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

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WORKING CONDITIONS - THE SHIFTS IN THE EARLY 1960s Most of the 8-hour maximum shifts were made up of two or more parts, one of which could be as much as but not more than four-and-three-quarter hours, and crews alternated between one week on the early shift and one week on late. The first buses on the various services departed from the garage at around 4.30am, all of which went to the outer terminuses. Crews had to report at the garage office 15 minutes before departure time, for drivers to prepare their vehicles and conductors to collect the equipment and fill in the manifest in which the ticket numbers were recorded. Buses left at intervals of a few minutes, one for each service, then after a pause the numbers going out increased over the following three hours as the time-table service built up to maximum. By eight o’clock very few were left in the garage, usually only those under repair, but once or twice I saw the garage completely empty between 8 and 9am and 4.30 and 5.30pm. This situation was of course reversed between 11pm and around 12.30 am, when all the vehicles returned to the garage, where the full compliment was ‘at home’ until the two on the night services left for George Square within a few minutes of each other.     About 70% of the workload was concentrated in the morning and evening peak hours. In addition a number of extra buses were required during the lunch break, when about half of workers in general went home at mid-day for a meal. This was coped with by the introduction of shifts of a different work pattern called spread-overs. These were split between morning and late afternoon, with the parts falling between roughly 6am and 9.30am, and 3pm and 6.30pm. Green-staff in general had free time between 9.30am and 3pm. The lunchtime parts were fitted into shifts with lighter morning and afternoon parts. As these shifts had starting and finishing times outwith the daily number of hours, they qualified for an additional payment of one-third. Spread-overs were generally two- or three-parters, and I recall doing one with four parts, the shift parts being known generally as ‘bits’. This meant that half of these ‘odd’ shifts were split between early and late, and as the early work was the most popular with the green-staff, an early start on a ‘late’ week was keenly looked forward to. After signing on for a shift leaving the garage the driver collected the time board, a 10”X8” piece of white painted half-inch thick plywood.  On one side there was a pre-printed sheet with details of the route of the service and the arrival and departure times at terminuses, and the times due at timing points along the route which were hand written in boxes. The other side had a list of ‘regulations’. The above gives only a very sketchy outline of the work in general; to cover it in more detail would require a few more pages. SERVICE AND ROUTE NUMBERS Along with the time board, the driver collected two small route number-plates of metal roughly 8” x 4”, in which the route number was punched out. These were displayed, one in a bracket in the rear nearside and the other in the front offside windows of the vehicle’s lower deck. This allowed timekeepers along the route to identify which bus was which, for which they were equipped with a timetable book with the route numbers and the times of all buses that went past their station. The time board itself was supposed to be lodged in a holder below the front offside window of the cab, but in order to check the times it had to be picked up. At the start, like others I found this to be a distraction, having to pick it up to read it. Until one day I saw another driver with his board propped up on the hand-brake lever stop bracket leaning against the window below the windscreen, where it could be seen simply by leaning forward slightly. There was a vague memory of a warning given during the time at the bus school about this practice and serious accidents it had caused, but it was half-heard, and its significance was only realise rather forcefully in the following way.     The event happened after a few weeks in the job when proceeding up Eglinton Street and approaching the Toll, with a clear road ahead and a couple of buses following close behind. On crossing over the uneven surface of the tram lines which turned into Turriff Street there was a bump, and the time board fell off its position on the hand-brake lever bracket and landed out of sight on the floor. Although reducing speed in preparation for drawing up at the Toll stop, it was far too risky to try to retrieve it until the vehicle was stationary. The timekeeper was standing with his book open ready to check us, but when I tried to depress the brake pedal to draw, up it wouldn’t move because the time-board was wedged rock solid and immovable under it! The panic this generated can be well imagined as I strained to get the pedal to move, and when this failed the only thing to do was to grab frantically at and pull on the handbrake. Because of the relatively slow speed the vehicle coasted smoothly to a stand at exactly the right place at the stop. In an unbelievable stroke of good fortune the time-keeper, whose eyes had been momentarily on his time-table raised them just when the panic pantomime was over. If he had been watching he would have known what had happened and would have taken action accordingly. What would have happened if I had been driving the second or third vehicle doesn’t bear thinking about. Of course I had to pause until his attention was elsewhere before I could retrieve the time board.     Soon after this the time-boards were replace with a new type made of sheet metal. Checking through photos in various books on buses of the period, the old small route number plates, or the brackets on which they were mounted, are discernible in the windows of only one or two of the older (c1950s and early ‘60s) buses. (See page 18 of Alan Miller’s STREETS OF GLASGOW, p18, the nearest of the two buses.) The new one piece time-boards had a lower section of the same size as the old one that allowed it to fit into the same holder. But it but had another larger section above, on the inner side of which the sheet with the times in larger format was stuck. This made them readable from the driving position. The new plates themselves were painted red with the route numbers depicted in large black figures on the outside making them clearly visible to time-keepers, which dispensed with the cast metal plates. They are seen in some photographs taken in the 1960s which show the vehicle’s front offside. (See pages 27 and 40 of  Miller’s book, although in the case of the latter the number 44 seems unusually high. It’s hard to imagine 44 individual buses on the 32 service.) The smaller white time table board-holders on the offside weren’t fitted on the newer buses because they were in the way of the sliding cab door of the latest buses, while the holder for the new board was fixed on the door itself, which then made the route numbers clearly visible from outside.     Route numbers were allocated to vehicles on a particular service in their order of leaving the garage; the first one out was 1 and so on. On busy cross-city services, such as the probably uniquely interchangeable 38s and 45s, there could be as many as fifty buses covering the two at peak times. Each had a route number and a timetable, and the numbers were allocated between the three garages that supplied the vehicles on these routes, in the proportion of half from Newlands and the rest divided between the other two, Possilpark and Parkhead. The following is a sample of the dimly remembered, and probably not accurate, peak-time running times between timing points of a 45 leaving Rouken Glen. To Shawlands Cross - 15 minutes, Eglinton Toll - 6, Argyle Street - 6, Castle Street - 10, Springburn - 9, and Bishopbriggs - 8. These times varied in frequency and running between timing points between busy and quiet times, and other factors affected them which would be too laborious, too boring more likely, to lay out here. With a ten-minute interval between buses, departure times from terminuses during off peak times remained at the same times each hour. The 38 and 45 services had a convenient, timetable wise, total running time between terminuses of 54 minutes, which meant a layover time at the northern terminuses of 6 minutes. MISCELLANY Sent out on one occasion from Newlands with a change-over vehicle to replace one on a service passing through Pollokshaws, I made the exchange at the burgh hall. The change-over completed, instead of going the long way round by Auldhouse Road as I should have done, I turned into Bengal Street, where I lived in the multi-storey flats. There I found my younger son Colin, who would have been around seven or eight at the time, playing with pals. I offered to take him for a ‘hurl’ round to the garage, which he eagerly accepted.     On another occasion I was driving a full bus up Kilmarnock Road, and when halfway over the junction with Newlands Road I realised the driver of the heavily laden tipper truck approaching down the slope on the left was having trouble stopping. He was gripping the steering wheel and standing up on the brake pedal with his eyes on stalks. The truck was certainly slowing up but it was obvious he would be unable to stop and there was no time for me to take avoiding action. There was a bang and a medium lurch but I was able to pull up. In those day police travelled to and from work in uniform, and there was one sitting on the lower deck. There wasn’t much damage to either vehicle but it would obviously have to be reported, so I appealed to the constable to take the details, knowing that he was sitting on the nearside virtually at the point of contact. He showed a marked reluctance to do so, but got up from his seat and came off. He was an older man with a grim and unhappy facial expression and, approaching me and coming close up and rolling his eyes said in a muffled voice, ’I’ve just had all my teeth removed!’ He managed to cope with the situation but ‘grounded’ the truck because it was too dangerous for it to carry on.     On taking up a bus at Shawlands Cross on the 45 service bound for Rouken Glen, when climbing into the cab of what was one of the newest Daimlers, I thought I saw a whiff of vapour drifting up from the front. On settling down in the driver’s seat I paused for a few seconds to check, but when there was nothing further visible decided I had imagined it and carried on. It was busy and I had to drive hard to keep time, and thought nothing of the fact that although it was summer the cab seemed unusually warm. Then driving at maximum speed down Fenwick Road fairly well loaded as a number 38 and approaching the shops at Merrylee, the vehicle come to a sudden halt as if the brakes had been applied with full force. It took only a few seconds to realise that the engine had seized, and what I had seen at Shawlands was the last of the engine coolant drifting out of the radiator filler cap. We had to wait ten minutes or so for the next bus to come along which fortunately was able to accommodate most of the passengers. By this time the engine had cooled down a little, and when I tried to start it did so but with a clanking noise. I then drove slowly down to the garage and delivered the casualty to the fitters and, after reporting the situation, collected another vehicle to finish the part-shift. A few days later I encountered one of the mechanics and asked him about it. He said the engine had seized because of a radiator leak and it had needed a complete overhaul.     There were occasions when a simple defect occurred that simply had to be fixed quickly. Once, with a full bus on the 38 service going south, on a day of heavy rain I had to report to the Shawlands time-keeper that the windscreen wiper had stopped working. He reported it on the phone and came to me and said ‘If you can get to Newlands, go into the garage and a handyman will fix it’. So there I was, with a bus full of passengers driving in past green-staff with amazed looks and much head scratching, and I was directed all the way into the rear where a fitter was waiting. He took about ten seconds to tighten the pinching screw of the wiper arm with a screwdriver, and off we went to the accompaniment of more double-takes.     At the 57 terminus in Clayslaps Road, at departure time I was walking round the front of the bus getting ready to leave when I noticed a hiss of escaping air which I traced it to one of the front tyres. But the tyre itself seemed normal so I drove off intending to report it to the timekeeper at Charing Cross. He checked it and agreed that air was leaking from the tyre, but the fact that it looked normal made him hesitate about reporting it to control. What was on his mind was that if he ordered me to carry on and it deflated suddenly and there was an accident, he could be held responsible. So, after he reported the situation there was the comical sight of him standing at the wheel with a finger on the valve trying to make the tyre look soft before the tyre man turned up to change it.     As well as working as time-keepers at locations around the city, and in garages, making sure vehicle left on time and did not return at the end of a schedule too early, the inspectors’ main work was checking tickets on buses on the road. In recent years, despite being assured by drivers that they still operate, I’ve haven’t seen a single one. In my time they were encountered frequently, usually at least once or twice a day. They came on board and checked all tickets, then left and looked out for another bus. Some conductors were lazy and didn’t bother too much about gathering in fares, while others looked for discarded ticket to re-issue them and pocket the proceeds. Conductors sometimes encountered passengers who offer the fare and said ‘don’t bother with the ticket’, but few did so because they had to take the chance that it could be an inspector in plain clothes.     When buses ran in after the morning rush hour, about a third of the total remained on the road covering the off-peak services. This meant there was more room in the garage, so they were parked spread out in such a way that each vehicle was accessible. With each bay having the three lyes, during the day parking was on each side of a bay, leaving a gap fore-and-aft, e.g. in lye 1 & 3, so that any vehicle could be moved out along 2, and so on. One inspector was popular and had a reputation of being fair when dealing with the green-staff, but he was also known to have been an erratic driver and having had an above average number of accidents when on the road. He was on duty in Newlands as garage timekeeper, supervising the vehicles leaving and returning, to check that crews were doing what they were supposed to. He was also conscientious and willing to help any member of the green-staff with a problem.     A driver had reported late for his shift at the time when he should have been leaving the garage, and as there were no spare drivers available he was allowed to sign on and get on with it. It would have required up to ten minutes to get the bus ready, which meant it would run late at what was a busy time, so the above inspector, who I’ll call ‘John’, decided to speed the process by getting the vehicle ready. He rushed out to the lye-board, found the bus required and started the engine, intending to drive it up to the entrance to the hose for topping-up the radiator. As he did so the nearside caught the rear-offside of the vehicle in front then it hit the one opposite in the next lye at its platform. I witnessed the whole incident, and was sorry to see him head for the superintendent’s office at the back of the building, to make his report and request a replacement for the one he had damaged. When the story became known, everyone thought that if he kept his job the least punishment he could expect was to be demoted back to driving. But John must have been popular with the black-squad as well, because the whole thing was hushed up; the three buses were repaired and nothing more was heard about it, possibly other than a round of drinks for the black-squad at the Newlands Hotel. ©  G. Rountree, September 2008 On leaving the buses in February 1974 I spent a six-month period working as a labourer with a local company, John Horn, Printer & Lithographer in Riverford Road. Then in September of that year I started work in the Co-op wines & sprits warehouse in Clydebank, where I remained for nine years until I had to retire because of a chest condition in September 1983

George visited the 1994 open day at Knightswood Garage, with his twin grandchildren David & Vicky, here's some photos taken by George on the day (click to see full size).

     

   

I'd like to express my grateful thanks to George for allowing me to present his story here.
Did you also serve with GCT ?  Why not email me with your reminiscences for others to read on this site ?

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