Vintage

Just occasionally something will land in my inbox that will make me sit up and gasp. What you see below is a small selection from Alistair Bell’s A74 Project that he has recently published on Flickr (the photo sharing app). The A74 is the old Glasgow to Carlisle road that traverses the southern uplands. But for a short suburban section in Glasgow (Gorbals to Uddingston) it has entirely been upgraded to A74(M) or M74 (whatever the difference is). Alistair tells us:

“My childhood was spent travelling from Blackpool to Aviemore for skiing in winter and Lochinver and the Isle of Mull in the summer. I was always curious to see how the original A74 would have looked because of the many abandoned sections I could see along the 1960’s dual carriageway. I was too young to witness those upgrades, but I distinctly remember the A9 being upgraded in the late 1970’s. Many sections still had the original GPO trunk poles, with all the white and brown pots but only a single, thick cable running directly under the bottom cross-arms. The main thing I remember about the Isle of Mull were the GPO poles with all the dozens of wires attached and presumably still active.”

“This Flickr project is set in late 1958 (the summer was rubbish that year), it captures the route just before the dual carriageway upgrades began which means lots of telegraph poles of varying styles. I’m trying to be as accurate as possible with pole type and location, using historic public records, country surveyors, newspaper archives and online WCML photographs. There’s also a 1958 documentary called The Fish Run” https://youtu.be/R-S2k11_E8A

The photos, as the discerning may already have guessed, are AI generated. But if you know how AI works you’ll also know that is a fair chunk of work. And this is certainly a use for the tech that I approve of. You can see the rest of A74 Project here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCUors Look it up and be amazed. Much to tick the aficionados boxes here.