas was bound to backfire. 3/4