Tickets and more

As I said in the last blog not all the life was checking tickets. If there was any major incident and we were in reach we could be called to go there.

This could include arguments between passenger and driver that had blown out of proportion, accidents between bus and car or sometimes pedestrians, or perhaps when the city was hosting an international rugby match and buses were pulled out of the city centre we would be sent to deal with that.

All in all the job was interesting and varied and of course there was promotion to the next level to work toward. This was called the G.D. or general duties inspector and was another move upward. Although in fact as junior inspectors we worked on most points as they were called the G.D.'s worked point work most of the time.

Point work as it was called was the static area that was covered by inspectors and included the Bus Station where you would deal with the buses that came in and out all the time, and the Castle point where you would deal with the fewer buses that used that area. This point was were my future career in Cardiff Bus changed for life but more of that much later.

The CBS or station point was the busiest of the lot and there would be two on at all times as buses came in every minute or so and you had to check the times and make sure that if a bus was due a relief driver then he or she turned up and on time and if not why not.

This was where the junior inspectors started to learn the ropes and had someone to guide them that knew what they were doing. The Castle point was seen as the easier point and you would be put on there after a while and left to run it on your own.

You could also get out of the way and have a cup of tea in the local cafe with no-one bothering you to much. You could also get caught having that tea so had to keep your eyes out! I once got caught reading a paper on the back seat of the spare bus we kept there and given a right bollocking!

But we slowly learned the ropes and then looked toward the promotion trail as other inspectors retired, much as the colleagues that I work with are doing now as I am due to retire. I was due for promotion if not to the next level but in monetary terms in 1988 and it all went hugely wrong one day. Read about this in the next blog.

The Ticket Inspector

Well as I have said in the summer of 1982 I finally made it up to ticket inspector. In some parts of the UK that is not the starting point but in Cardiff that was and still is where you start out. I say just a ticket inspector but in fact you went to a lot of different things as I shall explain over this and other blogs.

Of course the main idea was to check the ticket that the passenger has paid for and make sure that they were not over riding,( travelling further than they had paid for) or perhaps young adults were paying the correct fare. They had a habit of paying half fare and saying they were 15 years old even if they were 16,17 or even 18 sometimes. The driver, (and these were nearly all one man buses by now) even if he suspected them did not have time to check.

The quick check that caught nearly all of them out was ' 'can I have your date of birth please'? The times that they messed that up and gave me a year that proved they were over 16 was huge! It was then either pay the correct fare or get off. There was a standard excess fare I could charge as well of about four times the maximum fare and I used that if I thought they were really at it.

The rule of the company was to check roughly 28 buses a day or about four an hour over the shift. That was not to difficult but if you were stuck out of Cardiff and missed the bus you had been aiming for that could ruin the check day. If perhaps I had been dealing with a passenger complaint and that took some time up then I could record that on a checking sheet as 'dealing with passenger' 15 minutes or whatever.

Of course that excuse could also be used when I stopped of for a cup of tea! I very often 'checked' my way up to Llanedeyrn the area of Cardiff that I live in and went home for a cuppa and then back out again.

You could have a laugh with the passengers as well as check tickets. As long as they had paid the correct fare they were not bothered about you being there and as I have said I have always got on with people and this was no different. I can remember one day running up the stairs to check the tickets and when I bobbed up the lady sitting on the top seat said 'Oh my God!' so I answered back ' No but you're close! Tickets please!'.

Another way they saved a little money was not paying for children and saying they were only four years old when they were over. I checked one young mum's ticket and as I get on with kids I was saying hello. Of course I said has the little one got a ticket and she said 'no she is only four'. Of course the little girl dropped her in it and piped up 'no I am not mum I am five'. I had to laugh as she tried the 'I forgot she was the older one' excuse. She of course got charged for her child as we both knew she was trying it on.

And of course there was the other side when things were not quite as pleasant. Young men trying to show off and thinking they were tough. I am a big man and even back then I was on the large side and although I have never used my size they do think twice about starting trouble.

I was checking tickets on one bus when the gang of boys decided either they had not paid enough or it was their stop and it was time to piss off the inspector. So they made a rush for the stairs to get off. One young man tried to push me over in the narrow isle. Now like I have said I am not small and I had on the thick great coat we used to wear for winter and it took one gentle nudge and he went flying over the seat in front! Of course I was 'Oh you seem to have tripped, are you OK?'. We both knew what had happened and he just looked at me and ran downstairs.

We also carried radios in case problems and could radio for assistance if necessary. They were made by Motorola and were their 'sometimes' brand. Sometime they worked and sometimes they did not! But in the case of trouble they were useful even If they did not work. In one case a guy had 'over ridden' and would not pay the excess fare and was intent of being a pain in the arse. So I picked up the radio that I knew would not work and called in for police assistance. Within minutes he had paid the fare.

More on the life of an Inspector in the next blog.

The start of my time back

Well it is now 1977 and as I have said I am back for good. It the years away the buses have changed and we have a lot of new ones. Still no power steering on most so for those that read this and have always had cars with power steering can you imagine what it was like to go around corners with a ten ton bus full of passengers with no power steering?

However it was the norm back then and I was put on the standard routes on one man services and was glad to be back to be honest. I have always enjoyed driving and I get on with most people and this job suited me at the time.

But of course we all have to move on and after a year or so I wanted to get on the 'out of town' routes. At that time we had buses going as far as Tredegar about 30 miles away. This was a two hour trip each way and was something a lot different to the normal driving.

I was accepted on the relief rota which meant that if a driver was on the sick or holidays then I would be asked to do there work. Later on I was put on the main roster for the route. I enjoyed the three years that I spent up and down that route and the time went quickly. The buses we used at the time had power steering and that was a real difference!

The roads themselves however were poor and took a toll on the buses. The suspension of this type that we called 'K liners' soon got very bad and although I thoroughly enjoyed the routes and the people we picked up my back was taking a real battering from the bad roads and after three years I transferred to another roster.

This was the Penarth roster and was once again out of town. Not as far as Tredegar only about five miles out but it was not driving in the city with all the traffic and we had better buses and I enjoyed that as well.

Part of one of the out of town routes was the journey to Newport about 10 miles away and back. I drove this route for some time and one day on a dark rainy day had the accident that I have never forgotten. I was negotiating a corner on the way into town and all of a sudden someone called out, 'you have just knocked someone over'.

I stopped and ran back and there was a man lying in the road. The police were called and the ambulance, and while we were waiting a passenger said, 'I saw it all driver, he walked into the back of the bus as you were turning'. In the rain and dark he must have been rushing to get to work.

By the time the police arrived this guy had gone and I was so shook up I did not get his name. I was charged with driving without due care and attention and in the end had my licence endorsed and fined. Later on I was called to the Council (two years later) and told that this guy had passed away. If he had died within a year and a day of the accident I would have been charged again with death by dangerous driving and could have gone to prison.

Reading this you might ask what was wrong with driving in town? (Apart from the above). Well if you drive to town to do some shopping and get stuck in traffic and get frustrated at it, think what it is like to do the same thing for eight to ten hours a day picking up hundreds of people at the same time. That is the job and if you do it you get used to it. But getting out of town makes a real difference and even today we have out of town routes and there is usually a queue to work them.

That lasted until 1982 and I then applied to be a ticket inspector. I had applied before and been turned down but as you rarely got it first time I was not that surprised. But this time I thought I had a real chance at it and in the summer of 1982 I got the post.

Representing the company!

As I mentioned the in last blog I was fortunate enough to win the South Wales driver of the year in the first year of trying.

From there I went to Blackpool for the weekend and competed in the national against drivers from all over the UK. To be honest I did not exactly cover myself in glory that year. I did OK I guess but got nowhere in the rankings.

The course was near Blackpool beach off road and had slalom type driving courses using cones and highway code events and spotting defects on a vehicle. However I enjoyed the competition and met a lot of people.

The next year as the regional winner I came second and of course could not go to the nationals. The year after I came first again and this time the competition had moved to the Midlands to a large bus depot. If I had not made one silly error I would have done quite well that year. However many other drivers made the same error so I did not feel quite as bad as I might have done.

I entered one last time in 1982 and won the regional heats once more. However by the time the finals came around I had taken on the post as Inspector. (More in later blogs on that). As I was no longer a driver I could not go to the nationals and the second place man took my place.

Of course that was the last competition I entered for Cardiff Bus. But I had enjoyed those years and met drivers from all over the UK. I found that there is a very strong bond between bus drivers where ever you come from.

Back on the buses!

Well it is now July 1977 and am back on the job and this time for good. I did not know that at the time of course but to be honest it felt like coming home. I still had a lot of friends on the job, my father still worked there and I was well known so the was no problem settling in.

Mark was five years old now and for the last three years or so I had seen him every day at about 12.30 onward but now he was starting school anyway so not being home quite as much was not a problem.

And when you worked for a bus company in those days overtime was part of the deal to earn a decent wage. We lived in a council house and had all the usual bills to pay so I,like most of my contemporaries worked 13 out of 14 days and overtime on several of them and thought nothing of it as it was part of life then.

I have to say that even today there are many drivers who work a lot of overtime. Not so many as in those days but it is not uncommon to work long hours in our industry although the laws have been tightened up now.

I still had my bus driving licence of course so went in as a driver straight away. We were still operating crew and one man operating buses back then and I went in with conductors for a while until a space became available on the OMO shifts. The years away had brought in more routes that were one man operated and many conductors had taken the driving test and were driving the new routes.

The old hands who would not drive one man buses were really on the way out and as the years passed all routes were changed to that type of operation.

As I have said in an earlier blog, I have always taken pride in my driving and it was put to good use the year after I came back. Drivers were invited to have a go at the 'bus driver of the year' competition and I decided to have a go at it. This was the local South Wales event to get into the nationals and through luck and a bit of skill I took first place in my area so I represented my company in the national event in Blackpool that year.

More on this and more in the next blog.

The 'Wilderness years'

Just a short entry about the four years that I spent away from Cardiff Bus and the difficulty I had getting back in again!

I left and went to work at a steel rolling mill for what was supposed to be better money. This was in nearby Newport and I soon found out that I would start as the lowest of the low picking up rubbish that had been discarded from the mills. I moved after a few weeks to the mills themselves and was responsible for getting the first of the rolls onto the conveyor to pass through. This was piece work and the more you pushed through the more you earned.

I was not fast enough for them and in the end I decided to get out of was a dirty dangerous job and found a job in Cardiff at a funeral directors of all things.

This job was a chauffeurs job and driving smart Daimler cars for a living was no hardship. However the company was not easy to work for and part of the job was collecting bodies from morgues and taking them to the funeral home.

You learned to live with that and I have never been bothered by the dead ever since. But some of the shifts involved staying over night in the funeral home waiting for calls from the police to collect bodies etc and I decided it just was not for me.

So I then got a job delivering fish of all things!

The company was called Snowdens and I spent three years there delivering fresh fish all over the south Wales valleys. I was well regarded there and as the job started early every day and finished by 12.00 I had a lot of time with my fast growing young son.

But in the end the smell of fish began to put me off and I thought about getting back to the buses. I went for an interview and was shown my record and that had 'NOT TO BE RE-EMPLOYED' in large letters all over it!

But the years working for Snowden's on early morning shifts had in the main sorted out my lateness and I used the 'old boys network' and got my father to have a word with the manger to see if I could get back in. He had a word with me and told me in no uncertain terms that he would have be back as a favour to my father and if I messed up then I would be out for good.

So in the summer of 1977 I was back and this time for good!

The one man operator

I had been driving buses now for about two years and the company were beginning to bring in modern buses. Basically the type you see around these days with the doors at the front which meant that you could speak to the conductor or the passengers as they came on instead of being stuck up the front on your own all day. They were of course easier to drive with the semi-automatic gearboxes that they had.

Of course they were the forerunner of the next phase that would be 'One Man Operation' and that soon became the buzz word of the day. Most of the younger drivers like myself were interested and as it would mean extra pay when you signed up and had been trained.

The older hands were not interested and they were plenty of arguments as they could see the job losses that would occur as it became more wide spread.

But for me it was the future of the bus industry and I could not wait to get on them. I was in fact on the second batch of drivers to get trained for one man operation. The buses were the new Leyland Swift type buses and would operate some of the quieter routes that we had. No-one really thought that the busy routes would go one man. How wrong we were as the future would tell!

But the buses were modern,fast and easy to drive with the power steering and semi-automatic gears. I could drive them and for overtime I could take one of the old buses and a conductor. It seemed the best option for me and the extra pay was very useful.

It must the said that the OMO stickers caused great hilarity at the time with the obvious 'homo' connotation that it bought in.

My son Mark was born in 1972 and working all hours meant that I did not see as much of that new baby as I would have liked.

As I have said in earlier blogs my time keeping was not the best and I had several 'bollockings' over my lateness. In fact my own father sent me home one day for being late! Being newly married and with a young son made me think of leaving and finding a job with less hours.

In the end I left in 1974 after four years and with a full licence that would enable me to drive any bus any where in the country. The company were not sorry to see my go and I will tell you just how not sorry in the next blog!

I become a bus driver!

Well this was back in 1970 and I had been a bus conductor for six months. You had to work for at least six months back then before you could apply for it. Like most young conductors I wanted that licence and to sit up front of that half cab. Check out the photo of the A.E.C. that I eventually was driving.

Way back then the training was done on 'crash box Guys' one of the old buses that we kept just for training. They were a half cab much like the one above and the gear boxes were the crash box type which for those who have never heard of them were boxes that did not have modern synchronized gears. If you could drive them you could drive anything that came your way.

We trained for about six weeks and then the Chief Inspector came out and checked out your driving standards. If he thought you were good enough you passed! That was it no other tests just the Chief. It was said at the time that if we had plenty of drivers you failed and if we were short you passed! They must have been short because I passed out.

Well then you are let loose on the general public lord help them and given a conductor. Just as it was when I first became a conductor you were the new boys and given whoever they wanted to give. I had some good ones and some bad ones I guess. The only thing was that my wife to who I just got married to said that she did not want me to have a female conductor.

I could not argue to much I guess because she had seen some of the problems that caused when male/female partnerships worked together for a long time.

The buses way back then were a real mixture and you soon learned to drive just about anything. We had preselect gearboxes, white stick Damliers, long Leylands, AEC's just about everything. I am not going to claim here that I was the best driver around but I have always taken a pride in my driving and like to think that I gave my conductors and passengers a good ride all in all.

We did have our moments though and when I had passed out my old driver 'Billy the Wombat' and myself used to race each other occasionally! This today would never be tolerated and rightly so, but back then with a quiet bus it was just a bit of fun.

And to end today's blog the next move for me and Cardiff Bus was the One Man Operator that would take over the driving of just about all bus firms but this was back in 1972 and was just about to be introduced. It was more money and for a young man recently married I was up for it big time. More in the next blog.

A conductors life

As I said in the first post, I started out as a bus conductor. Most of us did back then unless you already had a bus driving licence and then you could start as a driver straight away.

So what was life like? Well for one thing you kept pretty fit running up and down stairs all day long. I was getting married in six months and worked long hours. You did not have much choice as the wages were not that good.

Of course in the late sixties the mini skirt was all the rage with the girls and I spent many a happy time gazing up the stairs as they climbed it! I tried to make sure my future wife did not see me though!

Bus conductors were usually paired up with a driver full time and good friends were made at that time. With the hours that they worked drivers and conductors often saw each other more than there wife's or husbands. If there was a male/female partnership that was the cause of many a marriage breakdown back then.

For myself at 21 of course the main thing was to get that driving licence and be at the front of the bus. More later on that but it did mean that I was not partnered up fully as I was new and just got put with a few drivers. One that I was with often was called 'The Wombat'. Bill if you ever read this you will know why and I enjoyed the friendship that was had.

Bus staff often in those days had nicknames and in fact today many of the drivers have names that they are called in friendship by others. (Sometimes not so friendly either).

The life of the bus conductor has gone now of course as just about all buses are operated by one man/woman. But back in the late sixties and early seventies we were the main stay of the bus. The buses were 'half cabs' with the driver up in his cab on his own. I say his because of course back then women bus drivers just did not exist. The buses were heavy and with no power steering. This is not meant to be a sexist remark but it just did not happen.

You met hundreds of people a day, most friendly and some not. The violence that seems to be around today was not as bad back then and on the whole I had few problems. Even the drunks seemed to be OK and would usually pay the fare.(Eventually). Smoking was of course aloud upstairs back then and on the last buses I often had a job seeing the front of the bus for the smoke. That is one thing I am glad that has changed but as I smoked myself at the time I guess that I was not so bothered as I would be today.

What you could have was a lot of FUN! Some of the passengers were real comedians and most of the staff were great. The female conductors (clippies) were always up for a laugh and teased us men rotten. As my father was an depot inspector doing in fact a similar job that I have done for over 20 years I was taken in very easily. I do not mean that the staff 'sucked up' to me because believe me that would never happen but I had been back and fore with Dad for years and I was known and accepted very quickly. That helped believe me and was one of the reasons that I stayed for four years.

On the next post I move on to driving and the fun and trouble that bought me.

A life on the buses

Well this is the first post that I don't suppose will be read but I have spent a long time working in the public transport industry and thought that I might as well get some of the things down while I still remember them and before I am to old to bother.

It all started back in 1969. I had left the safety of my first firm, British Rail where I had spent the last five years as an apprentice fitter and of course as 21 year old's do thought I knew it all. I joined a couple of firms as a fitter and proved to them and myself that I had been spoiled on BR and did not know enough about the world of commercial transport.

That got me the sack and to get a quick job I thought that would get a job on Cardiff Bus for a few months. (Believe me that VERY few join because they want a full time job). My father was an Inspector on there and had been there since 1949 and there was no problem getting in as a conductor. That was how we all started back then.

As a bus conductor you very soon lose any shyness and learn to communicate and have fun with Joe public. You bloody well have to as hundreds of people are on and off your bus a day and it soon knocks any shyness out of you. If not you just could not do that job.

What was a problem back then was getting up! Bus drivers and conductors start at stupid times of the day, as early as 04.00 in the morning. That has not changed all these years later and these days I start many days at 3.45 as a supervisor. They also work different shifts finishing at past midnight and these shift pattern changes caused a lot of problems for me back then.

I was bought up before the bosses more than once for my late arrival and in the end that caused major problems but more of that in other blog posts. This will do for the first post and if you ever read it let me know.