SCT'61 - Life on the Buses

This is the first of a series of articles we are planning to add to the site with reminiscences about "Life on the Buses".
If you would like to add your own reminiscences (or someone else's with their permission), please get in touch via the usual email address.
Click here for the second article by Ian Banks or here for some reminiscences about working on the X1 to London in the 1980s.

In this article, originally published in the Essex Bus News, July 2001, Gareth Morgan recounts his story of being a Southend Transport conductor in the early 80’s.

It was 21 years ago this month [2001] that I gained one of the last Conductor’s Licences issued, together with badge FF33123. Southend Transport employed extra conductors each summer to cover for staff holidays, open-top Service 68 (Shoeburyness - Leigh) and staff shortages at Eastern National. I therefore wrote to Derek Giles, Traffic Superintendent, enquiring about summer employment. I was interviewed and following a discussion about the conversion to open-top of the last four of the WJN-J batch of Daimler Fleetlines, I was offered a post.

On 30 June, three days after leaving school, I reported for duty and was issued with my uniform and ticket machine, Setright S145. I was allocated staff number 218 and was joined by four other new recruits, seasonal and permanent. Our training school was to be Leyland Leopard GJN509D, parked at the London Road garage. Training involved matters such as how to operate a Setright ticket machine and the special instructions for passing under the Pier Bridge, necessary to prevent decapitation of upstairs passengers. On passing their test, all new recruits were put onto a spares rota which meant that we might be given virtually any route to do, including those which were normally OMO (no political correctness then).

ST’s two main crew services were 1 (Southend to Rayleigh) and 27 (Southend to Canvey). Conducting on another of the London Road services, the 3 (Shoeburyness to Canvey), was of particular interest to me as this was the only service which ST regularly operated to my local bus stop, Tarpots Corner on the A13 in Benfleet. EN provided the other five buses (usually FLFs) required for the service, but ST just happened to operate what had often been my bus to school, reaching Tarpots at 0744 en route for Southend. It was quite amusing for the schoolchildren knowing that the conductor had been "one of them" just a few weeks earlier.

The July 1980 edition of Buses recorded that only 6 Leyland PD3s (334/40/2/5-7) remained in service, so conductors were regularly working on Fleetlines. Working on a bus with doors clearly had its advantages in bad weather, but involved a few extra tasks: the No Change Given sign on the front of the bus had to be turned over to conceal the wording; the passenger-operated Videmat ticket machine had to be covered and a hood placed over the coin hopper adjacent to the driver. Whenever I had to cover for an OMO duty, passengers often had the correct coins ready, but held up the bus whilst trying to pay the driver. It was particularly sad that children on certain routes, even then, had no idea what a conductor was for - after all, most had probably been told that they must pay the driver before sitting down.

I was soon regularly working on the four Eastern National open top FLFs (2300-3) on Service 67, (Temple Sutton to Eastwood via the Seafront). This was by far the less popular of the two open-top services and on one wet day I arrived back at the garage having collected just £9.74 in an eight-hour shift.

One of the more eventful days on the 67 was when a couple of boys simply didn’t want to get off at Eastwood. While I had my back turned on them to point to the stairs, they jumped over the side!

Work on ST’s own 68 was not without incident, either. On one occasion I said to my driver at Chalkwell Shelter that I thought we were running very early, as we had no passengers on board. "No problem", he said and reversed the bus along the seafront to the previous stop, ready for a second attempt at punctual running.

Another memorable moment was when, having completed our last 67 journey very early, my driver took a rather strange route back to the garage. We came within half a mile of our destination, but overshot and then only after a minute or two headed again towards the garage. The reason for this strange diversion? My driver explained that this would give the impression to garage staff that we had been working the duty scheduled to finish 10 minutes earlier than our own one and we shouldn’t, therefore, be booked for early running.

As far as gricing was concerned, there were plenty of perks with the job e.g. (1) being able to meet other enthusiasts; (2) viewing the duty boards so that I could discover odd workings; (3) travelling on dead mileage to reach services not previously used and (4) the staff pass which allowed me unlimited free travel by EN and ST and half-price Wanderbus tickets.

I left ST at the end of September 1980 after a memorable summer, determined to repeat the experience the following year. I did so, just after major service revisions in mid-June 1981. The main crew services became the 1 and 25 (short workings from Southend to Leigh Church) and I had to face spreadover duties, with around three hours of unpaid time in the middle.

My most memorable day at ST was a day when I was off-duty. The last day of Leyland PD3 operation was to be 31 July. Noting from the rota that I would only, at best, catch a glimpse of the bus on its final round-trip, I arranged to swap rest days with another conductor so that I could travel on the last journeys. In the afternoon, I arrived at the garage, in uniform, shortly before the conductor was due to leave the garage for the last part of his duty and to offer to do the work for him. After receiving confirmation from the Traffic Office that he would be paid for the work, he willingly went home early and I then prepared my waybill. MHJ347F left the garage and operated a return journey on a Southchurch short working of Service 6, on which I issued only 14 tickets.

The final two journeys were the 1710 Service 1 from Central Bus Station to Rayleigh Station and the return journey departing at 1758 and arriving back at Central, in theory at least, at 1843.

This was a busy journey on which I issued 99 tickets. We carried many enthusiasts, no fewer than nine of whom actually drove the bus (all staff, I must add) on various sections.

After photographs had been taken, we returned to the garage, I counted the takings (£32.42), completed the waybill and then re-wrote it as a souvenir of my having been the last conductor on a Southend Transport rear-entrance bus - or so I thought...

My 1981 season finished at the end of September. I did not return in 1982 as I had some research to do for my university course. In 1983 conductor vacancies were fewer but I was very fortunate to be offered the post of Travelcard Conductor at Central Bus Station. This involved selling the popular Southend & District bus+rail Travelcards, Xl season tickets - and taking bus photographs during quiet periods.

If I had the afternoon shift I was able to fit in one unusual duty beforehand. This involved conducting the 0830 Xl (using an Almex ticket machine, because of the higher fare values available) from Southend as far as Ensign’s premises at Purfleet, arriving at 0935 and taking over the Southend-bound Xl at 0955, after a much-needed refreshment break. On a sunny day takings were very high, with families heading for London for the day on the outward journey and for Southend Seafront on the return. My record was £386 for the 3-hour shift! After a break I would then drive the staff taxi (London type PVW588R) to Central Bus Station and work my Travelcard afternoon shift. For security, the morning Travelcard takings were taken back in the staff taxi, later takings on a Fleetline running back to the garage out of service from Service 18 (Foulness).

Three memorable seasons ended in September 1983. At that time, who would have foreseen the introduction of a fleet of 23 Routemasters (with conductors, of course) five years later?

Gareth was a life-long bus enthusiast and had joined the Eastern National Enthusiasts Group (later the Essex Bus Enthusiasts Group) in 1977. Brought up in Benfleet, he was very well acquainted with both the Southend Transport and Eastern National operations. After graduating from University in Bristol he worked in public transport, latterly for a county council public transport unit where he had particular responsibility for maps and publicity - one of his favourite topics. He died in December 2002, aged 41.