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About nine years ago,
I started to type at my computer
and then suddenly realized I can make a book out to this;
and it has taken nine years to assemble all the information
and to put it all together. I
started work for Manchester Corporation Transport Department in
1962. I was eighteen and a quarter at the time.
I should've been nineteen officially, but when I telephoned them
they said come down to fifty-five Piccadilly, so I did.
I passed all the necessary medical tests and
mathematical tests and was taken on
as a conductor for Manchester CorporationTtransport Department on
Wednesday the
8th of August 1962. I did almost five years
as a conductor and then in 1967
I became a fully-fledged driver and stayed with them
and their successors, such as SELNEC (South East Lancashire and
North East Cheshire Passenger Transport Executive),
Greater Manchester Transport, Greater Manchester Buses North
I'm finally First Group. I retired
having obtained my pension early, earlier than
I should have done, and retired fully
after working part-time for a number of years
in October 2006.
Once the Coperation had decided to take a person on,
as a trainee,
we were issued with a summer jacket.
Once we had passed all the necessary tests
and were taken on permanently, we were issued with the full uniform
which walls dark blue
woolen cloth, heavy woolen cloth, a jacket,
trousers with red piping, a big overcoat
also with red piping, a peaked cap
and 3 or four separate collars.
I was based at Queens Road garage.
Garage was a special term but since it was the very first tram depot,
built in 1901, the term depot stuck for many many years
and both management and crews would refer to it as
Queens Road Depot, or even Queen Road Garage.
The terms were interchangeable. Manchester Corporation
ran buses for 365 days of the year
24 hours a day. We ran a night service,
so there was never an hour when you couldn't have a ride,
or travel on a Manchester Corporation bus.
We also run buses to the myriad of factories
that were in the Manchester district, including for instance, Trafford Park,
Metro Vicks was the main employer there
and probably half the fleet went to Metro Vicks.
After the peak hour, many buses
did school journeys taking children to
swimming baths and other
activities, so that the the buses were
in constant use. In the nineteen sixties when I was working as a conductor and
driver,
many people used the buses. There were fewer cars on the roads, buy the city
center was always congested,
but the running times were generous and with a bit of effort
and a close eye on the rearview mirrors for
the odd police car, it was possible to pull the time back
and leave the outer terminus on time.
There was a lot of camaraderie involved, because
every bus had two men, the conductor and the driver,
apart from the odd one or two single deck
one man vehicles even in those days. So there was a lot of fun, a lot of camaraderie.
People would get to know each other and
and interact socially outside of the job
as well as working together on the buses.
I was always interested as a child in buses. I was quite happy going
on a long bus ride. I had a great auntd who lived in
Old Trafford so we used to travel on the 81 service from
Cheetham to Brooks Bar and back.
Also we used to have day trip out into the countryside around Burnley anda
Clitheroe, so we would use the Ribbel buses,
which ran up and down Bury New Road.
I did develop an ear for the sounds that
various buses made. I used to traveling down Leicester Road and Higher Brougton and
and two buses used to come round the corner. One was a 73 going to Whitefield
and the other was the 1 service which only went another few stops to Manley
Park.
Inevitably the 1 would be a PD1
um, a Leyland PD1 on the 73
would be Daimler and I could tell before the buses came around the corner
which it was going to be by the different sounds they made.
The jacket I'm wearing, is Manchester Corporation Transport Department,
uniform which was issued to me in
probably 1968, not long before
Manchester and the surrounding towns are subsumed into
SELNEC, which was South East Lancashire North East Cheshire
Passenger Transport Executive. It still fits
and when I drive buses for the Transport Museum now and again,
I wear it to the great delight of the passengers.
Its quite a heavyweight wool cloth
with red piping. The badge up here
is my PSV Public Service
Vehicle Badge, which is my license to drive buses,
now called PCVs, or Passenger Carrying Vehicles.
It had to be worn and displayed at all times.
This little badge, is for
safe driving for 15 years. I'm also wearing
a pocket watch
which is a Waltham. It was my father's, but many many drivers
have pocket watches and in fact just after World War Two,
the corporation bought batches of watches
from the Ministry and the drivers
could buy them from the corporation and pay five shillings per week.
Most of the photographs in the book, were taken by myself.
I had always been interested in photography
and in July 1964,
I bought a Kodak thirty five-millimeter
Retina camera. I always had the camera with me
and took whatever interested me at the time.
It was an expensive hobby, because a role is 36
Agfa slides, was the cost of the day's pay.
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