Commuting in the heat fifty years ago

[whole diary]

[Marlburian]

I've never liked the heat, and advancing years and health factors have made the last few days unpleasant. I did not enjoy a 25-minute bus trip across Reading on Wednesday afternoon. Then I thought back to my year of commuting from Tilehurst to Paddington in 1973-74: those eight-seater compartments (four passengers facing four more) and a tiny window that was opened by tugging two handles and hoping it would "give". I often caught the 1718 home, and the train waiting in Paddington always seemed to have all the windows closed. And the rough upholstery that seemed to be of horsehair and had a stale odour ...

I always headed for a non-smoker, believing that the smoking compartments were hell-holes with the additional stench of stale tobacco.Even walking past one was unpleasant.

Though I guess that it was even worse in the days of steam ...

[stuving]

Hot weather was seen as pretty much just "one of those things" you had to put up with. It killed people, but then so did lots of other things before penicillin and modern safety laws. Of course this would never excuse dressing for the heat as we (some of us) do now! This clip is from July 1903 (it goes on the report several inquests on other deaths).

[broadgage]

I too dislike the heat. I would recommend the purchase and use of an air conditioner. These may be purchased from many suppliers for about £200 to about £300. Running costs are about 35 pence an hour.
Be certain to get a proper compressor type air conditioner that refrigerates the room air and expels hot air to the outside via a window or other opening.
Cheaper alternatives that claim to work by evaporating water are almost useless in UK^▸ (United Kingdom) conditions and should not be considered.

[Marlburian]

As it happens, I've just had the aircon condenser on my Ford Fiesta replaced. I gather that it should be used most of the time, but being old-school I seldom feel the need for it and at lowish speeds have the windows wound slightly down - until the recent hot weather, when I discovered there was only some luke-warm air emerging. Turned out that there was a hole in the condenser.

The bus trip I mentioned in my first post was to the Royal Berkshire Hospital. I arrived in very good time and was happy to wait in a  cool room with the air-conditioning humming away - it was more soporific than some of those "relaxing" tapes of music, waves or rain.

[TaplowGreen]

I too dislike the heat. I would recommend the purchase and use of an air conditioner. These may be purchased from many suppliers for about £200 to about £300. Running costs are about 35 pence an hour.
Be certain to get a proper compressor type air conditioner that refrigerates the room air and expels hot air to the outside via a window or other opening.
Cheaper alternatives that claim to work by evaporating water are almost useless in UK^▸ (United Kingdom) conditions and should not be considered.

Air conditioning is terrible for the environment, surprised at you suggesting it Broadgage with your green credentials!

I would suggest employing another punkah wallah instead! 

[broadgage]

I limit my use of air conditioning, so as to limit both the expense and the harm to the environment.
Not convinced that it is any worse than heating, with electricity or with fossil fuels, both of which I avoid.
The need for air conditioning can be reduced by wearing summer clothing, I do this.

[Mark A]

As it happens, I've just had the aircon condenser on my Ford Fiesta replaced.

Being fairly recently inspired to look out how a vehicle air conditioning compressor works, it was good to find the article on the following link - which happens to show the disassembly of the a/c compressor from a ford fiesta (and shared with many other vehicles). Delightfully elegant in its function, especially the way it varies the amount of power that it will take from the drive belt so that when in use it can avoid being the sort of on-off system that isn't kind to anything - and it has a bit of built-in protection against low coolant pressure for good measure.

Mark

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/266711-anatomy-car-ac-compressor-clutch-variable.html

[grahame]

I limit my use of air conditioning, so as to limit both the expense and the harm to the environment.

We are have been using a lot of aircon in the last few days ... are we harming the environment?




Before you answer  ....





Our solar panels are generating more electricity than we can use, even with the aircon running, and a battery backup sees us through the night ...





The option of keeping cooler by walking around naked is more open to us this summer than last, but means a quick grab of clothes is someone comes to the door.

[broadgage]

A/C powered from the grid is not that bad as during the times when it is needed, there is generally plenty of solar energy being fed into the grid, and the potential for more.

A/C powered from your own solar panels results in almost no harm.

With a warming climate demand for A/C both in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) and overseas is increasing, it is relatively easy to supply this demand as there is at least an approximate correlation between A/C demand and solar energy production.

[Marlburian]

I glimpsed an article the other day that suggested that domestic air-conditioning may be essential/desirable in the future.

As well as recalling the "joys" of commuting half-a-century ago, I'm also trying to remember how I coped when my cars didn't have A/C, just a heater/cooler. I think the last one that didn't was in the late 1990s, and in the last century we've had a few hotter days than recently, not least in 1976. And IRRC my first car, an Austin Countryman (1963-71) had nasty plastic seats that could get very hot.

[eXPassenger]

Going down this rabbit hole.
I remember when the cars my parents bought had heaters as factory fitted optional extras.
We also use a VW T5 camper van which has no air conditioning.  When we are in Spain or southern France we keep the windows open.

[Chris from Nailsea]

When I was driving local delivery vans (I'm retired now) I just drove around with the cab windows down.  That saved on my fuel consumption, just because every time I got out of the van, all of that otherwise expensively generated air-conditioned air would have escaped. 

[TaplowGreen]

I limit my use of air conditioning, so as to limit both the expense and the harm to the environment.

The option of keeping cooler by walking around naked is more open to us this summer than last, but means a quick grab of clothes is someone comes to the door.

Curtains - open or closed? 

[johnneyw]

.....nasty plastic seats that could get very hot.

Arrgh, the bane of our lives in the 70s...the smell of hot plastic seats and trims when sat in the back seats of the car would make my my brother and myself feel particularly unwell on long car journeys with our parents.

[Marlburian]

Returning to my 1970s commuting: on one occasion there were six of us office-worker types in an eight-seater compartment when a superior foreign lady looked in and said "Is this the best there is?" - and walked on down the corridor, leaving us - me - anyway feeling inferior.

And there was the very nice young blonde lady I'd met socially and who had digs a hundred yards from the station, in Carlisle Road. Occasionally we would catch the same train from Tilehurst and on one occasion she led me down the corridor looking for a compartment with spare seats. As luck would have it, it was a smoker - as I mentioned above,  I disliked the smell.

By then, after a year of commuting to Whitehall, I'd been lucky to get a sideways move to an office in central Reading, and a year or so later a new post was created there at a higher grade - which I got. It entitled me to first-class travel, and I'm trying to recall where the first-class seats were - in an "open" carriage perhaps?