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.