Memories of a decent bus service

[Ousetunes]

In these days of expensive public transport, of buses forever running late or not even turning up, and the general dissatisfaction of the Sheffield pulbic at large regarding our bus service, I thought it was time to remember when we had a public transport system that was the envy of the rest of the country.

 

I remember many a journey on the old Regent V bus, the ones where the access was an open platform to the rear of the bus. In the early 1970s there was still quite a few of these on the roads, and they looked great in their blue and cream livery with the Sheffield coat of arms painted on the sides (like the trams used to).

 

I recall the conductor issuing little tickets, different colours depending on your fayre, being wound out manually from a metal dispenser that was slung around the conductor's neck. The conductors and drivers and the inspectors (who frequently boarded the bus to check you'd paid) were all smartly dressed - I think the conductor and inspector even wore smart caps.

 

Then came the buses with doors at the front and sometimes in the middle (Atlanteans I think). Unfortunately, they came on the roads in the coffee and cream livery of the newly formed South Yorkshire Transport. Everyone wanted the blue and cream back! And the Sheffield coat of arms was gone, replaced with an SYT logo painted near the front of the bus, near the advertising panel.

 

But SYT (and later, SYPTE) also gave us the videmat machine, a large bin-like container into which you threw your fayre and it printed your money onto a receipt - in reverse. Conductors were far and few between - many a time I risked not even paying coming home from school certain that there'd be no conductor to check if I'd paid.

 

As late as 1983, I and a friend of mine decided we'd take the 88 from Nethergreen to Roscoe Bank just for something to do. It cost us 2p each. A cheap night out alright! Around the same year saw the introduction of the bendibus (which IIRC was free to use at first). I marvelled at the central bendy bit, in which you could sit or stand during your journey. I was impressed with the bendibus which was white with orange and green colours.

 

Do you remember the Silver Jubilee bus in 1977 which was painted in silver? I used to look out for it from my classroom at Nethergreen Middle School (I was in the pre-fab classroom overlooking the field and school gates). Then TCHarrison had a bus painted orange and white - the first bus I'd seen totally covered in advertising. That ran regularly on the 95 route.

 

Also, we ended up borrowing a fleet of Manchester buses - also orange and white. Why was this? Or were SYT on strike? I'd guess this was around 1979.

 

Our buses then turned into brown, cream and red - a sickly site. I stopped using the bus regularlywhen I finished school in 1985. Then I'd use it to get to Broomhill and back in 1986 when I started boozing.

 

Some nice memories - some not so nice. One of my earliest recollections is travelling down the Moor onto Ecclesall Road in the early 1970s on one of the older type buses. A huge kid - enormous - had been sick and the whole upstairs smelled of vomit, which was pink and running all over the floor.

 

It used to be cheap, used to be reliable and used to be something we Sheffielders rightly thought a lot of. I doubt many a public transport regular can hold claim to such boasts with our present public transport system.

[Sweetcheeks]

Thanks for the memories Ousetunes! I have always used public transport, being a non-driver, and my early memories were the Trams, whose stairs seemed oh so steep to a chabbie. I remember the Trolleybuses in Rotherham, a great sight to see. I used to love the old back loaders, holding on to the central pole as the bus wizzed round the corner at speed, trying to jump off before it stopped and feeling a prat when you fell over on meeting the pavement. Those fares you mentioned were so cheap, funded I believe by the rates. Yes the 2p fare was what I used to pay to get to school, then when I started work it was 6p for many a year, increasing greatly to 10p and we complained. If we only knew what was to become of our buses and fares. Would we go back to the services we had in the 70`s...you bet!

[Torgwen]

I was a conductor and then driver during 1978-80 and it was a great job at the time. A huge variety of people used to work on the buses and it was easy to get a job on them if you wanted. Bus fares at the time were 2p for kids and average fares were 5p eg Broomhill to town, 7p eg Abbeydale, Netheredge, Hillsborough to town. For 16p you could spend hours travelling round the city (if you wanted ).

 

Yes the tickets were issued off rolls, blue for 7p, pink was 5p, white was 2p (I'm not sure now thinking about it about these colours, I think there was a purple.

 

The reason I left was the shifts and serious decline in any social life or any other life than the buses. The earliest start was 4.15am (night) and I had to walk into town (25 mins) because the nearest staff bus wasn't near enough to make much difference. Any start before about 5.30am was NIGHT and I never got used to the starts between 4 and 5am, which there were plenty of. The shifts were alternate evenings (started around 2.30pm on) and mornings (late nights). With the early morning start if you went out in the evening you were falling asleep by 10pm so not much company and when on evenings you'd get finished around midnight but what social life are you going to have starting at that time?!

 

Buses that I worked on - 95 and 17 from Leadmill Road garage plus others - ran every 5 or 6 minutes. This made it crucial if some idiot was pinching time in front of you (going a couple of minutes early) - you'd end up with a full load and your foot flat down on the accelerator going up City Road. When you got to Intake you'd see the prat in front who had nipped up there with hardly any passengers.

 

The job had changed dramatically by 1994 when I filmed a bus driver who I had known from when I worked there - Doug Gibbons. He told me how after deregulation the job had got worse, the fumes in town were worse, people weren't so happy as by then they all worked on their own as no conductors any more. A copy of the 10 minute video I made "Since Deregulation" is with the TGWU in London.

[ALZYMER]

It was the late sixties. I was around 18/19 years of age complete with almost bouffant hairstyle, ala 'Small Faces', and yes I'm a bloke! I was conducting on the 95 bus route from Intake to Walkley. The bus was one of the 'new' front loaders, Atlanteans I think they were called, and at that time we still had driver and conductor teams. A young mother and baby got on the bus at the Intake terminus and I put her baby stroller onboard as she had her hands full. At the Manor top she got up get off the bus and I got off with her and helped her to get the stroller ready. I'd just finished and was about to turn around to get back on the bus when I heard a whoosh as the front doors of my bus closed:confused: Here I am in full uniform, Setrite (ticket machine) around my neck, getting amused looks from the passers by and seing my bus dissapear down City road:help: So I stood in the middle of the road and put my thumb out to hitch a ride:thumbsup: A guy in a Jag stopped for me and I came out with the immortal line 'Follow that bus'. Anyway half way down City road we passed the bus and I got on at the next stop. A look of amazement came across from Fred the bus driver as I got on, but I did get a round of applause from the passengers. Needless to say that job only lasted a few months.

[Unregistered]

Cheap fares - paid for by rate payers.

 

In the 70's that subsidy passed £1 million per week.

[Fareast]

Great memories of Sheffield buses:- From the age of being compus mentis[?] to about 11 years of age, one of my ambitions was to be a Sheffield bus-driver.My mom and I used to catch the 32 Woodthorpe bus from the terminus at the junction of Hastilar Road and Richmond Road. I always headed upstairs for the front seat and I used to love pretending I was driving through the Woodthorpe, then the Manor and then down into town.

 

We also used to regularly catch the 21[swallownest] single-decker bus on Richmond Road which went to Catcliffe. Then, it was usually the back seat and hoping we'd pass whatever other traffic was on the road.

 

We moved when I was about 8 in 1949 to Hunters Bar and I think even then the bus was the 82 bus to town, although we usually caught the tram, which was more frequent.

 

The Sheffield bus service, as others have so rightly pointed out, was probably the best in the U.K I would guess that almost everyone in Sheffield knew very accurately where buses left from, the route they took and how long a journey would take.Nothing much seemed to change, year on year,[why should it?] and there was a feeling of reliability and constancy about going by bus.

 

Every year Sheffield Transport would publish a thick cream book, which I think was free, with the timetable of every route-----and you could actually believe it was true!

 

I don't blame Mrs. Thatcher or the Tories for everything but the de-regulation of the bus services was not thought through properly and I think should have been resisted much more vigorously.

[Nyx]

There never seemed to be anywhere you couldn`t get by bus, it was great.

The 2p fares which went up to 9p when you were older were great value!

Anyone remember the old timetables which were about the size of a paperback book with every bus in them? The cheapest i remember them being was 5 pence.

These days the timetables are individual and change too frequently, i have to go and get a carrier bag full when they do - what a waste of paper!

[saxon51]

Do you remember when the buses had the route number on the back, so you could see which bus it was as you approach it from the back? No need to sprint and overtake the bus - as nowadays -just to see which one it was as it drives away leaving you standing just because you aren't actually standing at the stop. They also had the destination displayed above the entry as well so you had a chance of knowing which bus you were boarding.

 

Nowadays, if you see the destination board it will probably say something like 'Claret Line' (Where the bloody hell does that go?) ? You need to wait until the other writing on the board takes its turn

[MikeJ]

Torgwen mentions Doug Gibbons. He was (and I am sure still is) one of the very nicest men I have met (with his brother, back in '73-5). I knew he worked on the buses-I believe he lived up at Crooks Moor (?). Is he still working for the bus company? I do hope life continues to treat him and his family well.

[britmom]

Oh my what memories this thread brought back for me! My Dad was a bus driver and I remember the times we would go to work with him and sit on the bus and ride out to Bakewell! He used to take us to his Garage ( east bank Rd) and let us count his money before he turned it in! I remember the other drivers giving me and my sister sixpences too ( yeah I'm showing my age now I know)