Glasgow Transport Memorabilia, ON THE BUSES (GCT), April 1960 to February 1974, Page 4

ON THE BUSES (GCT), April 1960 to February 1974
By George Rountree.

Page 1/2/3/4/5/6/7

TRYING TO KEEP WARM

For thin blooded individuals like me it was important to keep warm to be able to withstand four hours or longer, up to four and three-quarter hours maximum, confined in a draughty cab during winter cold spells. Until the mid-1960s no heaters were fitted to any of the old corporation buses. Only the newly introduced Atlanteans had them. During spells of very cold weather every endeavour was made by most drivers to reduce its effect, to make the conditions less frigid. To combat the cold certain practices had to be resorted to, the main one being to spread a sheet of newspaper or cardboard over the engine radiator grill at the front. This ploy could be effective but it was risky and needed experience to find out how much of its surface could be covered to produce the best heat without it overheating. If challenged while actually driving with it in place, the excuse used was that you hadn’t noticed so it must have been there when you took over! But the variation between engines of individual buses was considerable, and there being no temperature gauge it was vital to keep a check on how warm the bulkhead between cab and engine became.
    As a journey progressed a certain amount of hopping out the cab was needed, in order to increase or decrease the area over which the paper was spread, until the correct coverage was found. Even then the cab could be cold going down Springburn Road with an empty bus which induced you to take a chance to spread the paper wider. Then finding on the return journey going up the long gradient past Sighthill with a full load, the radiator boiling over spectacularly with plumes of steam billowing up over the front of the bus. Apart from the embarrassment this caused, for me anyway because I tended to imagine that everybody knew what I was up to, there was the problem of finding a place where you could top up the coolant to replace the usual big loss which occurred. This could mean carrying heavy 5 gallon cans of water with a suitable pouring spout from a convenient (sometimes less than convenient) petrol station, garage, or other source. Or by the ordinary inconvenient and difficult to pour bucket obtained from a house if the situation was urgent.
    Every winter appeals were made by the union, the TGWU, to the management to have heaters fitted to all vehicles. But it took a strike to get anything done, and during frigid conditions of the very severe winter of 1962, with long periods when even daytime temperatures remained well below freezing. At one point even passengers joined with crews to protest about the polar conditions inside buses. The vehicles had no provision for their installation, so the first measure taken by management was of a cheap stopgap nature until a more permanent heating system could be devised. This was before the Atlanteans began to arrive with heaters fitted from new. The engine cooling system pipes on older buses had no on/off valves nor did the bodywork have a suitable place for a heater radiator or a suitable path for the hoses and the extra piping that would be needed. However, after some experimentation an extremely poor version was installed in over a thousand buses, poor in that the heater radiators were not much bigger than those fitted to large cars! The result was this ridiculously tiny heater fitted at the front in the base of the destination screen compartment above the cab, with louvres cut at the front for fresh air to enter which was supposed to supply both upper and lower decks, but not the cab. There was no fan, so it was actually a ram effect or forced draught system that worked only when the vehicle was moving into a wind.
    Apart from the heater radiator being too small, two other serious disadvantages became apparent. The first being that the full 'head' of coolant made necessary by the height of the heater radiator above normal engine radiator water level was seldom fully achieved or preserved, because the engine coolant had to be maintained above a certain level. Any vehicle as intensively used as a bus, which could pass through the hands of up to ten different drivers each day, through ignorance or carelessness invariably suffers from lack of attention to signs, mechanical and otherwise, that a defect needs attention. If the level of water in the engine radiator was allowed to fall below a certain level, uncovering as it did so connections to the heater pipes, all the water in the heating system ran out. This caused an airlock, which meant that even if the engine was hot and the radiator was fully replenished, it would not circulate through the heater system. Drivers covering up radiators and failing to check the engine temperature, of which I was occasionally guilty, could cause them to boil up and loose coolant which aggravated the problem.
    When this happened it meant no heat and a rapid progression to even more frigid conditions than before the heater was installed, as the un-blockable vent at the front meant that cold air came in through louvered openings that weren't there before. Further compounding this was the fact that circulation through the heater pipes could not resume until all the air was bled out of the system, which could only be done in the garage. The other fault was that there being no fan to blow air through the heater radiator, when the bus was stationary or slow moving there was no flow of warm air into the saloons. And of course as the freezing weather continued for a couple of weeks and complaints mounted about the lack of heating, many vehicles had to be withdrawn for the airlock problem to be remedied. However, feed pipes to the heater were routed up through the rear inner corner of the cab, so that when the circulation was working, at least the driver could occasionally warm a hand on them.
    Another problem in cold weather was draughty cabs, an aspect of which caused me a lot of trouble until I discovered where one illusive draught in particular was coming from. With all windows closed, and closing properly, any cab was bearable because there was always a certain amount of heat coming through from the engine. But the slightest gap or tiny crack in the seals of the door or the windows could on the coldest days turn it into a freezing hell. I quickly learned which leaks were the important ones and how to treat them, usually with strips of folded-up newspaper jammed into spaces from where the draught excluder strip had become worn or was missing.
    There was one draught which gave every driver a hard time, the origin of which wasn't found for a long time. This mysterious phenomenon affected the older buses with pre-select gearboxes, from D117 to D216. The semi-automatics, being the newest, their draught excluders were usually intact. The vehicles concerned very quickly became known and resented by most drivers, none of whom seem to be able to locate its source. It seemed to come in through the cab door, for it affected the driver on the right side from head down. More time was spent searching for the source of that draught, which of course was only experienced when the vehicle was on the move, than was good for safe driving. Holding out the right hand would encounter it until you moved close to the door at its leading edge, which seemed to be the only logical place where it could come from. It appeared to come through a gap that did not exist for moving the hand back and forward past the forward door jamb found it, lost it, found it, always at the same place. But still no obvious point of entry was could be traced.
    Despite repeated searching during my first winter that problem continued to plague me and others for a time, until on a windy day during 1963 when the windscreen of the bus I was driving opened of its own accord onto the first stage of its safety clip. They were large 2-position clips, one on each side of the screen frame, which was hinged at the top allow it to be held open for ventilation on warm days. Sometimes the braking and accelerating motion of the vehicle caused them to become unfastened, so that the next time the brake was applied the screen opened slightly by tilting forward at the bottom, so that the clip dropped down stopping it from closing. If that happened in cold weather it had to be closed again quickly. On this occasion, with the bus still moving and heading into a freezing wind blowing from the north east although slowing up, I rose up and leant forward over the steering wheel to close it. This could be done in relative safety, and on succeeding, with my hand still on the clips and the windscreen obviously shut tight I could still feel a draught. Feeling around quickly before the bus came to a stop established that it was coming from the left side. On starting up again and feeling round the front left of the screen, I discovered that the untraceable draught that had been plaguing us on the right side was actually coming in from the left.
    The windows of the half-cab, those on the drivers left-hand, were in two sections, the forward half of which could be opened by sliding it back alongside and outside of the rear portion. When these vehicles were new there had been a draught excluder strip with a neat rubber wiper fixed to the rear of the sliding portion. As the vehicles aged the rubber perished into various degrees of degeneration, and depending on how much 'rotting' had taken place, how much draught was forced in. With the forward motion of the vehicle, pressure built up in the partly enclosed but open-to-the-elements half-cab section on the nearside. This caused a narrow but powerful stream of air to pass round the cab from this opening until it hit the window frame just forward of the door, deflecting it towards the driving position. Here was the source the problem. In some cases the situation had gone beyond even that, in that the metal draught excluder clip which held the rubber was missing altogether, leaving a bigger gap and causing a 'worst case' draught. Now that it had been found, treatment was simple if you remembered always to carry a newspaper, to fold a page up into a neat strip to wedge into the gap, which always did the trick. Life in the cabs in cold weather was made much more comfortable by that discovery.

FUNNY STORIES (1)

While this tale would qualify as being the funniest with a touch of the bizarre of the five related here, it was just one of many I witnessed or was involved in. The last buses to run out Barrhead Road in the late evenings on journeys from first the Broomielaw, and then Midland Street, were timed to depart at 11pm. The others, 38, 45, and 57 were due to pass Argyle Street at 11.30pm, so the following event took place within ten minutes of that time. On this occasion on the 57 service we had a rear platform vehicle, or back-ender as the type was known when the Atlanteans were being introduced. After passing Eglinton Toll and travelling along Pollokshaws Road I noticed that the view in the mirror of the lower deck seemed to be hazy. It was early in the week and the bus wasn't busy, with less than a dozen passengers on board. Between collecting the odd fare the conductor sat on the seat next to the platform and looked about him in an unconcerned way.
    As no-one else showed awareness that there was anything wrong, although still rather puzzled I carried on. But drawing up at the stop at Allison Street the lower deck was definitely hazier than before. Just then I noticed a flicker of movement in the inside mirror, caused by someone rushing downstairs from the top deck and going straight off on to the pavement. On checking the nearside mirror to see if it was clear to drive off, in the gloom I became aware of a young fellow hurrying up alongside the bus as if intending to speak to me. He stopped opposite the cab and leant on the mudguard and shouted something. I opened the sliding window in the cab centre, and he said "D'ye know yer bus is on fire, driver?" Glancing in the inside mirror again, I thought the view was even murkier than before and decided it must be something serious after all.
    My first thought was a dropped match or smouldering cigarette end had set a piece of paper lying on the floor alight. But why had it taken so long for anyone to react? It certainly wasn't caused by anything at the front end, around the engine or the electrical wiring or switch-gear in the cab as I would have been the first to notice it, and there were still no other signs that ought to be visible if there really was a fire. I got out and went round the front of the vehicle, and reaching the pavement was just in time to see the young fellow go back upstairs. This made me think that whatever it was, it couldn't be that serious after all. Could the few passengers upstairs be smoking heavily enough to cause it, producing enough smoke for it to drift downstairs, something I had never encountered before even with a loaded bus? But most puzzling of all, why hadn't the conductor investigated?
    Meanwhile, no-one else I could see inside the bus gave any sign of being aware that there was anything wrong, so I decided to carry on. But before heading back round to the cab it occurred to me to look at the top deck, and glancing up it appeared to me that the atmosphere was really thick. On stepping back for a better view I saw what I took to be the young man, as a quite hazy unrecognisable figure, going along the passage and taking a seat on the nearside. He then sat down with arms folded amid the smoke and fumes as if expecting the journey to continue!
    The humour ends here, but it might be of interest to learn how the incident ended. It became apparent at that point that there really was a fire or something was smouldering or an electrical short circuit was causing the smoke. The others on board too, suddenly began to react. It was as if they had all been asleep and had just wakened up and become aware that there was something wrong. On going round to the platform and stepping aboard, the first whiff I got was of an acrid reek which indicated that it was an electrical fault which was recognisable because of the peculiar metallic biting tang it produces. Although it didn't seem to affect anyone else it caught at my throat. The conductor began to take an interest too, and we hurriedly ushered the few passengers on to the pavement and discussed what to do, for this posed a serious problem. How do passengers on a last bus get to their destination if the vehicle breaks down? Transport department rules for crews were that whatever happened, the final journey must be completed.
    Under normal circumstances the first thing to be done would have been to transfer the passengers to another bus. But ours was the last vehicle in the procession of five services to go through the city centre and out Pollokshaws Road, and the next bus to pass that point would be one of the two night-services which ran out Pollokshaws Road, but they didn’t leave George Square until 1am. However, in this situation there was another, rather more serious and urgent difficulty to resolve. We had to do something to save the bus from being burnt out. As I set this down many years after the event, the solution becomes apparent. Hindsight indicates that all I had to do was simply drive round the corner into Allison Street, to Govanhill fire station about a hundred yards away!
    As they were unlikely to be carried any further without a long wait, about half the original complement of passengers were within striking distance of their destination and had decided to walk. After a hasty conference I decided to try to carry on cautiously up Pollokshaws Road carrying the few still with us. Telling them to be vigilant and with them standing on the platform ready to jump off, I started up again in the hope of getting as close as possible to our home base at Newlands and get another bus. If on the way we were completely immobilised, the nearer we could get to it, the shorter the distance whoever went for help would have to walk. We started off again, but immediately, when passing Allison Street the inside lights suddenly dimmed and sounds of alarm were audible, so I drew in to the pavement edge beyond the junction. After turning off the master electrical switch, I leaped out and stopped the engine by the external fuel cut-off control and hurried round to the platform. There was a small group standing with the conductor on the pavement, watching the fumes coiling in thick wreathes out of the open windows above and from the platform itself and drifting up into the night sky.
    As well as by using the internal phone system, it must be explained that the transport department's emergency breakdown service could be summoned by public telephone. But like the bus service, around midnight, there being only eighteen vehicles covering the night services which were then operating, the breakdown service went into a kind of limbo. Bus garages are busy places during the night, because all vehicles have to be cleaned and refuelled and mechanics were on hand to deal with defects and normal servicing. Finding a telephone, one that worked anyway, could be a problem in the surrounding unfamiliar area, and while Larkfield Garage was undoubtedly nearer, for us the natural desire to get help from our own garage if possible was strong. By now it was well past midnight and we really wanted to get home. If we summoned help from Larkfield we might end up having to go back there, and there was no knowing when we would finish our shift.
    The end of this story, which began with humour, is an anticlimax because although I can't recall clearly how we summoned help it must have been by telephone. After a time a mechanic appeared with a bus from Larkfield, which by this time wasn't needed as the last of our passengers having gone off on foot. Leaving the defective bus in his hands, on which the fire appeared to have gone out, I drove the replacement empty vehicle up the road to Newlands, and took the liberty of assuming that by that time no-one would be still waiting for us in the outer reaches of the route. Anyway the night-services would soon be running. I think we earned a one hour overtime payment, which being after midnight was paid at double-time.

FUNNY STORIES (2)

An awkward situation could develop with crews on the last journey in late evenings. Drunks were a pest, especially if quarrelsome and argumentative, but also, strangely enough it would be thought, if they fell asleep when it might seem that they would cause no trouble. We used to be occasionally bothered with this situation in which, as the journey neared its end we were concerned because we didn't know where the inebriate gent who was fast asleep should have got off. If carried past his stop on the outward journey and if he could be roused at the outer terminus, it was relatively easy to put him off on the return leg at the stop nearest to his destination when heading for the garage. Some might be irate if they found themselves in this situation, but usually possible to mollify them by promising to let them off on the way back, but there was the odd one who just could not be roused, and herein lay the problem.
When entering the garage the man on the gate or the nightshift shunters around at that time would immediately spot anyone still on board, and would demand that we take the vehicle back out again, which left the crew with the problem. Sometimes the driver had to head for the nearest police station to have the unconscious drunk removed. But this could be a lengthy business, and might lead to you not getting home until long after the usual time. It also involved having to witness a disturbing scene, and maybe even find yourself being threatened by the offender for having taken that course of action, because the police were anything but gentle when dealing with them.
Finding ourselves in this situation late one night I suggested to my conductor that I switch off the lights just before entering the garage, and hope that the men around at the gate might not notice the drunk on the top deck. With bated breath we did this with complete success, and after the conductor had gone off into the office to pay in his takings, I was able to drive on into the gloom at the rear of the building and park the bus in the lye requested. In Newlands Garage, the lyes were arranged in bays of three between rows of cast iron poles supporting the roof. When the buses came in the entrance, after being refuelled they were driven to the first section of three lyes, and when it was full the next bay was used, and so on until nearly all of the space was packed solid with them. While I thought that what I was leaving was a highly amusing situation it was really a case of us passing the buck, because it left the nightshift workers, cleaners mainly, to deal with any unpleasantness. For us the humour was in imagining the mental state of the drunk, if he woke up on his own in the dark surrounded by solid ranks of buses. He might have great difficulty in finding out where he was and locating the way out, and he might well have thought he was suffering from delirium tremens!

FUNNY STORIES (3)

This has a more serious aspect It was mentioned above that Newlands Garage roof was supported by rows of hollow cast iron poles. In winter the floor was often wet so that extra-special care had to be taken, particularly when the garage was filling up with returning vehicle at the end of the morning rush hour. After 8am, apart from a handful of vehicles under repair the building was usually empty until around 9am, when the first bus to run-in appeared, then others working on peak duties arrived in increasing numbers. All the floor area of the garage had to be hose down each day and the only time this was possible was when the building was virtually empty, so running in when the floor was wet meant there was a need for extra caution.
    When I say that Thursday was payday you will know what's coming. Yes, one driver, anxious to be first in the queue, drove in and was, as usual, directed round by the rear and park in a lye. Moving a little too fast, as he made to turn his vehicle it went into a front-end skid, hit a pole and knocked it down causing the section of roof it supported to collapse. The heavy beams and girder trusses dropped down on to the bus roof near the front, pressing it down almost to top-deck floor level, which then stabilised so that the vehicle was holding up the roof. Examination of the surrounding area overhead revealed that over the distance between five poles, including two either side of the demolished one, the other beams’ securing bolts had sheared, and the beams themselves were poised on the edge of the horizontal supports on the pole-tops, which left a tricky situation.
    To cut a long story short, the bus remained holding up the roof for three weeks while officials figured out the best way to tackle the problem. Probably experts had to be brought in, but eventually, over a couple of days, the sagging section of roof was jacked up and the bus was released and taken away to the bus works, while work went on in the building for a couple of months to repair the damage. The broken and other displaced poles were replaced with H beams, so that since that time until the building was demolished, the location of the accident could be identified. Because the three lyes on either side of the accident had to be barricaded off until the work finished, the situation caused a great deal of inconvenience.
    There was nothing funny in that you might think, but this addendum is. The parking bays (lyes) numbering up to 19 were divided by the lines of poles into threes, with the lyes themselves being numbered from the left when viewed from the yard. Running in late at night with about one third of the total vehicles allocation arriving over a period of not much more than an hour, the working arrangement was the gateman stationed at the main entrance gave drivers instructions on where to go. Nearby were the re-fuelling bays, situated on the right-hand side of the yard just inside the entrance, and he directed arrivals to one of the two pumps. Vehicles arriving when the pumps were occupied were required to go 'doon nineteen' to the rear of the building, and park in a bay containing the vehicles still to be refuelled. At the rear all buses, including those refuelled, turned left and parked in their designated lye.
    Late one night some months after the incident related above a driver was directed to do this. But he too lost control in the narrow space next to the toilets about thirty yards within the building, where a barrier had been erected to protect crew members entering or leaving it and the nearby bothy. The bus wash was on the left in lye 18 at this point, and this tended to make the floor here rather wet, and of course this was when all the vehicles were washed. The out of control bus glanced off the barrier then skidded to the left and knocked down another pole, causing a repeat of the previous situation with the vehicle holding up another section of roof. However, here the lateral roof beams passed through a section of plasterboard walling above the line of brick-built utility rooms which included the bothy and toilets. It so happened that a conductor was busy with a natural function in the 'bog', when he was showered with large lumps of material dislodged by the movement of the beams above him. This caused him to leap off the throne and hop out with eyes popping and trousers round his ankles shouting 'It’s an earthquake!' But having learned from the previous event, the experience gained was put to good use by the authorities, so that the bus was released within a few days.

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