Selected Memories of the last Chief Engineer of the old big United Counties

I arrived in Northampton to take up the post of Chief Engineer of United Counties Omnibus Company (UCOC) in 1978 after training as a graduate engineer Tilling Senior Trainee at Bristol Commercial Vehicles Ltd in Bristol, Area Engineer at Eastern Counties in Norwich, Assistant Engineer at Maidstone & District and Assistant Chief Engineer at Ribble in Preston. This is a rather longer contribution than those from my previous jobs because it had such a range of activity and scope! I fear the chronology has got jumbled with so much happening in these reflections and rose-tinted spectacles may have affected the selection!

I arrived by train in Northampton to be met with my inherited company car and the General Manager’s (GM) driver. The GM’s driver reminded me of a fellow university student from the town who had the same open character and loud voice, allegedly a feature of the area due to the prevalence of very noisy shoemaking machinery! The car was a Triumph 2500 badged as a 2000 because 2500 was above the approved grade for a chief officer of a National Bus Company subsidiary company of its size. Most people knew and, to the knowledgeable, the wider rear track gave it away. I got used to cruising to Preston on Friday evenings and back on Monday early mornings, with the continuous flow of HGVs on the M6 for several months often through slush. Staying in an hotel while finding a house, it became an escape from the fine cuisine to go out for fish and chips from time to time!

The GM asked me to give him a first impressions report after one week. He considered Luton to be a major problem due to a continuing inability to meet traffic requirements with fit vehicles (let alone not able to rescue NBC vehicles in trouble on the M1). However, I reported back that Luton is a management problem – the staff are all working with gusto, but at Bedford, not seen as a problem, staff were wandering about between workshops with two managers who didn’t seem to work together.

RUNNING BUSES

In my first week I had a swift tour of my inheritance bounded by Daventry, Corby, Huntingdon, Hitchin, Luton, Aylesbury, and Bletchley with Johnny Johnson the soon-to-retire Assistant Engineer. I was worried at the implication of posters asking ‘do you know how much an engine air filter costs?’ I soon noticed several vehicles with holes punched in their engine air intake trunking for the use of easy-start and hence the ready ingress of dirt! After one visit, Johnny said “Did you see the air intake trunking on that VRT?” – “No” – “I didn’t think you did – there wasn’t one!” Other questions constantly brought forth the replies: “We used to…” or “We ought to….”
Johnny spent his mornings ringing every depot to see if they had met service and, if not why not, so he could report to the GM. He would then round up the needed components and race off in his car to deliver them. This was rather foreign to me after the calm at Ribble!

When I arrived, Luton depot was running short of 40 vehicles for service on top of its engineering spares allocation. (I had a nomenclature problem at first, often double correcting myself and calling it Chatham because the M&D Chatham depot was called Luton!) NBC took over Luton Corporation Transport and moved everything into the existing UCOC garage rather too soon, as a director later admitted to me.

It took time, (with new format Standing Instructions, Technical Instructions, All Depot Instructions, depot vehicle routine maintenance planning and record charts, every form scrutinised for purpose and ability to be filled in with a ‘thick pencil’, and soon a 4-weekly maintenance costing report for each depot) but we eventually got down to a weekly return of maintenance carried out and units changed. This fed into a new manual record system (“We used to..”) which enabled me to flick through each vehicle for unit life and engine fuel and lubricating oil consumption at a whim. Also, we were meeting service! When Johnny retired, Jim Weeks from Southdown helped me instil calmness and was soon whisked away to Cumberland and later as Chief Engineer at Northern General. He was followed by Peter Adams from Crosville who did a very professional job overseeing the Works, converting a batch of VRTs with 501 engines to Gardner 6LXB and then flat front VRT2s into VRT3 specification. This latter was initiated because the growth of Milton Keynes and its frequent roundabouts brought an urgent need to fit the later standard VRT3 full power steering. We had given up on the bolt-on solutions. He also developed the Works’ ability to install and maintain air conditioning units which served as a useful tool post Ridley!

At central works the AEU shop steward, who was an engine reconditioner, grumpily brought to my personal attention a seized Leyland engine that had come in for overhaul from Luton which he had only reconditioned earlier the same year.

I dug into this seizure from a former Luton Corporation RELL. Engine changes were quite efficiently dealt with either at Luton or at Bedford, but the need for them caused me concern. So, I was able to consult the vehicle’s record card to see that it had three reconditioned engines within two years but no radiator changes. Digging around at Luton, I discovered that the Drivers’ Daily Defects sheets were promptly put in a drawer after the running shift had dealt with what they could, and never looked at again. I made the Depot Engineer, sitting in a bus at the garage, aware that it was his job to monitor defect reports and make sure they had been fully dealt with and I was not too happy with his performance! He found another job quite soon. I could see no outstanding talent in the company for his replacement at our biggest and busiest depot. I advertised for a replacement and found a young GPO fleet engineer who I brought back for a second interview because he seemed too good to be true! Within a year of starting, he came to me and said I’ve done what you said – we are meeting traffic requirements with some real spares, we have restarted the M1 recovery service for NBC, what shall I do now – I said ‘Keep doing it until the Area Engineer retires’. In the meantime our radiator reconditioner had come to me with a scheme for an annual change of all vehicle radiators (including heaters and demisters) – Luton was the pilot depot and it worked.

In those times, the Certificate of Fitness (COF) for a vehicle expired after seven years from new. Subsequent re-certification was usually for six years, then five and so on. In common with many companies expiry of COFs was a serious matter as the recertification examinations were getting tougher and no COF meant vehicle off road. At an early stage I found that we were overhauling vehicles in Central Works on an age basis. I was happy with the standard and level of work and particularly liked the recently overhauled fleet of RELH dual purpose vehicles re-trimmed in standard NBC moquette! I could see problems over the next 2-3 years due to large batches of new vehicles 7 years earlier. I had heard of some NBC companies farming out COF preparation to contractors across the country at great expense and of a case of fraud. I calculated that with anticipated new vehicle intakes and, if we recertified every vehicle as it was overhauled, the problem would level out and go away. The cost of the re-certification examination by the Ministry of Transport was peanuts. After speaking to the East Midland Traffic Area Certifying Officer at Northampton (who thought I must be daft) and then with the Eastern and Metropolitan Traffic Areas, I instructed that after every Works overhaul a vehicle would be recertified, whatever its expiry date! It just happened – no problems, no outside contractor costs!

To overcome previous maintenance difficulties and to save taking in other companies’ cast-offs, to the detriment of maintaining the home fleet, 110 Bedford/ Willowbrook buses had been added to the fleet in the early 1970s. They most probably saved the company from floundering. Depots just phoned up the local Bedford dealer for parts and could order a half engine, with no central control, to keep them on the road. In their latter days, we brought engine rebuilds into the Works and all Bedford parts were supplied through the central stores after I appointed a Stores and Purchasing Controller from Rockwell Glass to make both functions operate very much more effectively. A final batch of 10 Ford /Duple buses was added with NBC ignoring my predecessor’s vehement complaints of non-standardisation and they were soon shifted out.

With better financing, the company was able to afford large intakes of new heavy-weight vehicles in my latter years. We had a phase when every double decker in the fleet was a Gardner-engined Bristol VRT. I cautiously ordered a small number of the new, unseen, untried Olympians, but despite central NBC, the SE Regional Director rehashed the orders between his companies that year. Our last batch of VRTs were ready for service but held in store at non-operational Desborough garage – they were sent to Eastern Counties who didn’t want new-fangled vehicles but could repaint these red! Instead, we were topped up to a total of 20 Olympians from Alder Valley and Southdown – who couldn’t afford their orders. I had specified our Olympians with an axle ratio for town service at Bedford and Luton -a slower top-speed and faster acceleration. Three chassis from Alder Valley had already been specified and built with high speed, lower acceleration, so those spent their lives in the countryside around Northampton depot. We were offered and took an extra batch of the last Leyland National Mk 1 that seemed surplus to NBC requirements. When NBC deleted the white band on these vehicles to save cost, we painted the band on before they entered service. This was a kick back against a colleague from my Norwich days, by then at NBC head office, who persisted in referring to the company as ‘Untidy Counties’. We kept to hand-painting at central works during my time. There was nothing more satisfying than looking around the Works before going home on Friday evenings to see the paint and overhaul output awaiting collection over the weekend!

BUILDINGS

The GM had rapidly raised the company from one that nearly went bankrupt to reasonably prosperous, amongst other things, by talking nicely to county councils. An engineer, he had already started to spend money on aged maintenance facilities. In the meantime, the most visible signs were the provision of heavy duty rubber curtains around the narrow pits in open garages.
Building maintenance annual funding was also coming through such that over following years we were able to reroof several depots and the Works and improve heating with gas fired overhead radiant tubes. Rance Muscott kept the buildings maintenance underway and got on with the routine redecoration work using the surprisingly varied NBC corporate decoration schemes.
GM asked me to plan a scheme for Wellingborough depot in my first weeks. I found myself working on my hotel bed and doodled a hole in the garage’s back wall, a drive through washer, and new enclosed pits on the other side of garage. This meant that the work could be done whilst vehicles were still maintained behind the heavy duty curtains! He said that it was rather more than he intended to spend but went with it. Bit of a strategic failure – as the depot was closed and sold in 1990, but then we, and many others, hadn’t anticipated Nicholas Ridley becoming Mrs Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport!
In 1976, the company’s Northampton Derngate bus station which doubled as covered vehicle parking had been sold to the council in exchange for new facilities incorporated into the new vast Greyfriars building. I became aware of the former when its temporary use, before change of ownership was completed, as a grain silo causing the sprouting grain to block the drains. The latter came to my attention with constant complaints from office staff of poor ventilation, being purely mechanically ventilated with no opening windows. The latter situation was taken well into account later when the original new Milton Keynes bus station and offices were specified with opening windows! Vehicles were parked overnight in Greyfriars which had a fuelling and drive through wash but no other maintenance facilities.

On one occasion a vehicle was stolen and driven away, causing havoc to several cars in a narrow residential road. Our insurers fought claims from the insurers of those damaged cars against us for not keeping our vehicles secure. My evidence was that the risk of damage to the business by fire destroying the fleet was far greater and ability to drive the vehicles out without delay was paramount. We won the case. Greyfriars later still became nationally famous as being voted the third most hated building in Britain and indeed was duly demolished in 2015.

I was aware that plans were underway to improve Northampton depot maintenance facilities, which were housed in part of the Art Deco head office and central works complex at Bedford Road.
When working on the Wellingborough plans with the Regional Architect, I intimated that I was not happy with my predecessor’s Northampton project and the more I saw the plans, the more I worried. Indeed, I was not convinced that a bus could be readily backed out of the proposed inspection / MOT/ brake test bay and there was nowhere to store tyre stocks or for the tyre man to work. It also dawned on me that the plans did not allow for separation of the central works and depot running shift. The depot staff had had free rein over the years to plunder the Works for anything out of hours with resultant overhaul scheduling delays. So, we added a proper store indent and separate staff facilities and a lock or two! This meant that it would encroach more into the central works space and areas used for unit reconditioning would be devoured. Happily, there was a large new building extending the central workshops, laughingly known as the new paint shop, but had never been used as such. So, I set the Assistant Engineer / Works to design how he wanted it and to gradually shift reconditioning into the area. He did a grand job and it must have given him some satisfaction in his run up to retirement. I recall musing with the GM one evening when admiring the recently completed depot facility “a bus company can run without a central works, but not without a depot” which turned out to be very prophetic and the norm from 1986!

Thereafter building projects rolled out. Milton Keynes Development Corporation was going great guns and our small garages at Stony Stratford and Bletchley came under pressure. A redundant bakery was made available for conversion into a temporary new workshop. This was to suffice until a new bus depot for 100+ vehicles was constructed at Winterhill alongside the West Coast mainline. The NBC regional architect had to make it “look like an upside-down biscuit tin, preferably with no chimneys”! I got stuck into how it would be run: – as a small depot to start with and later with up to 100 vehicles; a running shift facility that left the main workshops secure out of daytime hours; vehicle washing either by service driver or shunter; a simple parking scheme so that everyone could readily identify vehicles that were ready for service and those waiting attention; a single point for a supervisor to see every bus leave at morning run-out. I reckon I got it right – I would, wouldn’t I? The only failing was that the pits were too wide for minibuses which became a major vogue soon after, but that was readily dealt with. The first thing the architect got the contractor to do was to lay three small samples of smooth concrete and to draw different stiff brushes across them so we could decide and preserve the finish to be used in the workshops and parking areas! Alas, the site has become a retail superstore area!

The financial and legal arrangements with the Development Corporation for the Winterhill depot and new bus station led to NBC recommending a specialist solicitor from Newcastle upon Tyne. The solicitor was a real character – often using the expression “My dear old thing..” while brushing the Woodbine ash off his overcoat. From his manner we did not expect him to know much about operating buses, but he amazed us with his grasp of the precise details of operations and the possible scenarios that could cause us grief. Indeed, he tied it up so well, that there was some doubt that UCOC would be able to extract itself when privatised and I think that is why Milton Keynes City Bus was set up as a very small company, that could fail without causing widespread damage when UCOC was split up!

Significant work vastly improved the Bedford maintenance facilities (still in use!) and Luton had a bodyshop and MOT inspection bay with brake tester incorporated, now the site is abandoned. At Kettering, such was the layout of the garage that we installed a ‘drive through’ bus wash which gave a very good clean because you had to reverse into it and drive back out again!

STAFFING

I inherited a near-retirement Assistant Engineer and an Area Engineer. Also an Area Engineer who soon moved to assist NBC Regional Engineering Office. We recruited a very able Area Engineer from UAS, and another from South Wales to replace them. We promoted the assistant to Depot Engineer at Northampton and brought more northern talent from UAS as deputy at Luton.
We could not get a Works Manager to replace Jock, and the new Area Engineer volunteered to take on the Works as well, which he duly did very effectively, before being shifted off to be Fleet Engineer for the newly split off Luton and District company.

We soon had a very much stronger supervisory team performing well. Indeed, when times got a bit tight, I thought that we had too many managers and took a large step to reduce costs by making three Depot Engineers redundant with their Area Engineers tasked to run the depot as well. We did upgrade the Milton Keynes depot to be an Area to cope with all the constant growth and change. That was one of my hairiest decisions but was topped by making 90 redundant as United Counties Engineering was reduced to cope with the new situation of having no tied customers. This latter confirmed my view not to trust the press. I had toyed with the idea of providing a press release embargoed until after I had told the employees, then had cold feet. I sent that notification after I had already told the staff from the top of a painters’ tower, only to hear on local radio later that “employees at UCE will be hearing bad news today” – they had misread the date and would have broadcast that comment before my announcement, had I sent it as intended originally!

Despite an ever-aggravating T&GWU shop steward the central works was also represented by the AEU. I still don’t understand how we ended up with an engineering staff strike at the Works and Northampton depot for a week over training of apprentices! I wanted an apprentice training officer to run a rotating programme for all depot and works apprentices and keep their further education on track. Eventually we ended up with the AEU shop steward as the engineering training officer which he carried out very successfully until and beyond his retirement!

It might have had something to do with the work study based incentive scheme – a source of continual aggravation within many companies, but I don’t think it was. When we were allowed to negotiate it out, I did my homework very thoroughly and was able to lower percentage additions for unsocial shifts to keep the overall costs very similar.

CORPORATE PLAN

When Sir Freddie Wood chaired National Bus Company he wanted to be able to show off his empire, hitherto hidden by local liveries and names from easy identification. Standardised liveries, logos and procedures started flowing through. I never fathomed why buses were red or green and not red or blue! Perhaps as chair of a paint company he knew something about blue paint (not that the poppy red stayed red but faded pink and the green was not so vibrant as Tilling green!). Then we had corporate plans. These seemed a bind at first, but I soon discovered that if you can get capital expenditure into the plan it just flowed through – lorries (how many times did we replace the stores lorry without a disposal?), vans, cars, garage sit-on sweepers, floor scrubbers, push-around bus washes. National maintenance schedules were imposed which seemed to sorely perplex some of my colleagues. I took the view that we maintained buses satisfactorily and we just needed to fit what we were already doing into a different (but very similar) form. Don’t hassle the workers with unnecessary change!

The company had what I have come to call a canteen culture that endured in the southern depots which came from ENOC in 1952, but when splitting in 1989, Luton and District which was in the Metropolitan Traffic Area took with it Hitchen and Aylesbury; Bedford stayed with the pre-1952 UCOC depots and Milton Keynes was separated. This I think was because the agreements between UCOC and the MKDC over the bus station and the Winterhill depot had been tied up so tightly that it was thought most likely to fail and if so would not affect the rest of the company. United Counties Engineering was grouped with similar fellow company central works for sale. I went for MD of the Engineering part, not expecting to be a suitable hands-on candidate to make Fleet Engineer in Stagecoach style!

THE END

The remaining UCOC was bought by Stagecoach, one of three direct from NBC. Luton & District eventually ended up with Arriva, Milton Keynes Citybus became a political football between the Competition and Markets Authority and Stagecoach with several, sometimes enforced, changes of ownership. United Counties Engineering failed after a gamekeeper turned poacher bought the engineering group through Frontsource and passed them to Vancrown to close them all. This led to my redundancy without any of the terms agreed with NBC and having to go to an Employment Tribunal to be declared redundant and to claim the due minimum redundancy payment from government. I couldn’t help constantly remembering a meeting of managers with the Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley (who was determined to split the NBC up into small competing units, unlike his predecessor who was on the verge of selling NBC off to its management like British Road Services) saying that some of you will be millionaires in a few years and others won’t be. Guess what!

Jan & Sept 2024

Selected Memories of an Engineer at Ribble

After graduate training at Bristol Commercial Vehicles, I started my career at the frugal but efficient Tilling Group’s Eastern Counties. When the National Bus Company (NBC) was formed, opportunities increased and I moved to Maidstone and District – an ex-BET group company that liked its heritage, invested in lots of new vehicles but nothing in its maintenance facilities; even worse, Area Manager’s seemed to usurp the Chief Engineer. Arriving at Ribble in 1972 was like returning to a vastly upgraded Eastern Counties! Good systems that were engrained, still working with competent staff and well managed. The Frenchwood engineering offices were more like a grand stately home compared to the pre-fab at Maidstone!

Harry Tennant had been Chief Engineer since 1949 and presided over this efficiency yet was happy to try new things (“last time we did it that way – … this happened, but let’s give it another go”). When I was appointed as Assistant Chief Engineer, a new post of Works Manager was also created to assist in managing a time-consuming shop steward at the central workshops, so Ron Hopkins was able to free me of my predecessor’s travails. The four Area Engineers had their patches under full control so my post was basically a monitoring and coordinating post and overlooking the Certificate of Fitness situation and liaison with Leyland and the Assistant Traffic Managers.
I enjoyed working with Harry Tennant. At that time, work study bonus incentives had had to be introduced as being the only way allowed to raise wages to retain skilled men. Harry was not very tolerant of the work study staff. In earlier times, he and Assistant Engineer Ron Holding (by the 1970s Ron was Chief Engineer at Crosville) had set to on a Saturday morning to replace the cylinder head gaskets on a Leyland engine and knew just how long it would take. He expected the same of his managers and their skilled staff without the need for work study engineers. When, in my time, the work study scheme was extended to cleaners, I set about using the experience at Maidstone to set down cleaning procedures, only to be told very forcibly, that Ribble has perfectly acceptable cleaning procedures and the purpose of the work study scheme is simply to pay more!

Harry did insist that all letters sent out were signed as H Tennant. I said that I was not prepared to sign his name but would sign my name and add “for” H Tennant. He agreed. The history to this was that as a teenage lad I had written to the Bristol Omnibus Company for a holiday job and had received a reply from E Hardy, Chief Engineer. I was very impressed that the Chief Engineer had sent the letter but was devastated when I turned up for interview to be told that the little squiggle alongside the signature meant that the lowly Personnel Manager had written and signed it. I decided then to refuse to sign anyone else’s name thereafter!

While starting his bus career with Leyland, Harry was not averse, over many years, to prod the company into new ways. In early times he had put Sentinel underfloor engined vehicles through Leyland town on service to point up the lack of a similar local product. He didn’t like the very flexible Panther chassis and, before NBC was formed, got BET to order Bristol REs instead. Then not liking the thirstiness of Leyland engines, bought another batch with Gardner engines. When British Leyland were a near monopoly supplier, he got NBC to back him fitting a 680 engine into a Leyland National to prove to Leyland management that it could be done, so as to replace the fixed-head 510 engine that was proving so costly to run and maintain. Frenchwood Works also undertook for NBC the conversion of a specially purchased short Leyland National bus to operate on electric power, towing a trailer full of batteries. It first ran in 1975 and spent some time with Crosville on the Runcorn Busway. It has taken around 45 more years for a battery electric bus without a trailer to operate in service!

When we went to Duple to discuss the first large order for Dominant coaches, Harry took with him the coach seat back profile that he had developed as the standard for Ribble coaches. He insisted on it being the profile to be used. He also insisted that the vehicle electrics fuse panel should be accessible for maintenance from outside the cab as was the case on Bristol VRs at the time. I added in that there should be an external access flap for screen washer refill. These became features for all the NBC order, not just Ribble. Harry had also decided some years before that the traditional illuminated company name across the back of coaches was not desirable. I’m not sure whether it was a response to having to mask it before spray painting or the maintenance of the glazing.

My contacts with Leyland Bus were regular, mainly with Graham Dandridge. It was a period when they were the monopoly supplier and were showing little signs of taking much notice of operator feed-back. One repeated item was a campaign change of the differential unit in the 30 Standerwick VRL double deck coaches over two winters. The Leyland 680 Power Plus engine running with a high gearing ratio soon pointed up weaknesses that were not seen in lesser powered stage vehicles, leading to substantial redesign at Bristol (by then part of Leyland Bus). Besides all the growing pains of the Leyland Nationals, one recurring problem was newer Leopard coaches running out of power on motorway inclines, whereas the VRL double deck would happily overtake. A sign of terminal malaise was not alleviated by the answer that the Power Plus version of the 680 engine cannot be fitted into the Leopard.

When I arrived, the introduction of one-man operation of double decks was getting underway. From experience at Norwich and Maidstone, I was aware that this was accelerating and that all converted vehicles needed formal inspection by the Ministry. So when I found that the rear engined double decks going through overhaul at Frenchwood to renew the Certificate of Fitness (at 7 years old) were not all being converted, I insisted that they were. The traffic department had them reallocated to Kendal as soon as available.

The company operated Almex, motorised Setright and hand operated Setright and I suspect other ticket machines, so making vehicles able to operate universally without local conversion work was quite a conundrum if you wanted to be able to exchange buses between depots for maintenance, displaying all-over adverts or interworking. I set up a sub-committee of the drivers’ trade unions with the Assistant Traffic Manager through which we consulted on cab equipment. The works designed a suitable cash tray which could take brackets to suit all of these and we got designs approved for universal operation. I was taken aback when the Traffic Manager thanked us for getting him out of a particular problem with new equipment and in return he was taken aback when told it had been agreed for the whole company – Merseyside to Carlisle, Blackpool to Burnley! This enabled Ron and me to take samples to the bodybuilders and for new double decks to be certified for one man operation before delivery.

These were large batches of Leyland Atlantean AN68 double decks with Park Royal and ECW bodywork. I visited the factories, usually with Ron Hopkins, to see progress and agree details. The Park Royal version suffered a serious failure around the rear bulkhead and underwent a campaign change, but the ECW bodies seem to have been stronger.

Ribble had formerly had its own architect but NBC had regional architects’ offices, so Harry Tennant took over buildings functions. This was the norm in the Tilling Group and the smaller BET companies. Ribble always struck me as having more up to date facilities than my previous companies but they never inspired me as appearing modern, light and airy places in which to work! Skelmersdale depot was built and opened during my time, but I had little to do with its design.

Visits around depots were always interesting. I usually went to monitor how things were going on and made a point of visiting traffic supervisors to get the customer’s view of engineering’s performance. Northern area was a favourite! On my very first visit I was surprised to find two Bristol MW buses parked in Penrith garage in full dark red Ribble livery – they seemed very out of place, then I realised their parentage from the Darlington registrations and they had come with the rationalisation by NBC in Carlisle. Later, I was not popular for pointing out the last two coaches from Grange or was it Ambleside that were still in Ribble cream when National white second repaints had been running for ages! Area Engineers were left to programme vehicles into the spray paint facility at Frenchwood, so these had been deliberately omitted for old times sake as they were still in good condition. Another Harry Tennant-ism – Ribble vehicles were either wholly in Ribble red with the bubbly fleet name or National Bus poppy red and National decals – no mixtures, unlike many companies that did intermediate transformations. When on these visits, I first began to notice that the earlier Leyland Nationals appeared to be changing to a pink livery. The initial orders were delivered in dark red but were repainted in NBC poppy red at Frenchwood before entering service awaiting an agreement to operate single decks with over 47 seats as one man. So Area Engineers were asked to spot the pink ones for early repaint while Ron Hopkins tackled the paint suppliers.
Always check your facts. I recall an area engineer, new to Ribble, wanting to make a point that a driver who had seized an engine on the M6 should be sacked. I had a look at the fuel and lubricating oil consumption of the vehicle – a fairly old Leopard, and suggested that he did too: 100 mpg lubricating oil consumption doesn’t look like a driver problem to me!

Harry was promoted out of operating buses to the new position of NBC Regional Chief Engineer in October 1974. To replace him, Syd Lamb asked to ‘come home’ to Ribble, transferring from Chief Engineer of Midland Red. When National Travel North West was formed to include Standerwick, depot engineering and support remained with Ribble. As National Travel Group had its own engineering central management, I saw us as providing a service to the local management and we had no control over the vehicles ordered. Hence we found ourselves operating three Willowbrook Spacecars. Syd didn’t think we should accept this state of affairs but didn’t get anywhere changing it!
In April 1974, I went to Derby to chair a meeting of the NBC companies that provided breakdown and vehicle replacement services to the Motorway network. Ribble, especially Dawson Williams, the Central Area Engineer, knew all about the police control room systems, but we found that the United Counties company which covered the busiest southern part of the M1 had been unable to provide breakdown assistance for some time and knew nothing about police control rooms. In January 1978 I departed Preston to take up the post of Chief Engineer at United Counties and I had a great time installing working systems to replace the “we used to..” “ we ought to..” responses that greeted my initial questions around the patch and reinstating a breakdown service to the M1! That’s another story.

GHP
6/7/21

Bristol RE

As a graduate engineer I found myself training at the Brislington works of Bristol (Commercial Vehicles Ltd) when the RE was about to be constructed – in fact I was on the production line when the first production model was assembled – I took in my Bus and Coach magazine with an exploded sketch of the layout to help us put it together! As an aside, the same vehicle eventually became an experimental vehicle and I had the pleasure of driving the only RELH6B – a turbocharged horizontal version of the Bristol BVW engine!
It is interesting that Bristol did not extend the MW, like AEC and Leyland extended their Reliance and Leopard models to meet the new 36 ft maximum permitted length. Cyril Eyles was the down to earth engineer who dreamed up the layout of the RE I believe. The glories were that the engine came closer to the back axle than the Panther and Swift et al and drove forward with a smaller diameter higher speed prop shaft over the dropped centre rear axle into the gearbox – originally the synchromesh box designed specifically from scratch with input and output flanges at the same (back) side. The drive from the gearbox went straight into the standard Lodekka rear axle – a well proven unit at the time (and only came to grief on the VRLH6L coach version with the Leyland 680 Power Plus engine). This provided a better, even optimal, weight distribution between axles to provide better ride, steering and braking performance.

Clutch life became an early problem related to drivers not able to hear the engine and the higher torque of the 6HLX engine. Later calculations proved it to be of too small a diameter. We discovered that Leyland and AEC were having similar problems with 36ft long vehicles. While various modifications were tried, the change to semi-automatic using the SCG epicyclic box with BCV transfer gear to bring the output to the rear was put in hand.
The earliest vehicles had a rear suspension with rigid beams pivoted at the front each with two air bags, one in front and one behind the rear axle. This beam failed in service and the experimental department confirmed the mode of failure on a 24hr running test rig. The decision was taken fairly swiftly to replace this arrangement with something that had worked well – the Flat Floor Lodekka (FS – FLF) arrangement of ‘flexible beams’ with single airbags behind the rear axle. It was my job to produce the Service Modification drawing to campaign change the rear suspension!

With regard to the engines – I was with Eastern Counties as a junior engineer when the incoming General Manager wanted to be seen to have fast coaches, so he had one vehicle (ECOC RE890?) converted to horizontal Leyland 680. BCV also introduced it as an option and certainly Crosville went for it because there REs were being overtaken by Ribble Leylands on the M1. However they soon found that if two REs one with Gardner and one with Leyland engines left London at the same time, the Gardner was home first.

When I was at Ribble, I eventually got Leyland to admit that the reason that the longer Leopards faded on Motorway hills, whereas the double deck VRL also with a 680 engine could go ’70MPH uphill’, was the unwillingness of Leyland to produce a ‘Power Plus’ version of the horizontal engine because the exhaust manifolds would get in the way of the chassis frame. Signs of Leyland’s fall from excellence!

Geoff Pullin
12/2014

21/12/14 – 10:59

I seem to remember during the sixties Buses Illustrated ran a “joke” article called “Ready, steady, bus”, which tried to bring our hobby up to date with a bus news bulletin presented in the style of contemporary pop music programmes. It referred to “Bristol’s new smash hit, ‘MWL'”
At the time I wondered if that was just a figment of the writer’s imagination, or had Bristol offered the MW in 36ft length, but not sold any. This article answers the question! I think the Lodekka was actually offered as a chassis to be bodied by non-standard builders in it’s final years after the partial takeover by Leyland, but again none were sold.

Don McKeown


22/12/14 – 07:36

I have looked through the linked article related to the exchange of VRT for FLF between SBG and NBC.
It suggests that it was the Tilling operators who wanted the transverse engine layout. I think you will find that the change of engine position was brought about by legislation that provided grants to bus operators for introducing vehicles suitable for one man [sic] operation and I understood that the small print stated transverse rear engine for double decks. I would appreciate any ‘inside’ information on the reason for the rapid design change from the reasonably well developed longitudinal engined VRL to the VRT.

Geoff Pullin


22/12/14 – 12:08

From the point if view of drivers and passengers alike I always found the RE to be the very best of the first generation rear engined single deckers. For the driver it was well behaved, smooth and free of any nasty vices. The virtually universal, but not exclusively so, smart looking ECW body was simple and uncluttered within and the model was the outright winner in its class for me. As a luxury coach the RE was equally delightful and well behaved. Having driven and ridden in many other brutes of the period, of famous makes, I feel free of any guilt in this enthusiasm.

Chris Youhill


23/12/14 – 05:20

A couple of observations. Firstly, the arrangement of the RE engine and gearbox was apparently selected because BCV wanted to offer a short version, and the Gardner engines were relatively long, so that the rear overhang would have been too long if the gearbox was between the engine and the rear axle.
Regarding the change from the VRL design to the VRT, I suspect that there is some truth in both of the reasons given. The early bus grant specs did only refer to transverse engined double deckers (allegedly, the specs were drawn up by people from Leyland). However, there was another issue – or, in effect, the same issue as that which prompted the arrangement of the mechanical components of the RE. With the engine mounted longitudinally, and the gearbox, the rear overhang was so long that the total vehicle length could not have been less than about 32’7″. At that time the Construction and Use regulations specified the proportion of the length that could be outside the wheelbase. Positioning the gearbox ahead of the rear axle in the manner of the RE would not have been possible with a double decker. Thus the vehicles would have been large enough to have about 80 seats, but at that time they would principally have been used to replace early LDs, none of which seated more than 60. Everything else aside, the extra fuel used would have done nothing for the Tilling Group’s operating costs per mile, and, it is known that General Managers were “incentivised” to try to reduce operating pcm each year, even if only by a fraction of a penny. So it is perhaps understandable that Tilling managers wanted a shorter model. In practice, very few 33′ double deckers were delivered to THC/BET/SBG/NBC companies.
There is another aspect to the story that is also rather curious. BCV wanted to return to a single type of “universal” chassis, harking back to the days of the K and L types, and the VRL would theoretically have achieved this. Production economies would have been the benefit. So it seems rather strange that, when BCV offered the VRL as a single decker, the prices quoted were higher than for an equivalent RE.

Nigel Frampton


07/01/15 – 06:36

What a fascinating article Geoff. I’m quite envious of you training with Bristol Commercial Vehicles, and on the early REs too, at what must have been an exciting time in the industry. The RELH with the turbocharged horizontal Bristol BVW (BHW) engine you mention was actually the third of three prototypes built -this one being chassis number REX.003. After several years serving as a BCV testbed vehicle, it was eventually kitted out by ECW to full coach specification (C47F), and entered service with West Yorkshire as its CRG1 (OWT241E) with Gardner 6HLX engine in 1967. It has always been my favourite RELH coach, and was the only one of WY’s CRGs to have a manual gearbox. Conversely, WY’s earlier ‘express’ RELH6Gs (ERG1-11) all had manual ‘boxes apart from ERG7, which was converted to semi-automatic transmission. From new in 1966, this coach was dogged by an annoying vibration at speed. Various remedies were tried – new flywheel, gearbox, rear axle – but to no avail. In the end someone suggested fitting a fluid transmission, and the vibration magically vanished. Presumably something must have been misaligned somewhere in the original configuration, but the new fluid flywheel and epicyclic gearbox did the trick.
West Yorkshire did have some problems with the manual gearbox RELLs, relating to the synchromesh balk rings failing from time to time. Despite encouragement from Bristol for drivers to use the synchromesh as intended and depress the clutch once for each gearchange, most drivers appeared happier using the tried and tested method of double declutching to effect better changes. This could be confirmed by the “FRRRP! FRRRP!” hiss of air emanating from the air assisted clutch – one “FRRRP!” for each depression of the clutch pedal.
Nigel’s comments relating to the Bristol VRL also ring true. The New Bus Grant double-decker specifications at the time did indeed only refer to transverse rear-engined models, and Leyland was involved in advising on this. A shorter VRL would have fallen foul of the Construction & Use Regulations as Nigel states, due to the rear overhang of a vehicle being determined as a proportion of the wheelbase. Therefore, the shorter the wheelbase, the shorter the rear overhang had to be to reduce disproportionate outswing at the rear. Some years later, this caused similar problems for Leyland, when designing the short National. The long wheelbase National had a long rear overhang due to the engine and gearbox being mounted behind the rear axle. The short wheelbase model had shorter window pans due to the body pillars being closer together. This spacing, together with alterations to the fan drive, allowed the rear overhang to be reduced and conform to C&U regulations. The engine compartment was more cramped on the SWB Nationals as a result, which made some engine maintenance tasks more difficult.

Now, going back to CRG1, just before Christmas I finally took delivery of a model of my beloved coach (by EFE) after waiting around 47 years for the privilege! It is a fine and beautiful model however, and has been well worth the wait.

Brendan Smith


13/01/15 – 11:41

The first 250 or so RE buses (not coaches) for Bristol Omnibus all had Leyland engines. Gardners began to come in during the 1972 delivery but there were only 14 Gardner-engined REs in all out of nearly 400 (including RESL). For coaches and DPs, the split was more even but Leylands still predominated.
I worked in the Traffic Department 1970-3 but the talk was that Gardner’s could not meet Bristol’s demand for large numbers of REs so a decision was made to standardise on Leyland engines. I also heard that the few Gardners were diverted from another NBC order. Someone may know more!

Geoff Kerr


21/10/15 – 07:09

With regard to Nigel’s final paragraph, when I was training at BCV (1962-5), the VR was only known as the ‘N’ type and the SU was the ‘P’ type – the latter only a glimmer in Cyril Eyles’ (CE) eye – and always referred to as likely to have a Perkins engine.
With regard to Geoff Kerr’s comments about BOC RE buses – I think you will find that the decision to go to single deck city buses was taken by a General Manager, hot from Ribble (where similar decision had been taken – also using REs!) The fairly new CE at BOC at the time (Philip Robinson) I think you will find started life as a Leyland senior apprentice and may well have had biassed views on engine provider. Even within NBC, personalities could be decisive! At Ribble, of course, Harry Tennant decided (in BET days!) the RELL6L drank too much fuel and specified Gardner for the second batch although shortage in NBC early days meant he had to accept RESL6L thereafter.

Geoff Pullin


22/10/15 – 07:21

The Gardner-engined REs that BOC received in 1972 were indeed diverted from another operator – Western National. There were also 3 Plaxton-bodied RELH coaches, diverted from the same source. I understand that WN had financial difficulties at the time.
I am slightly intrigued by Geoff Pullin’s reference to the SU as being known as the ‘P’ type. Duncan Roberts, in his book on the RE, mentions a proposed ‘P’ type, that would have been a lightweight rear-engined single decker (which, of course, never materialised). We can only speculate on what it would have been like. I had never heard of the SU being referred to by any other designation, and by 1962 it would have been in production for a year or two, so the use of an alternative designation seems a little odd.

Nigel Frampton


22/10/15 – 10:55

Perhaps time is playing tricks as indeed the SU was in production by 1962. Perhaps the P type was a successor for it – the Albion engine was not over popular then. I can’t remember it having a rear engine when I drew out a draft specification leaflet for the proposed new models that Chief Engineer Cyril Eyles intended. A quick flash of wisdom now tells me that the P type of course became the LH which did indeed have a Perkins engine and I think the Leyland engine was an option that nearly everyone took!

Geoff Pullin

Eastern Counties – selected memories May 1965 – December 1969

I was appointed Deputy Assistant Engineer to Eastern Counties Omnibus Company on May 17, 1965 at an annual salary of £1,000 after an interview at Fleet Street, London with the Tilling Senior Training Scheme directors followed by one at Norwich with General Manager Len Balls and Chief Engineer Leo Page. Unfortunately I became ill with an unknown virus immediately upon arrival and spent two weeks in hospital overlooking a cemetery and four weeks at home in Clevedon, Somerset recovering! I had a small office in the chief engineer’s office block on the first floor within the central repair works at Cremorne Lane, Norwich immediately behind the head office at 79 Thorpe Road, Norwich. The office looked out over Laurence Scott and Electromotors works and I was serenaded and showered by one of their large extraction plants.
I was worried that I would be expected to work out stresses and design things. I don’t think there was a job description! The only task I can recall as recurring was to take the minutes of the weekly works committee meeting chaired by Jack Robson, the Assistant Engineer – a true Yorkshire man, who I had come across by phone when at Bristol Commercial Vehicles Ltd (BCV) as a trainee. When I was having a spell in the service department at BCV, the phone rang one day and this Yorkshire voice said “You know that modified suspension beam that you have just fitted to our RE (coach), well it’s b***** broken again!” There were two main problems with the first batch of REs, one that the clutch plate life was very low and that the rear suspension hinged fabricated beams, which each supported two air bags, cracked in half spectacularly. The first was only cured by introducing fluid clutch and epi-cyclic gearboxes in time and the second was a campaign change to fit the FLF style flexible beam rear suspension to all REs. I was in BCV experimental department when the test rig confirmed the failure mode and in the drawing office to produce the campaign change drawing and instructions! Jack also introduced me to the phrase ‘as noisy as a weaving shed’ which meant nothing to me as a quiet west country man!
I had a few trips out with Jack, who tended to see the central repair works as his main domain. When I was training at Bristol Omnibus Company, I was shown the Setright ticket machine shop and made aware in hushed tones of a ‘problem’ that had been discovered whereby the machine could be made to print a ticket at the correct value and then the dials could be forced back to a lower fare and the register counters would only count the lower fare. Thus a conductor could provide the correct ticket to the customer and pay-in a lot less than was rightly due. One morning, travelling across Norwich to work on a full 1948 vintage K5G, (this body type had been replaced on my Bristol school journey eight years earlier!), I was at the back upstairs, showed my leather bound red pass and then watched the conductor ‘turn-back’ his Setright on every fare! I’m not sure whether Jack knew about this scam, but he soon had the senior Setright mechanic to discuss the matter! Another of his phrases comes to mind: ‘there’s none so miserable as those that are short or crippled’. We sallied forth to the Setright works in London and came back with a modification that should cure the old single digit fare machines still in use in Norwich city. We also took a two digit, modern machine, which I could turn back successfully and they promised to overhaul it and make it fraud proof. I was taken along to collect it, as the expert! I thought the machine felt ‘dodgy’ and succeeded in turning it back in front of the Setright managers! More Yorkshire expressions were forthcoming! Eventually they came up with a shear pin that broke if you tried too hard and then the conductor had to explain why his dial went round and round. I doubt if he got away at the first enquiry, but he certainly wouldn’t the second time. I don’t think the road staff could have known that it was me who upset their well paying scam – they never showed it! Far less difficult was the conversion of the Setright machines from £.s.d to £.p, which I planned.
I set up an experimental items system for trying things out in service and providing regular reports for the company and manufacturers (especially BCV and ECW) and this was always admired when I attended the Tilling Group regional engineering meetings three times a year, hence getting to know the chief engineers of the then Eastern Region. I had a rubber stamp made with the then-current oval Eastern Counties logo and the address so that all drawings and documents looked really professional.
The vehicle maintenance system comprised of ‘docks’ at fixed mileage which were scheduled from the Chief Engineers’ office weekly and were carried out at central repair works for the Norwich (Surrey Street), Cromer, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft; Ipswich for Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Felixstowe and Saxmundham; Peterborough for Peterborough, March and Kings Lynn and Cambridge (Newmarket Road) for Cambridge (Hills Road), Ely and Newmarket. Specific mechanical units (engines, gearbox, rear axle / differential, air brake units, air suspension control valves, compressors) were scheduled for preventative change and were sent out by truck from central repair works in time for fitment.
When I arrived, the schedules showed vehicles due for attention every 30,000 miles and with the sixth dock being a change of all units, then the cycle started again. The previous chief engineer John Woods had set up this system and it had worked like clockwork. A few years before my arrival he had sent news to all depots that through the completion of the programme to replace all 6 cylinder engines in double decks with 5 cylinder engines, the company’s overall average fuel consumption had been reduced such that it was now better than Lincolnshire Road Car Co! Happy days! The regular site of a 5 cylinder double deck chugging along the main roads followed by a stream of cars was already familiar! I collected LFS125 from ECW at Lowestoft – the first time I had driven an FS with 5 cylinder engine and 5.5:1 back axle ratio, making it a very sluggish machine compared to the 6LWs with 6:1 back axle ratios that I was used to at Bristol Omnibus. I was assured when at BCV that an enquiry had been received from Norwich whether 5-cylinder engines could be fitted to the 30ft double deckers – presumably when the six rare FL vehicles were ordered and delivered with Bristol BVW engines (After my time these were changed to Gardner 6LW for better reliability and standardisation, I believe).
However this was a time when PSV fitters were being attracted away by the HGV industry which was having to get to grips with annual HGV testing at the newly set-up testing stations. Central repair works was beginning to slip behind in producing overhauled units and it was unthinkable in those days, and probably impossible, to find a contractor to help even if the engineer’s budget ran to it. So units began to fail in service and the running depots were having to spend more time carrying out major unscheduled changes that should have been done in the dock shops. The immediate solution was to write 40,000 miles for 30,000 miles and alter frequency of one or two unit changes! Things got more dire. In Peterborough ECOC pay scales were such that skilled fitters were attracted away to semi-skilled jobs in new industries, so Kings Lynn garage was given some major docks to do. Traffic conditions were getting tougher as well, new vehicles had compressed-air assisted brakes and were being specified with 6LW then 6LX engines to replace 5LW vehicles with resultant increases in wear and tear from greater braking and acceleration. The routine inspection and adjustment (in those days brake adjusters, clutch adjustment, battery topping-up were frequent manual tasks) slipped behind and the mechanical staff were depending on drivers to report defects. I’ll come back to this later.
I always had a bit of a penchant for design. I was able to put this to use in two items that were seen by many people and in the second case used by ECW on other customer’s vehicles. The first was the ‘PAY AS YOU ENTER Please tender exact fare if possible’ transfer that was applied to the exterior of all ECOC one-man vehicles for several years. I think the ‘if possible’ was my own customer relations addition, as even then I didn’t like ‘thou shalt not..’ notices on buses. The second was another small transfer which was required when time limits were placed by law on the use of horns during the night. All ECOC one-man vehicles were retrospectively fitted with reversing horns and reversing signs after one or two fatalities, one in Lowestoft bus station before my time, and one within Surrey Street garage. Now a switch had to be incorporated to turn the safety device off! Realising that few types of vehicles had similar dash panels and thus space, the transfer was designed to be used on all vehicles. I achieved this by incorporating an arrow that was in a square and could thus be cut off and placed at either end of the notice section and turned up, down or straight when applied. It was adopted by ECW as a standard! Another abortive bit of design was to produce bus stop plate designs for the Ipswich area incorporating both companies names and or colours. The standard British bus stop plate appeared not long after this effort, but it never achieved the main purpose, by which it was ‘sold’ to the industry, of being recognised as a statutory sign prohibiting parking of non-PSVs.
I was allotted the task of installing the first drive-through washes in the company. I spent a night or two and a day or two watching the run-in at Surrey Street so as to position the first drive through bus washing machine in Surrey Street, Norwich. It had to fit between the roof trusses and had a recirculation tank. It replaced a couple of Essex washers which dropped down around a vehicle and mechanically brushed the sides and rear leaving the front to be done by hand – one of these had to be extended to cope with the first 36 ft long vehicles. It had to cope with an allocation of about 240 vehicles (of which some 45 were in outstations overnight and an overflow on open ground across the road at the top of the bus station). Although I got the position about spot-on, (after all I had been driving for a fair bit of overtime on service driving at Bristol, as a graduate trainee), there were some operating problems. The wash was fitted with a felt blanket to deal with roof cleaning and it also swept a good volume of water off the roof of vehicles, but drivers were very keen to get washed and parked up. This meant that there were rather more gallons of water on the garage floor than was acceptable and some of this made its way towards the maintenance pits which in those days were at the city end and not enclosed. I discovered that a ‘dripping time’ of 20-30 secs within the exit ramp was all that was needed to improve matters drastically and this was implemented! This type of wash did not deal with fronts and backs. So the Depot Mechanical Superintendent (DMS) Alec Mortimer recruited four older ‘dependable’ part-time cleaners who succeeded in hand cleaning all the backs for the evening run-in as each bus stood before driving-through. The fronts never get so dirty and water coped between routine cleans! Then a night or two were spent in Hills Road, Cambridge to site their wash.
One problem I like to think that I resolved with the FLFs was that conductors couldn’t see forward to announce where they were. I designed a cut out in the nearside blind and a blanking plate in the cab which stopped reflection from the bright fluorescent lighting distracting the driver. I wonder what the Scottish group made of these when they were exchanged with VRT, thankfully after I had left for Maidstone!
With the arrival of a new General Manager, W. Tom Skinner, formerly chief engineer at Eastern National – the richer sister company down the road, policies changed! He wanted to keep himself ahead in engineering. Leo Page, the chief engineer at the time preferred being left alone to do what he was used to! The first change was from 6LW to 6LX in the second large batch of FLF double decks and the replacement by BCV of the Gardner 6HLX engine by a Leyland O.680 engine in one of the second batch of RELH coaches (I think it was RE890) as an experiment to improve the performance of the coaches which were perceived to be slow! [As an aside, this strategy didn’t work! Later I discovered that Crosville specified Leyland O.680 engines in their RELH coaches for the Liverpool London service due to complaints of slow running but found that the slower Gardner engine vehicles still got in first because their greater low speed torque got them up the hills faster than the Leyland versions. Later, when at Ribble, I complained to Leyland service engineers that 12m Leyland Leopards were being outperformed by the splendid heavier and bigger Bristol VRL double deck motorway coaches which also had Leyland O.680 engines. I was informed that the VRLs had the ‘Power-Plus’ truck engine which was not available in the horizontal format and in any case wouldn’t fit into the Leopard chassis frame if they tried! This was an indication of British Leyland at its worst and a pointer to its future demise!
The next ‘impressive’ idea was to install Dawson cyclone cleaners to make interior cleaning more efficient. I saw the system in use at Trent, Derby where a long straight service lane allowed the vehicles to line up with raised side platforms in place for the operator to enter the vehicle from the rear side emergency door to agitate litter with a compressed air lance to be sucked through the front door which was covered by the giant fan extractor unit. I was given the task of installing a unit in Surrey Street but had little conviction that it would be operable! There was no way any vehicle could line up in a straight line at Surrey Street – it had three or four side by side fuelling points and there was just room to drive from these through the bus wash at the back side of the garage. All I can say is that it was installed, mobile steps were provided and it got used during the day as outstation vehicles came into fuel. I can’t remember whether Hills Road, Cambridge received a unit.
New FLFs around this time were delivered with flaps that would open under the rear upper deck seats to let in an air current to take all the upper deck litter out through the front door. Earlier deliveries were converted later. Director George McKay on entering Cremorne Lane works and seeing the pile of flaps waiting to be fitted exclaimed “what’s all this f***ing stuff for?”!
Another fascinating episode involved the last MW (LM) buses. Two (or was it one?) were specified to have front entrance and centre exit with room for more than usual standing passengers and glazed quarter lights. Perhaps a good idea in principle for the Thorpe Station – Cringeleford route. But then you looked at the exit and the huge deep steps and shuddered! One was allocated to King’s Cliffe outstation to provide greater capacity (fewer seated, more standing) on the commuter inbound service to Peterborough! How long did that last? Why on earth didn’t they (was it Tom Skinner or Tilling group?) wait to use the lower-floored RESL (RS) vehicles which followed immediately in place of the outstanding order of MWs? The devil is in the detail.
Due to the poor earning potential of ECOC, it had always run vehicles to a great age and received second hand vehicles from other ‘richer’ Tilling group fleets to save capital costs. Tom Skinner was well aware that Eastern National was disposing of sound Bristol LS buses which would help the ECOC vehicle age profile and several arrived, the first stage carriage versions ever in the fleet and confusingly designate ‘LM’! Another innovation was the purchase of some Bedfords. There were 4 Bedford VAM with Leyland engines with Duple coach bodies, designated CB. I collected one of these from Hendon. They had very heavy steering! Also 4 Bedford VAM, 2 with Leyland engines, 2 with Bedford engines (to see what the cheap engine would do compared to the ‘heavy duty’ ones) with bus bodies by ECW, designated SB 661-4, I think. The driver had to get to his cab by walking behind his seat and squeezing forward, because the ticket machine and cash tray structure were mounted over the shallow engine cover. I had these rebuilt with a substantial engine cover to form the normal way into the cab. (These Bedfords are not mentioned in your website fleet list! Although I say here 4 + 4, I have just looked back through some lists of slides and notice that fleet number CB836 and 845 occur, so perhaps there were more or two batches? I also was reminded that ECOC had an earlier unique batch of Bedford SB chassis with Duple coach bodywork which had Gardner 4LK engines (- this must have been another of John Wood’s conversion projects!)
When Jack Robson retired as Assistant Engineer in June 1967, he was replaced by Eastern Area Engineer, Charles Mannell. Tom Skinner told me I was to replace him as Area Engineer. I told him that I felt totally unsuited to the job as I had had no practical training other than as a graduate engineer and holiday jobs, but could do the Assistant Engineer’s job! He said the area could run itself and that’s why he was putting me as Area Engineer for the experience – they will teach you the job!
The greatest advantage was a company car – no less than the retired Assistant Engineer’s car because Charles had long legs and had had his identical Austin Cambridge seat amended. Finding and looking after the outstations in Norwich and Ipswich districts was a joy – no carphones or mobile phones! I carried an oil can for garage door hinges and locks, lamp bulbs and a cloth and cleaner to keep the signs looking tidy. In 2½ years there was one outstation that I never found! Whenever in Diss, I changed the time clock to suit the time of year for the bus station lighting. It was the norm for the Ipswich and Central Works vehicle painters to spend the Summer repainting company property, including outstation garages and booking offices. I enjoyed deciding the colours to be used and remember having the ceiling in Bury St Edmunds booking office painted bright red and in Ipswich where the public wandered through an old office building between bus stations, I had the ceiling painted black so they could not see how irregular and tatty it was!
New vehicles were usually allocated to outstations so there would be no starting problems in the mornings. An MW (LM) allocated to Stradbroke (Ipswich district) did a run on one day a week into Norwich. The driver parked his bus at the back of Surrey Street garage and moved another one to block it in, so that nobody used his vehicle during his lay-over. I have a feeling that it had a plastic flower posy on the front dash!
In the Summer, Great Yarmouth was allocated extra coaches and the DMS was distracted by his wife’s lodgings business. I got to know from the experience of drawing my finger on the interior windows of a bus how long it had been since it had been cleaned – in Great Yarmouth it was often nicotine encrusted from over 8 weeks! Incredibly, come to think back, I cannot remember ever having to deal with any disciplinary action or formally meeting with any trade union representatives during my time as area engineer, except indirectly when we had a campaign check and rectification of heaters on all SC (LSC?) buses in Ipswich depot one cold winter. We had an apprentice at Great Yarmouth and at Lowestoft. I was concerned that the one at Great Yarmouth was not getting adequate training so arranged for him to spend time at Surrey Street where he could get a lot more experience – I suspect he had to travel back and forth by bus, so probably didn’t do much work!
Getting buses out of ditches was another regular item where I was shown how to do the job. My predecessor had designed, and had made in the works, ground anchors which could be secured to the soil with large angle iron stakes, to provide a winching point. I arrived one snowy morning at Bulmer Tye to find the Ipswich gang already well forward with recovery of a double decker. I was then approached by a GPO Telephone engineer’s van. He said he was looking for a cut in all the telephone cables along the road – then he saw the ground anchor! I was never advised what the cost was to our insurance. We did issue instructions to check for little concrete GPO posts before inserting stakes in future.
As mentioned before, the regularity of vehicle routine maintenance was slipping badly. This was a national problem and the Traffic Commissioners were beginning to get tougher by insisting on very high standards at the Certificate of Fitness inspections, such that depots could no longer just take a vehicle off the road, steam clean it and present it. [In those days a new PSV was given a Certificate of Fitness (COF) at the factory for seven years. It became the practice that at the first re-certification the longest period that was granted was 6 years if the vehicle was in good condition, 5 if not!, and at the second re-certification 5 years and so on. At ECOC the average age of vehicles was always high, so COFs became more frequent]. If the certificate ran out, the vehicle was off the road, full-stop! So, we tried putting all Norwich district COFs through central repair works where they took precedence over mileage docks. The regular inspection of PSVs by the Ministry of Transport was always carried out in the depot and each inspector was supposed to see each vehicle every year. It was not so regimented as it is now or was for HGVs at that time.
This was the time when no pay increases were permitted by government unless there was an increase in productivity. A work study scheme was begun for engine overhauling at Cremorne Lane works. Charles Mannell had experience of engine overhauling on a grand scale in South Africa and set about the job in a proper manner. This soon improved output and we began to find that engines were available when wanted. Later, these engines were declared to be poor quality at Surrey Street as they failed within a short period. Having already learned at this early age that most people tell you what they honestly believe to be the truth, there is usually an explanation if you dig in carefully. One day whilst ‘walking the job’ I asked a cleaner why he was topping up the engine oil of an MW (sorry, LM) when it came in from an outstation, as it was fitted from new with a Frankman Lubrimatic automatic top-up system which enabled the sump to be replenished from a reservoir. He said it didn’t work, so I had a look and discovered that it had been disconnected and the wide stub pipe onto which the normal filler tube should fit was left open without a cap. Depot Mechanical Superintendent Alec Mortimer was horrified and a quick check over the next few days as similar vehicles appeared for refuelling from outstations revealed several in this condition, thus sucking road dirt straight into the oil sump and causing rapid bore wear! Filler tubes and caps were ordered up and the Frankman’s officially and properly disconnected. The work study scheme was absolved!
Surprisingly the arrival of the first RELL (RL) and VRT (VR) doesn’t seem to have made a dent on my memory. It must have been without incident, after all they had automatic break adjusters and a fluid clutch! I can recall that a VR was converted to one-man operation fairly swiftly, our first double deck so equipped and allocated to Attleborough outstation to prevent overloading on the first morning journey- rather more successful than the King’s Cliffe experiment! This presaged the huge FLF for VRT exchange between the Scottish Bus Group and National Bus Company that followed soon after which greatly effected ECOC but not me!
By this time the 240 vehicles at Surrey Street were being inspected about every 8 weeks, if that, and the maintenance was running mainly on drivers’ defect reports. The fine performance of the three running shift chargehands kept the fleet on the road! As a small improvement, I had already increased the number of specific Norwich vehicles that were allocated to Cromer depot for routine maintenance. I then received a simple instruction from the General Manager (I think the Chief Engineer was off sick by now and was replaced by John Phelps just as I was leaving in late 1969) ‘I want all Surrey Street vehicles routinely inspected every four weeks – organise it!’ I think I might have said that this would mean buses not being available for service when broken springs, brake relines etc were found initially at a rapid rate, but no doubt got short shrift.
I sat down and worked out how many vehicles of each variety would be required every week day so that traffic would have an even flow of vehicles. I could see that there would be some efficiency gains when we got it going because we currently (I had inherited and who was I to query it?) had wandering battery toppers-up, a Dunlop tyre man unable to find vehicles he needed, interior vehicle cleaners scrubbing clean the older vehicles frequently and the newest and outstation vehicles rarely, the advert fixer never being able to find the right vehicles. I went to see Alec Mortimer the DMS and asked him what he would say if I told him that we have to inspect every vehicle every four weeks. He replied that he would take his white-coat off and go straight home! Never one to have a ‘meeting’, I sat on the radiator in his tiny office, we chatted around what would need to be done, and sure enough, it was my assurance that specific vehicles will be released by traffic on the allocated day, that caused him to say ‘give me another shunter and I’ll make it happen!’ And he did. Then immediately I was successful in getting the job of Assistant Engineer at Maidstone & District, an ex- BET company that was now, with the Tilling Group incorporated into the National Bus Company. My 2 ½ years there, with Vin Owen as my Chief Engineer, was a different world and another story!
I was followed as Deputy Assistant Engineer by Chris Jepson, who also came via Bristol Commercial Vehicles. When I left, the post of Area Engineer Eastern disappeared and Chris became Norwich District Engineer which newly incorporated Kings Lynn.

Geoff Pullin
01/2015

Thanks for this very interesting article, I don’t know how you can remember so many of the peoples names from those days, so long ago.
I worked at LUT in the 70’s and I struggle to remember names, but I can easily remember all the vehicles though !
I remember one chap though with reference to the information of the pre-decimal set-right machines.
We had none of those at Swinton depot, only TIM’s for 99% of duties with just the odd Bellgraphic (you wrote onto the ticket through a little window- the copy winding straight into the machines body after issuing the ticket) which were used on the X60/X70 runs.
This chap however knew how to fiddle a TIM. (You just asked for a favourite machine, if you had it before). He did it while on part day duty, where you did not sign off back at depot, hence you kept hold of the ticket machine until you did your back half duty. What he did was sit the machine into a vice, unscrew the handle and he made a short drill shaft with an end that matched the handle and by attaching an electric drill he wound the penny counters on through 10000 and stopped short of the start numbers, hence paying in say £16.00, when perhaps £20 – £25 had been taken. He was found out (sacked on the spot & prosecuted of course) when the overnight TIM checking staff found slight differences on the halfpenny & shilling catch, which was not moved onwards by the drilling process. All that effort for a few quid, once every three of four weeks. So it was not just Setrights that could be beaten !

Mike Norris


13/01/15 – 06:18

Geoff, what an excellent article. I was slightly later than you into the Bus Industry, PMT from 1968 – 1972. So much of what you have written applied at PMT even though the Companies were from opposite sides of NBC. We too installed a Dawson Cyclone interior vacuum at Hanley Depot with exactly the same problems and solutions as at Eastern Counties. As a raw recruit into the Industry I still marvel at things we ‘got away with’ (scheduled docks not carried out because of major unit failures; a liberal attitude to annual Ministry vehicle checks. PMT had a large fleet of both early Atlanteans and early Fleetlines, neither of which were particularly reliable followed of course by the great Roadliner disaster; Incidentally, you are Geoff who was Head of Department at Coventry City College in the late 90s/early 2000s aren’t you?
I hope you will continue with part 3 of your memories – at Maidstone and District – a good BET Company if ever there was one!

Ian Wild


13/01/15 – 08:55

Thanks for the article. I got quite excited because I think we are getting nearer to the answer to my occasional but unanswered query about those two hatches in the rear of ECW VR’s which I believe are for removing rubbish, but they sound more sophisticated than the Dawson systems described here. At least such things did exist! Did the VR systems blow or suck and were they for both decks? Did they work?

Joe


15/01/15 – 06:06

Thank you for a lovely article Geoff, and what wonderful memories. They are an important part of our transport history and need to be recorded. Your article took me straight back to my time with West Yorkshire Road Car, at their Harrogate Central Repair Works, where I started my apprenticeship in 1969. Your comment about the RE suspension beam being “b***** broken again!” reminded me that until I started work at 16, I didn’t really know any ‘asterisk’ words, but my knowledge was soon to be extended. Then – although in the main I did not tend to use such words often – at least I knew that should the occasion arise (such as striking my thumb with my hammer) I could feel confident in letting forth a decent expletive or two to compete with the best of them!
The ticket machine ‘turning back’ saga is fascinating, and must have caused quite a few headaches for the Company. It was a much more elaborate way of fiddling the books than the method used by one or two conductors up here. One older Harrogate conductor loved double-deckers on peak journeys, where he would rarely venture upstairs to collect fares when the bus was well loaded. Instead he concentrated on collecting the fares of passengers on the lower deck, and then took up position at the foot of the stairs. As passengers came downstairs to alight, he would take their fares as they passed by, issuing tickets of less value than the money taken, and pocketing the difference. Very simple, but very sad, and he was eventually dismissed by the Company when it had gathered enough evidence to take action. Like Eastern Counties, West Yorkshire operated the ‘heavy dock’ maintenance system, carried out by the main depots at Harrogate, Leeds, Bradford, Keighley and York. However, the Company also carried out full vehicle overhauls when a certain age or mileage was reached. Overhauls were carried out at Central Works and the nearby Body Shop. All mechanical and electrical units, major and minor, were removed from each vehicle, and then the chassis was inspected, cleaned and painted, before being fitted with newly overhauled replacement units from stock, and rewired. On completion, the vehicle would be driven around the corner to the Body Shop on Westmoreland Street. There the coachwork was overhauled, with corroded/damaged parts replaced, seat frames checked and repainted, upholstery renewed in the Trim Shop, and the vehicle fully repainted by hand and (in pre-corporate poppy red days) finally varnished to a very high standard. Before the advent of the LS and Lodekka, bodies were removed for overhaul in the Body Shop, and the chassis driven around to Central works for overhaul, which must have made access to all the mechanical components fabulous. On completion, the chassis and body were married up again in the Body Shop.
As with ECOC, WYRCC had a preventative maintenance programme in operation, to help maintain reliability, but like ECOC, it sometimes fell short of expectations due to similar shortages of depot engineering staff. It didn’t appear to affect Central Works and the Body Shop, but their staff did not work shifts or weekends, apart from occasional rounds of overtime.
We too had a ‘productivity scheme’ inflicted upon us and it was something of a farce from start to finish. The two men observing fitters and electricians repairing or overhauling all manner of items large and small, had not the slightest inkling as regards anything mechanical or electrical. They were constantly asking “What’s that part there?”, “What does that do?”, or “Why are you doing that?” In exasperation one day when asked “What do you call that?” while overhauling a Gardner water pump, Chris, the placid fitter I was working with said “Charlie”. The Time and Commotion man was not amused, but I certainly was!!
Thank you so much once again Geoff for evoking many happy memories. I can’t wait for the next instalment.

Brendan Smith


28/12/15 – 11:52

I returned to this page today and found the comments – thanks for your responses

To clarify the Dawson Cyclone interior cleaning system for Joe – There was a large metal box which rolled up to the entrance door and sealed around it with cushion edging. It had a large fan which sucked air through the doorway and out through the top of the box. It must have had a filter system, but I can’t remember that. Having got suction, there will be no air flow until an access for the air is provided. With single deckers, the emergency door was just right – usually on the offside and at the other end of the vehicle. An operator entered the vehicle through the emergency door with a compressed air lance with a long coiled piping and agitated litter from dead corners and caught around the floor which then shot up to the front door and out. It was less neat an arrangement when the emergency door was centre rear. On double decks, the operator had to walk to the back upstairs to push open the rear floor level flaps to let air in to sweep upstairs, complete with coiled air lance which caught around everything. It is one of those bright ideas that can work with a straight long service lane providing vehicles have offside rear emergency doors. The Trent installation at Derby seemed to work very well but where were the emergency doors on standard BET vehicles? – rear offside! Tilling companies, besides still having rear platform double decks, had lots of FLF / FSFs with centre rear emergency doors (but at least reachable without steps) and were putting centre rear exit single decks (RE) into service which needed steps!

Brendan speaks of West Yorks’ central workshop overhauls. When I was still a graduate trainee at BCV, one of three interviews I had for a first post was at Harrogate with Chief Engineer Marcus Smith. He showed me around – including a Lodekka stripped of units and the chassis painted with yellow phosphate paint, I think it was, to protect against the excess road salt. He also made the comment that they were looking for a self-starter technical assistant and not someone who needed to be cranked. I assume I needed cranking! I came across Marcus again when he turned up as MD at BCV.

Ian mentioned City College Coventry. After not being on the millionaire list on the break-up aftermath of NBC, I got a job as Head of School – PSV training at what was then Tile Hill College, not because I could teach but because I knew the industry! I reported to Bob Millington, an indefatigable enthusiastic FE engineer who was new in post just before me. In FE colleges thereafter the jobs change and increase year on year and the funding of courses changes half way through the year. It eventually got to me and despite having designed and got built a purpose built PSV training workshop, complete with pits and hoists, I was only too pleased to get out just after there was a reverse take-over when Tile Hill took on Coventry Technical College and became Coventry City College, only to abandon the new workshop within a short period.

My experiences of work study schemes really started at M&D, continued at Ribble and thankfully ended at UCOC – but that’s another story!

Geoff Pullin


28/12/15 – 16:55

Mention of various ticket machine ‘fiddles’ in this article remind me of an instance at Blackpool.
At busy times, ‘jumper’ conductors were used to help with fare collection. These men would board a busy tram, help the conductor by collecting fares on one deck, then get off and await the next tram. There was no set duty for these men, so no proper record of what trams they had to work.
One man was known as always refusing overtime and so was not normally asked but one day the depot inspector was particularly short the next day so asked our friend to work but he refused. The next day, the inspector himself was off duty and boarded a tram with his wife and was surprised to find “Joe Blogs” work it as a jumper.
When the inspector returned to work he asked his colleague how he had managed to persuade him but he insisted he had not! Further investigation eventually found (with police help) that he had a caravan, boat … and a long missing ticket machine”
In another case, a lady was walking her dog near a Manchester bus depot when a bus passed and turned a corner a bit sharply. As it did so, a roll of Setright tickets fell off the open platform. The helpful lady picked them up, made a note of which bus they fell from, and took them into the nearby depot. The roll turned out to be one of a batch that went missing sometime previously…

John Hodkinson


29/12/15 – 06:54

I think John Hodkinson means Ultimate Tickets, which being pre-printed had a value, and had serial numbers, so easy to trace.
Setright ticket rolls being blank and of no value, and unable to trace.

Stephen Howarth

Maidstone & District Selected Memories of an Engineer

Maidstone & District looked a bit of a conundrum from outside in 1970 – very ‘heritage’ livery, generally looking smart but lots of modern vehicles: large volume orders for early Atlanteans, Nimbus, Fleetlines, Panthers, single deck Fleetlines… Inside, it continued – a very heritage HQ at Knightrider House and depressingly ‘tram-age’ maintenance facilities. I arrived as Assistant Engineer by train in the snow on January 1, 1970 and inherited a Hillman Hunter – a nippy car if you could get it started – this one was particularly perverse! I was met by Chief Engineer Vin Owen, who was still wondering why he had moved from the modern facilities at the orderly Trent company. Vin appeared to be in conflict with General Manager Arthur J White from the start. I suspect on the basis that huge investment in vehicles had not been matched with updating of routine maintenance facilities and that Area Managers were interfering with basic engineering decisions! Vin Owen had a simple view of buildings – if it is not required, knock it down and it won’t need maintenance. I missed his great clearance of tram paraphernalia from Sheerness depot. These didn’t help his relationship with the GM nor when he was travelling in Vin’s Austin Westminster car and the passenger door opened going around a bend!
The work study incentive scheme, to enable increases in wages which were only allowed by government if productivity increased (George Osbourne, must have noticed this!), was being implemented root and branch with Jim McLellan of PA Consultants and our Bill Young leading a competent and enthusiastic team. Cleaning was categorised into different tasks and frequencies. A new technical assistant, John Waters, had been tasked with writing revised (if there was one already) maintenance inspection and servicing sheets, making sure that modern equipment was properly catered for and the appropriate frequencies chosen and each written in a natural order of work. This was of course in advance of NBC getting round to doing the same thing. As depot after depot was dealt with, Vin wrote out new rosters himself, and talked each through without too much difficulty – wiping away old Spanish customs as he went. These led to interesting situations: At Silverhill (Hastings ‘trolleymen’), the Area Manager wanted to know who would drive the gypsum mine staff night bus as Vin had removed the night cleaner who had done it in the past; and at Luton (Chatham) the Assistant General Manager (on his run down to retirement) was sent to resolve a difficulty and commented that any fool can save money by not doing a job, but if the job needed doing it wasn’t a saving! A quote I often remembered in later years!
Vin managed to get new workshops built at Chatham and Maidstone and eventually Area Engineers with equal status to Area Managers. At the rebuilt Chatham (‘Luton’) garage, we installed the first automated chassis wash that I had seen – it did a reasonable, and certainly fast, job but needed a bit of human tweaking and replacement of the rubber screw pump innards but soon cleaned the Medway vehicles much more frequently than the previous annual clean. Electrics took a bit of a beating at first but eventually vulnerable areas were identified and protected. There was also a straight service lane incorporating Cyclone interior cleaning which worked well but not until I had spent a lot of late night hours resolving problems!
An interesting aspect of my position was that the Works Manager had previously been the company’s Assistant Engineer and thus appeared to outrank me and being somewhat naive and quiet of character I still managed to find ways around! When Douig Awde retried he was replaced by another ex Assistant Engineer – John Linham from East Kent!
All double deckers going through overhaul at Postley Works were being converted for one man operation. This supply rate didn’t meet traffic requirements, so Vin sorted out a swift conversion incorporating a bit of plastic pipe as part of the periscope arrangement and fitment of fareboxes for service 1 to be converted at short notice. He had to argue with the certifying officer that this arrangement was not temporary and met the legal regulations even if not to bodybuilders’ high finish.
I was named by one shop steward as the company’s highest paid critic, because after my visit to Silverhill, someone was usually hauled in and given a rollicking by the Depot Engineer (an electrician by trade from Trolleybus days) about a mechanical problem reported by central works!
Silverhill had a large percentage of the Strachans bodied Panthers and unknown to head office had started stripping out the ceiling and roof panels because they were moving so much that black aluminium dust was to be found everywhere. The Willowbrook bodied Panthers seemed to stay together. So Vin called in Willowbrook to suggest a structural repair as clearly they would loosen again. A programme of strengthening the roof hoops with externally fitted curved angles began. I later discovered when at Ribble that their first Panther chassis was proclaimed to be frighteningly flexible, especially after good operating experience of Bristol REs and it remained the only sample in the fleet!

Random memories:

  • The cleaner who cleaned staff cars with a stiff floor broom.
  • Trying yellow vertical dip headlight bulbs on a tour coach on the M2 one night and being frightened when unable to see not a lot – idea dropped!
  • Calling in to say I can’t start my Hunter!
  • Wondering what else can go wrong at Tunbridge Wells.
  • Wondering how so many vehicles are kept going so well at Tonbridge with sparse facilities.
  • Setting up a monthly fleet allocation list incorporating vehicle types and movements. This was the first formal document indicating who was responsible for maintaining each vehicle!
  • Wondering why Gillingham engineer Harry Pettican happily took engine packs out of Atlanteans as a routine at annual service when nobody else did or could!
  • Introducing a central tyre maintenance workshop service with Dunlop. The biggest unexpected problem was to find that many vehicles already had wheels of the wrong offset fitted randomly! I learned a lot about wheels in a very short time and ordered up stocks of new wheels of different types to give adequate serviced spares at each depot.
  • Organising that every depot had at least one long chassis single deck with rear towing eyes so they could tow in failed vehicles.
  • George MacKay (what’s this F****** stuff?) retired NBC Director lived at Tunbridge Wells and we ‘looked after’ his company car – not a demanding task I’m pleased to say!
  • Sorting out by phone, with Leyland France, a failed Leopard starter in eastern France. On return the works overhauled the starter and refitted it and it failed again on the next trip. Somehow I got Leyland to do the job again!

Watching the one-for-one swop of our 3 year-old Fleetline single deckers for Northern General double decks late in 1972 – several, maybe many, of the red buses went into service next morning in Medway towns. There were dark red buses with the full gold M&D scroll and some with the first NBC reflected N style logo and white company name. This was in complete contrast to Ribble where vehicles were either in full former Ribble colours and logos or full NBC poppy-red scheme – no mixing!
This swop coincided with the NBC new livery. Vin had previously wanted to get rid of the old fashioned M&D scroll and had one or two modern versions done by Postley Works, but they were not approved!
I learned that the old M&D scroll includes the word THE, one inch high, so that it can act as the formal legal company name, with only the address in the bottom left hand corner side panel!
Livery change kicked off when the Leyland National order forms asked which standard colour we wanted – Vin ticked light green, which was wrong for the GM! But soon after we were designated to be a NBC green company and the scroll went! I didn’t see Leyland Nationals arrive at Maidstone. When I got to Ribble they were rolling in in dark red, but as no agreement had been reached about operating one man vehicles with over 45 seats they were parked up and repainted poppy red before entering service.
There were times when Vin got more depressed and I had to say to him, if he hadn’t stirred a new topic up he could have rested! – but he kept going. My dealings with the General Manager were difficult. On one occasion, I think I had three representatives of a supplier in my tiny office and the ancient (heritage?) internal phone buzzed indicating it was the GM and I answered it “Good Morning”. To the room’s embarrassment I received the explosive response “Good morning what?”. Determined in the circumstances not to call him “Sir”, I added “Mr White”. At first, whenever Vin left Head Office, the GM would phone me and ask me to go to his office where he would put to me Vin’s latest (‘unacceptable’) ideas and ask my opinion. I supported Vin’s line on such occasions! Arthur White accepted early retirement for health reasons on June 30 1972 and retired to his previous Devon General haunts where he lived for many years! He was succeeded by Len Higgins who was also responsible for East Kent. Vin felt less happy as the amalgamation of the companies proceeded and was no doubt delighted to return north in January 1975 to United at Darlington.
I had decided to buy a house before prices rocketted too high and moved in to a newly completed house on August 4,1972. On October 6, 1972 I put it on the market, gaining £1,000 on the original £10,000 price! In the meantime I had seen the internal advert for Assistant Chief Engineer at Ribble and had applied for it without much energy or forethought. A week or so after, Vin looked somewhat down at mouth and said ‘I think you’ll get the Ribble job’. He had started with Ribble, and learned a lot at the hands of Harry Tennant their Chief Engineer, who 25 years later was still in post! I started on November 1, 1972 – another great change for me!

Geoff Pullin
01/2016


11/01/16 – 16:45

That’s a great article – thanks Geoff for writing it. So many things ring true for me as Technical Assistant at PMT around the same time. The main difference was that you could rarely call the average PMT bus ‘smart’! I remember an occasion when the Chief Engineer was on holiday and one Saturday morning the Assistant Engineer and I were summoned to the General Manager’s office to ‘discuss’ maintenance problems. That Gentleman – PH Wyke-Smith ranted and raved with plenty of expletives at the pair of us for fully 50 minutes – then followed 10 minutes of useful discussion on the problems we faced and possible solutions.
I moved onwards just before Leyland Nationals and NBC Corporate liveries appeared in fact the last new buses in my time were three dual purpose Bristol REs in full PMT dual purpose livery and they looked superb.
The two main problems in my time at PMT were the large fleet of Daimler Roadliners and the even larger fleet of early PDR1 Atlanteans with major corrosion and wiring issues. The significant collection of AEC Reliance 470s with constant head gasket and liner seal problems didn’t help what was already a monumental task to maintain service. Thanks again Geoff, it’s so important that these personal reminiscences are put down as a record.

Ian Wild


12/01/16 – 05:52

Thanks Ian. What I recall, like NGT, PMT was not a popular place to be promoted to! I know that Harry Tennant, Chief Engineer at Ribble was offered the GMs job and turned it down!
When at Maidstone, I can recall a Roadliner lying in the corner at Maidstone depot and the engine being changed, by a PMT crew, who clearly were well versed in the job.
I met PH Wyke-Smith a few times. When he was GM at Crosville, after PMT, and I was at Ribble as Asst CE, he came to see Harry Tennant, to update himself on engineering matters as he had been offered the NBC Engineering Director’s role and was “out of touch”! I think it was PHWS who introduced Regional Chief Engineers, thus releasing the chief engineerships of Ribble, United and Western National all at the same time, not that it did me any good!

Geoff Pullin


14/01/16 – 06:09

Geoff, you most certainly would have had a PMT Roadliner coach in the corner of a depot with its engine being changed by a PMT crew! PMT held extended tours licences for several resorts in the South East, I distinctly remember coaches off to Cliftonville as one example.
There were six Roadliner coaches and we had the dubious distinction of changing the engines or bell housings on all six at different times in the South East! A fitter and his mate were despatched with the necessary replacement unit in the Ford van and became pretty slick carrying out the changes. I never thought of PMT as being a Company not to be promoted to – but having experienced it at first hand, I can well understand why. Great people though and an excellent place to learn about bus engineering. I have fond memories of those four years.

Ian Wild