Glasgow IN COLOUR pre 1980

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Postby skintobalinto » Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:04 am

johnnyanglia wrote:Amazing photos. I think i will be another one buying the book. I look at the trams and think "Yeah fair enough". But what really amazes me is the cars. They are absolute works of art. The 50's/60's Fords and Vauxhalls are the epitome of brash flash. They really look incredible.



Absolutly right, I think cars from this era looked great, they all looked different and had character, but what I remember about being in cars from the 60's is the smell, especially on a hot summer day then the awfull pain as yor legs are burnt on the hot leather seats - is this nostalgia or a leather thing?

BTW I love the photos, I will have to get a copy of this book - Thanks
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Postby cumbo » Sun Jun 20, 2004 2:40 pm

Can't wait to see the rest. Not much changed on the south side ones
This book has been find of the year!
The Lauders photo is a bit strange? Must be following the strange traddition of renaming public houses with there original names?
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Postby johnnyanglia » Sun Jun 20, 2004 4:01 pm

The old cars still smell that way !. A lovely smell of leather/PVC and engine oil. And yes your legs do stick to them on hot day particularly the ones with PVC interiors which are far more pain inducing than leather interiors.
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Postby DMcNay » Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:07 pm

johnnyanglia wrote:Amazing photos. I think i will be another one buying the book. I look at the trams and think "Yeah fair enough". But what really amazes me is the cars. They are absolute works of art. The 50's/60's Fords and Vauxhalls are the epitome of brash flash. They really look incredible. The fashion are amazing too. One of my deep regrets is that it is no longer common place to be able to wear a suit on a daily basis without being accused of being a copper or bouncer !. However i think we have got to remember that the past was not too great. Yeah we had cars, fashion and beautiful building to admire but i think people had a less "worldly" outlook. Bigotry and intolerance were much more commonplace. For all its faults the age we live in generally speaking is more "liberal" and we do appreciate the past more even if it is only little digital snaps held in cyberspace.


Someone mentioned to me last week "If there was ever a Golden Age, we're living in it right now." Never heard a truer word spoken.
Too few hours in the day.
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Re: More Transport Pics

Postby The_Clincher » Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:26 am

Sauchiehall Street at the junction with Renfield Street - fairly familiar today with Lauders and the Pavilion still there, but what the hell was The Bottle Boutique??

I am reliably informed that "The Bottle Boutique" was an off-sales belonging to Lauders :wink:
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Postby escotregen » Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:53 am

The shot of the tram at Battlefield Cross reminded me of a story told to me by an old guy that starting chatting with me at the old Queens pub in Queens Street (alas, a private shop long ago bought out by a theme bar operator). The old guy had been a tram driver and the Cross was used to turn the trams around when they were on the short return to city centre run. It so happened that on a certain day in 1939 he halted his tram at the Cross when onto it strode a couple of policeman, passengers and driver were curious/apprehensive as war with Nazi Germany had been declared that morning. the polis came up to him, confirmed his name and then advised him he had been called up and he was to get to Maryhill Barracks forthwith. The old guy in the pub just 'happened to mention this' as a wee aside in another story. It was a sort of ...."oh and another thing I joined the war that afternoon".
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Postby johnnyanglia » Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:19 am

Excellent story. Its these little gems that are really rewarding. On a vaguely related theme. The Bridgeton billy boys had a long running fued with their catholic rivals The Norman conks who lived in Norman St in Dalmarnock. One day in 1942 the Norman conks to rile the billy boys flew a swastika flag from one of the tenements. The flag reportedly flew for three days before being removed. It would be pretty mad if something like that happened now but back then during the war i imagine that would be regarded as sedition or treason and you would have had the weight of the law on you in no time.
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Postby john-g » Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:40 pm

Good pics! Just ordered a copy from Amazon:).

The shots showing scenes which are recognisable, but in some way altered are best IMO. Scenes lost forever in the seventies just make me angry.

I must say though this whole fascination with trams is a complete mystery to me, I mean when you've seen one tram you've seen them all, although I must admit the old Victorian models were a nice design! I'm betting there are hundreds of colour shots lying in peoples attics depicting steam trains passing over the Clyde, the old subway and stations before "modernisation" and the old st enoch's station.

That said I can't believe the only people interested in colour photography back then were rail enthusiasts, there must have been just as many people interested in architecture, streetscape and skylines surely?

Colour skyline shots of Glasgow in the 30's/40's would be priceless.
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Postby glasgowgub » Wed Jun 23, 2004 4:47 pm

Theres a couple of pre sixties pics here -


http://www.glesga.ukpals.com/Tramsport/BusTrolley.htm Not sure of the location though.Can anyone help with that?
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Postby escotregen » Wed Jun 23, 2004 6:12 pm

Glasgowgub, on your first 'big' photograph of a 105 trolleybus; I think from early childhood memories that it's travelling up Firhill Road towards the junction with Northpark Street where the teminus was. If I'm right, the Jags ground is on the side of the road just outside the left hand side of the scene.
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Postby john-g » Wed Jun 23, 2004 8:44 pm

The first colour pic shows Govan cross! You can recognise the large red tenement building which is still there. The tenements on the right were bulldozed in the seventies to allow the council to create more wasteland for the cultivation of weeds. :(
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Postby escotregen » Thu Jun 24, 2004 2:35 pm

Glasgub I have a definite location for you on the photograph of the single decker trolleybus. (I think it's a number 108?) The location is Paisley Road West... just behind the bus is the old Rogano pub (this is the posh Govan version, I think there's another not so high class one in Exchange Square :wink: ). I'm advised the old Rogano moved down the road to its present location. There is a junction just about visible beyond the Rogano, I think this is Admiralty Street or Road.
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More trams...

Postby gap74 » Sat Jun 26, 2004 11:17 am

The last wee batch I'll scan from the aforementioned The Twilight Years of the Glasgow Tram. As I mentioned with the earlier pics, and as suggested by the title, these all date from about 1960-1962.

As for why it seems to be only transport pics from this era that are in colour - I dunno, are the wee men from those days who were fascinated by trams and buses any different from us wee men (and gals!) who are fascinated with tunnels and derelict buildings? And just like those of us nowadays who come to this forum to feed our mildly eccentric cravings for abandoned hospitals and the like, you tend to find that such wee men from the past were fairly technologically savvy. They didn't have the net, but they did have colour photography, which I imagine was still fairly expensive to do back then. Just my thoughts on the matter, but then I happen to like the look of old trams and buses too, so I ain't complaining!

So, without further ado....

By the way, the next lot of photos I have are from a Douglas Corrance book, whom someone was asking about recently in another thread. They're from 1981, but that's close enough to pre-1980 to me!

St Georges X, with the old Empress Theatre in the background. Opened in 1913 as The West End Playhouse, it changed it's name to the Empress Variety Theatre and Picture Playhouse the year after. It suffered a bit of a fire in 1956, changed it's name to The New Metropole in 1962 and was eventually bought by Jimmy Logan. Unfortunately, the blight of the M8 and the redevelopment work isolated the theatre, and attempts to redevelop it were met by constant planning refusals, so it lay derelict for a spell before being demolished in 1987.

Balmore Road, by the old Vogue Cinema. Was up here myself a few days ago to look at the condition of the place, noticed that the bridge in the background appears to have long since gone.

A bit dark on the left, but for me, this is a great shot of Sauchiehall Street. I walk along this section every day on my way to and from work, and to see people doing likewise 40 years previously is fascinating. The cinema on the right is now Blanket nightclub, and the fabled Grand Hotel at Charing Cross is in the distance, awaiting the M8 to come crashing through and flatten it!


Along practically outside the Grand Hotel now, the tram is turning up what apepars to be St Georges Rd.

Back in the city centre, this is Renfield Street at the junction with St Vincent Street.

George Square from Queen Street, with that lovely arch in the background. Thanks goodness a hideous hotel extension now hides that from view....

A slightly closer shot to really hammer home what a good thing it is that the hotel extension was built there.

Finally, a quite emotive shot of what purports to be Wilmots temporary scrapyard, somewhere in Partick - anywere near where the scrapyard by the Kelvin was until recently I wonder? I'm guessing that this was after most, if not all, of the tram routes had been withdrawn.

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Re: More trams...

Postby james73 » Sat Jun 26, 2004 5:42 pm

gap74 wrote:Image
Balmore Road, by the old Vogue Cinema. Was up here myself a few days ago to look at the condition of the place, noticed that the bridge in the background appears to have long since gone.


Great pics. That bridge over Balmore Road carried a freight line into Ruchill
Hospital. The line branched off the Possil to Rutherglen line around about
the area below the bridge at Ashfield Road. It crossed over the existing line
to Maryhill near the site of the new Possil station - the brick abutments of
this bridge are still in place and can be viewed from Broadholm Street.

I'm fairly shure the bridge in that photo survived in situ until the early
1980's, although I could be wrong about that.



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Postby Ronnie » Sat Jun 26, 2004 7:41 pm

gap74 - the picture of George Square from Queen Street reminded me of something I've been trying to remember for ages ... the name of the "coffee room" on the left hand side. The sign says "Raleigh Coffee Room". I don't know when it closed (I think it's the classy pizza place now), but I remember going to the coffee room a long time ago. It was full of old fashioned business types, in for a coffee before 9am, at lunchtime and at some kind of "playtime" they had around 3pm. They were in pin-stripes and bowlers, reading the financial papers. It was a continuation of the coffee shop in the Exchange at the Cross, which moved to the Royal Exchange in 1830 and was having its last breath in a basement in Queen Street in the 1970s. A wee bit of Glasgow business history that refused to go quietly. I assume the clietele were stockbrokers. (By the way it's an office block, not a hotel, that blocks the view of the station arch.)

emmar - tell your dad not to give up his day job !!!
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