
6 minute read
Memories of an ex-Launton boy: Highways
And Byways
This month the ex-Launton Boy is shaken by hitting a pothole in his home town, and muses on his youthful experiences in Launton, where the village railway station offered an alternative to road travel. He is so lost in the past that he still thinks that Bicester North station is called by that name!
My God, how my vehicle suspension is still in one piece beats me. I kid you not, I hit a pothole earlier today that was so large and quite unexpected, I thought I was about to be swallowed up.
The state of our roads and footpaths these days leave an awful lot to be desired. They are absolutely disgusting and quite frankly, dangerous too. The very worse ones around here in the Medway Towns in Kent are in the town centres and in the streets of the local suburbs. I cannot remember the last time I saw roads being repaired of their potholes. I have driven over better quality unmade and unadopted roads.
What we do have at the moment is plenty of trenches being dug here in almost every other street with traffic diversions galore. If these are not to do with the laying of cable, they are the laying of new gas pipes.
Now there is something that seems not to have changed all that much, i.e. the digging up of roads and footpaths other than much of it today is done by using mechanical diggers.
Remember back in the day the size of the hole-digging crew? There was one on the pick-axe and another on the shovel. There was yet another operating the manual traffic stop/start sign and then the most important one, he who was constantly making the tea. And all of this was being overseen by the all-important (don’t get your hands dirty) foreman. Five men minimum to dig a hole with occasionally a sixth, just in case someone needed to be relieved!
And how is it that when the Gas Board come along to dig a hole, they fill it in when they have finished and make good the road surface, for the Water Board to come along and dig up exactly the same hole, then fill it in when they have finished, making good the road surface, only to be followed by the cable people digging up the exact same hole, etc., etc?
Would it be beyond the wit of man to get in touch with the local authority and collectively book a notifiable period for the road to be closed, the hole, once dug, being left open for each of the contractors to immediately follow on from each other, the last of which fills in the hole and makes good the road surface, thereby saving time and disruption?
And when travelling out on the highways and byways, how frustratingly annoying when coming across lengthy coned off areas, funnelling traffic into a single lane with a speed restriction that you cannot even reach because everything is nose to tail and when you get to the end of it, you discover not one single soul is actually there on site. Absolutely no work whatsoever is being carried out.
Going back to the potholes, quite apart from the damage being caused to cars and light goods vehicles, spare a thought for both motorcyclists and pedal cyclists who come an absolute cropper if they hit one of the nastier potholes, particularly at night when it is more difficult to read the road ahead - or worst of all in the dark and in the rain!
Now, on this I am sure my memory is not playing tricks, but back in the 1950’s/60’s as I recall, especially being a cyclist back then, cycling quite some distances from Launton for a young fourteen years old boy, to Princes Risborough in one direction and Didcot in the other, I do not recall roads being in the appalling condition they are in today. In fact I have some fond memories of seeing road repairs in and around Launton when the roads were nowhere near in the poor condition they are generally in today throughout the country.
The country roads in particular stand out in my memory, where the tar had been spread and the road chippings had been laid and the diesel rollers (steam rollers were no longer used for the purpose of rolling the highways), rolling the road surface flat, ensuring the chippingswere well embedded into the tar beneath.
I recall the lovely smell of the tar on a hot summer’s day and when a road had been thus treated, the temporary road signs instructing drivers to slow down due to temporary loose chippings that could fly up from the rear wheels of the vehicle in front, possibly damaging your windscreen or chipping the paintwork of your vehicle.
It was always a pleasure as I recall, cycling on a freshly made-up road. Back then of course, a significant amount of heavy freight was transported on the railways, where in my opinion it should be today. For those of you who are not originally from Launton or who were born long after the event, there was a time when Launton Station had its very own sidings, albeit only small.
In my book, branch lines should be restored where possible so that each town of any significant size could have its own sidings with a distribution depot. If they can do this sort of thing with ship containers going all round the world, they can do it with railways, whereby a shipment can be dropped off by a train at the relevant station/depot/sidings for collection and local distribution by light axle-weight vehicles, which would quite apart from anything else positive, improve the longevity of our road surfaces by removing or greatly reducing the need for and us of heavy goods vehicles on our roads.
It’s called, having an integrated transport policy, something which seemingly, we have never had. This idea would, in my mind, be far more beneficial and far reaching than the idea of HS2.
Of course, with Launton sadly having lost its railway station, that opportunity no longer exists, but when you look at the possibilities with Bicester on the old LMS (Oxford-Bletchley line), not the GWR (Bicester North), there was always the branch off the main line into the Army Ordnance Depot where the systems, civilian and military worked closely with each other very successfully. An ideal location for such a scheme if ever there was one!
It could be done, it should be done, but of course, it won’t be. In the meantime, our roads will continue to receive their constant battering from heavy axle-weighted goods vehicles and with local authorities being starved of adequate funding for so many years, our potholes will continue to be a danger to us and our highways will make us look like a third world country.
Keep healthy and stay SAFE! Oh, and try to avoid the worst potholes! TonyJeacock, MInstRE | The ex-Launton Boy | September 2024