When I was a young lad in the early 70’s I spent as much time as I could on the road with my Dad. We lived in Hereford at the time, my Dad’s regular work was steel from Llanwern up to the Midlands. I remember in his ex- John Raymond Atki, 180 Gardner and 6speed DB gearbox, that if you needed 1st gear up Aylestone Hill (short but sharp) coming out of Hereford, then you had to bypass Frome’s Hill (long and just as sharp) on the way to Worcester, as Frome’s Hill was always 1 gear lower than Aylestone Hill.
I think I’ve read most - if not all of this thread, but I haven’t seen a mention of the Air Balloon -going up to Birdlip after leaving Gloucester. That’s quite a hill. I managed to scare myself down there in the early 90’s. I was pulling an Eric Mattheuws (from Veurne, ) bulker, loaded with apples for Bulmers in Hereford when I got a bit too confident going down the AIr Balloon. I was in 112 Scania, and as I left the roundabout at the top, I left it in a low gear and held it fine on the exhaust brake - with the occasional dab on the brakes, until I was about halfway down and I thought it would be ok to go up 1 gear. Big mistake. I couldn’t hold it after that - luckily it was about midnight on a Sunday and there wasn’t anything else on the road - but I learned a valuable lesson.
The Cat’s Back on the A3 in Germany is worth a mention too?
Later in the 90’s, I had a big ‘moment’ going down the Bussang on the way to Switzerland. I was doing a lot of Swiss at the time, and knew the road well, it was about September time from memory and was a lovely, sunny day, albeit getting late in the afternoon. What I didn’t reckon on, was a real slippery patch on one of the hairpins after the top, and as I cruised round the bend on the exhaust brake, the drive axle locked up stalling the motor - (I didn’t think this was meant to happen, but it did - was in a Renault Turboliner). Without the power steering, and with only going very slow, I struggled to get some opposite lock on as it started to jack knife. It all seemed to happen very slowly, and I had visions of the trailer pushing me on, and off the egde of the road - with a big drop into the valley below. I had enough time to think that if this doesn’t come back, I’ll just open the door and bail out. Luckily, the drive axle gripped agian and she fired back up,and I steered out of it.
Nowadays I live just outside Adelaide, South Australia. Coming into Adelaide on the South Eastern Freeway is , er, interesting. 6km of continuous downhill is bad enough, but the set of traffic lights at the bottom take the biscuit. Unfortunately there have been many accidents involving trucks running out of brakes, quite a few lives have been lost at the bottom of this hill. There are plenty of warning signs, flashing lights etc…, but people still get it wrong. The speed limit is 60km for trucks at the top of the hill (but still some get done for speeding there), but in reality, in a B Double at 68 tonnes, if you are doing any more than 25kms at the top you aren’t going to make it safely. There are cameras all the way down - supposedly, if you are seen using your brakes more than 4 times you will be nicked. The fact is, if you have to use your brakes at all, your’e going too fast. It’s usually about 2 am when I come down there (after the occasional Nhill change over) and 6kms at 25kmh is a bit tedious to say the least. Thank god for jake brakes though. To make matters worse, at the lights at the bottom of the hill, the majority of trucks turn right, the camber is horrendous as the road just goes across the hill - no positive camber here. Any more than about 15kmh at this point is scarey. As I said earlier, there are too many truck accidents on this hill, and the penalties are heavy - rightly so, but I think the design on the road is poor ( it was only built during the 90’s), but that never gets a mention in the press. Interestingly, there are 2 arrester beds (escape lanes) on the way down, but they are rarely used, I guess people think they will get it back under control before the lights at the bottom - although the $4000 fine for using the arrester beds might not ‘encourage’ people to use them either.
