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Old Nottingham City Transport Single Decker

Old Market Square , Nottingham c1960s

King Edward Street, Nottingham 1976 Former site of Central Market after it moved into the Victoria Centre & was being used as temporary parking for the Nottingham City Transport buses Ph

Fastest double deckers I've ever seen were Standerwyks (?) London to Blackpool night service. Our trucks speedos only went to 70 and they would go way past that (not sure about late 70s accuracy) but those buses would easily overtake them.

They always took a break at the Blue Boar, as was, and chatting to the drivers we could never get them to admit just how fast they were when flat out.

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Apparently I misspelled the name, it was Standerwick and they ran Bristol buses.

Found a pic, the rear section had a toilet and a small galley. They stopped at the Blue Boar for the drivers break and to refill the tea urn.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lva45/5059327465

 

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2 hours ago, Mess said:

On reflection I think I've probably got this the wrong way round.

It's more logical if passengers that wanted to get into town alighted at that stop whilst those who wanted to board for Trent Bridge should do so at the stop by the toilets in the square.

 

That's definitely how I remember it

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That particular bus stop on Processional way was only a setting down point as far back as I remember up until some clown changed the roads around in the city calling "The Big Wheel" or some other stupid title. Should have been called "The big cock - up" !

 

Anyway back on topic, drivers HAD to stop at that stop whether anyone wanted to alight or not, otherwise an instant bookable offence.

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Those service "extra"'s were operated by Bulwell, PSD & Bilborough Depots. These buses would usually follow behind the normal service bus when in fact should have gone first ! It wasn't called the "Lame Sick & Lazy" rota for nothing !.

I remember doing some overtime at Bilborough Depot one afternoon working on their "1600! rota with a conductor operating on 31s & 50s I told the conductor I didn't know where to go & he said, just follow the service bus & you'll be fine !

That would have been in '74, happy days !

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13 hours ago, catfan said:

Those service "extra"'s were operated by Bulwell, PSD & Bilborough Depots. These buses would usually follow behind the normal service bus when in fact should have gone first ! It wasn't called the "Lame Sick & Lazy" rota for nothing !.

I remember doing some overtime at Bilborough Depot one afternoon working on their "1600! rota with a conductor operating on 31s & 50s I told the conductor I didn't know where to go & he said, just follow the service bus & you'll be fine !

That would have been in '74, happy days !

Mick, thanks for the info. Given the peak time frequency of the 31s and 50s, my April 1975 timetable shows every three and three quarter minutes, it would have been hard not to be following the service bussmile2

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Posting about buses - who'd have thought it!  There used to be a man on the bus home to Bilborough, so 56 or 60, from tahn on a Friday/ Saturday night in the mid-late 70's who would hammer out a tune on the back of the seat in front of him - so brilliant

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Think your right Ian with that trolly or trackless as mum would have said. Corner of Perry Road and Nottingham Road, cemetery behind the stone wall and Bairnswear behind the iron railings, in fact wouldn't mind betting mum was in there on that date.

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Firstly a brief history of Bilborough Depot, as far as I can find was opened early '50s but could be a few years out. Built to cater for the Bilborough, Strelley, Broxtowe & Aspley areas. As these estates expanded so did the capacity of the depot meaning a lot of buses had to be parked out side overnight. this depot had room for expansion but was never enlarged.

This was all well & good but was no fun looking for an allocated bus at 4.30 am on a freezing cold morning I can assure you.

 

Upon finding your bus you would soon realise that all the windows were covered in frost inside as well as the outside area of the glass, if you weren't wearing gloves the steering wheel wanted to take the skin off your hands. First thing to do was clear a small area of the windscreen so if you were lucky & you managed to fire the bus up you could drive around to the depot where a portable storage heater would blow hot air in to the bus without hitting anything on the way. subsequently all the frost melted & the windows were then wet through. Leyland Atlantean buses had notoriously poor heaters !

 

So bus fired up & defrosted after a  getting a quick warm yersen it was time to hit the road, noticing that all these buses had a couple of inches gap beneath the entrance door which blew a nice cold blast on to your left side from face to feet. I've even seen ice formed on the seats ! Leading to many passenger complaints, but the driver's seat was just as cold as all the others.

Bilborough Bus Depot was the only purpose built bus depot in Nottingham, all other depots were originally built as tram sheds. Also Bilborough depot like Parliament Street Depot were the only Depots to have a service timekeeper / garage inspector around the clock 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

 

Every depot had their own bus routes & each route or group of routes had a rota number, Bulwell route being the "1300" rota, Bilborough Depot among others had the "1600" rota. This rota consisted of mostly old clapped out AEC Regents of the open rear ended variety(No entrance doors) all manned by a driver & conductor who were usually on light duties for various medical reasons or who were just plain lazy or wanted an easy life. These type of rotas were called sick, lame & lazy rotas !

The work they did were mostly school extra's , service extra's & works contracts i.e. Boots, Players, Plessey etc. Nice easy work in fact. The best part being when the kids were off school a lot of these crews had no work to do at all.

 

Having no work to do for all the school holidays meant another source of enjoyment had to be found so the creation of card schools, domino competitions, snooker tournaments even five a side football matches & games of cricket across the road on the park were quickly organised to find the crews something to do by the crews themselves !

I worked at Bilborough Depot on many occasions on overtime, day off working & being sent there when they were short staffed, I did enjoy working the 1600 rota many times doing service 31 & 50  extra's being a spare one man driver at Bulwell they had to pay me one man rate at any depot doing any work, thank you very much !

 

Some drivers I knew elected to work that rota full time, regular Monday to Friday split shifts with no late or weekend, bank holiday working was an attraction to many especially if they didn't need the overtime.

 

Sadly all good things came to an end & Bilborough being the first outer depot to close  which many never thought it would, but it did & eventually Central Market, Bulwell & Sherwood depots also closed, the end of an era.

 

Funnily enough I knew of one driver who borrowed a bus from Bilborough depot one day so he could move house, he paid a friendly fitter a few quid to remove a few seats & move house he did ! Such was the fun at Bilborough Depot !

Happy days !

 

 

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7 minutes ago, denshaw said:

Also there in 1979, with Frank the instructor, think we spent more time in Bulwell canteen.

Drinking copious amounts of tea was part of the training we were told !

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