Hello to all you old lads out there i was looking on here and i saw a post motorway 1970 now this is part of a short section about 5 or 6 miles long that ran from the old White city stadium to just passed the London end of the A5 so i thought i would ask if any old and venerated drivers where other motorways ended the year i started my driving career i know the M2 ended where it still do,se but the M4 ended at Maidenhead ithink that the M1 ended at Nottingham but not to sure about that M45 went where it still go,es but i dont think that the M6 was open all the way or the M5 i know that the Preston by pass as it was called then was open but somewhere in the back of my head i seem to remember doing a load of toys in a 30 foot box from tilbury to North Wales and using the A5 from junction 18 off the M1 also remember my first Scotch went up the A1 and back took me 4 days tipping in Carron reloading Cawthorn@Sinclairs at Birtly with Caterpiller tracks for Sweden via Tilbury.
If you go into map section on this website then click on the road you want info on there is a timeline tab which shows you when each section
was built. Motorway Database | Roads.org.uk
Thanks acab for the info but posted this subject to try and get some of us older drivers to come up with some different stories sometimes it gets a bit to heavy on here.
The m6 used to finish at j12[gaily]no spagetti flyover.If you were going london way you had to use the a5 down to crick to rejoin the m1.The m1 then finished just after the services nr watford [forgot name]and a sliproad long since closed took you onto the north circular rd at its junc with the a1 and the a41.
regards dave.
dafdave:
The m6 used to finish at j12[gaily]no spagetti flyover.If you were going london way you had to use the a5 down to crick to rejoin the m1.The m1 then finished just after the services nr watford [forgot name]and a sliproad long since closed took you onto the north circular rd at its junc with the a1 and the a41.
regards dave.
I seem to recall it was the M10 and you went onto the A1 before joining the north circular and I think it went down to Mill Hill later but it is a fair time since and the brain is a wee bit frazzled now
cheers Johnnie
I remember the makeshift junction at Goole before they built the Ouse bridge and the traffic backing up onto the motorway if Boothferry Bridge was closed for ships. I also remember all the cafes on the old road until you could reach the beginning of the M62 near Wakefield. The final section was concrete and I drove a Haulamatic dumptruck instead of going to school 
sammyopisite:
dafdave:
The m6 used to finish at j12[gaily]no spagetti flyover.If you were going london way you had to use the a5 down to crick to rejoin the m1.The m1 then finished just after the services nr watford [forgot name]and a sliproad long since closed took you onto the north circular rd at its junc with the a1 and the a41.
regards dave.I seem to recall it was the M10 and you went onto the A1 before joining the north circular and I think it went down to Mill Hill later but it is a fair time since and the brain is a wee bit frazzled now
cheers Johnnie
Yes mate you could go that way but if you carried on to the end of the m1past scratchwood services[remembered the name now]you came off on the sliproad i said before.However i stand to be corrected because as you say its a long time ago and prob. my memorys going as well,cheers sammy.
regards dave.
used to go with me dad early 70’s,didnt it end at the old argos and the slip went around the back of it onto the a1
curnock:
used to go with me dad early 70’s,didnt it end at the old argos and the slip went around the back of it onto the a1
Dont remember the argos but there was a major car body repair w/shop on your left as you entered the sliproad.
regards dave.
dafdave:
curnock:
used to go with me dad early 70’s,didnt it end at the old argos and the slip went around the back of it onto the a1Dont remember the argos but there was a major car body repair w/shop on your left as you entered the sliproad.
regards dave.
cant remember if it was an argos at the time but remember it years later it was an argos
The M1 ended at what is now junction 2 i think you came off the motorway under a tunnel which joined the A1 300 yards and you came to where the A41 and A1 split to follow the A1 you climbed up the side of the slip road that headed north up the M1 follow ing the A1 south after 3 sets of lights you then hit the north cicular road the right at second lights onto Fallendon way which took you to the top of the archway and North ,East and South east London was your oyster.
phil the book:
The M1 ended at what is now junction 2 i think you came off the motorway under a tunnel which joined the A1 300 yards and you came to where the A41 and A1 split to follow the A1 you climbed up the side of the slip road that headed north up the M1 follow ing the A1 south after 3 sets of lights you then hit the north cicular road the right at second lights onto Fallendon way which took you to the top of the archway and North ,East and South east London was your oyster.
thats what i said !!
M1 started at the M45 and ended at the M10, the stretch to Scratchwood was added later there was a bit to J18 added very soon after, M45 is as it was then apart from the new junction for Daventry, in the early days Jaguar used to test there cars along it.
M5 ended at Tewkesbury for awhile and whilst we’re on about motorways why is there, and has been as far as I can recall always roadworks on the M50
In 1967 I didn’t really know where the M1 ended, just that it was somewhere “down south” (below Sheffield). What I knew was that they had been building it through our area for a couple of years, and it was a real playground for us. I lived alongside the rock cutting between junctions 37 and 38, and me and my mates used to get cab rides with a couple of contractors. My mate rode with an Irishman who had a Commer 2-pop, about twelve years old and battered to hell, but he used to polish the cab every night! I often rode with a Trinidadian called George in a Bedford S tipper with a Neville body and home-made greedy boards. These old wagons came straight from the scrapyards nearby - if they ran, they were put to work. They didn’t last long, and when they broke, many of them were simply bulldozed in and buried. The Commer, a Costain Thames 15cwt van (hit by a tipper) and the mangled remains of a few other assorted vehicles are still there in the foundations. I went up after school one day to see George’s Bedford being lifted on to a flat wagon, it’s back broken just behind the cab. George said he was off to get something else, and sure enough, next day he had a Foden S18 , about 1950, short 8-wheeler with a high sided tipper body on. There was no passenger door, windscreen or mudguard, and it had seen better days, but it had a 2-stroke with a very loud exhaust, so I was more than happy. It had an alloy body and must have been grossly overloaded on every load, but it survived the ordeal and moved on to the next section along with George, who I never saw again.We were hauling rock from the crusher in the cutting southwards for about half a mile towards Barnsley to build up the embankment there, and Costain’s Euclids were going the other way towards Wakefield doing the same. There was a Bailey bridge taking the Huddersfield Road over the workings, and one of the groundworkers was run down and killed under this bridge. He’d let a Euclid go north, then set off to walk through when a southbound dumper got him, the driver unable to see him in the swirling dust. Costains tightened up on safety, and we were not let in the cabs for a while after. We used to nick the big polystyrene sheets they used for expansion joints in the bridges. They were about 8 foot by four, and about four inches thick. We used to take them down to the river, about four kids on each one, and bash lumps off each other’s rafts with sticks. Last man sailing won! One character I remember from this time was Paddy Burke, an Irishman who’d started on his own with one machine and by nothing more than bloody hard graft, was building up a plant business that eventually became a huge nationwide organisation as P J Burke (later M J Burke) Public Utilities. Paddy used to bring his daughter to meet the school bus in a Buick Riviera, a beautiful car. We’d lost some of our favourite playing spots to the motorway, watched it being built, and only a few days before it opened in the Autumn of 1968, my mate had just turned 16 and “borrowed” his brother’s BSA Rocket Gold Star and took me for a blast towards Wakefield - my first “ton”. One of Costain’s men tried to chase us in a Mini-Moke - no chance! Those little grey Mokes were everywhere on the site back then, Costains must have had the biggest fleet of them. Happy days…
Dieseldogsix:
and whilst we’re on about motorways why is there, and has been as far as I can recall always roadworks on the M50
Good question, my guess is to make it slightly less tedious. 