Omnibus Tales

By Clen Mackenzie

“A lighthearted account of the author’s experiences and adventures as a bus driver in and around Glasgow in the late 1960s and early 1970s, expanded with anecdotes and stories based on actual events, with fictional embellishment”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664116245

Book preview

Omnibus

Tales

Copyright © 2021 by Clen Mackenzie. 829580

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is a mixture of fact and fiction. Many of the names,

characters, places, incidents, events and anecdotes are real or based

on reality. This book recounts the author’s recollections of life and

events over 50 years ago. The author has no documentary records.

Factual matters are recorded as accurately as the author remembers

them. No admissions, assurances or guarantees are given in respect

of the factual accuracy of any statement, incident, event or anecdote

within this book. Opinions, descriptions and interpretations

are those of the author only unless otherwise attributed.

Xlibris

UK TFN: 0800 0148620 (Toll Free inside the UK)

UK Local: 02036 956328 ([phone] from outside the UK)

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

ISBN:   Softcover         978-1-6641-1623-8

             EBook            978-1-6641-1624-5

Rev. date: 08/16/2021

CONTENTS

Episode 1 : In the Beginning – Midland Scottish at Milngavie - Conducting

Episode 2 : Midland at Milngavie - Driving School

Episode 3 : Midland at Milngavie Depot

Episode 4 : Milngave - Out on the Road – the Spare

Episode 5 : The Milngavie Bus Fleet

Episode 6 : Milngavie – On the Cycle

Episode 7 : Milngavie – Settled In

Episode 8 : Milngavie – Incidents & Anecdotes

Episode 9 : Milngavie – Moving on

Photograph Credits

Omnibus

Tales

written by

CLEN MACKENZIE

I am indebted to John Sinclair, Campbell Sayers and Nigel Hall of The Bus Gallery for their kind permission to use their photographs in this book. All John Sinclair photos are labelled JS, Campbell Sayers photos are labelled CS, and my own are labelled CM. Nigel’s is the front cover photo, which is also the last photo inside the book labelled NH, and the back cover photo is my own.

As I have no photos taken during the actual years of these tales, some of my photos were taken in recent years using preserved vehicles held by Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust, to whom I am indebted for the sheer pleasure of being allowed to drive them.

Preamble

I lived from birth until the age of 14 in Wick, in the far north of Scotland. This was in the post second world war years, so the buses in the area were in all probability pretty old even then. I didn’t know anything about them at the time, although I did enjoy riding on them, but now know they were operated by Highland Omnibuses and that the double deckers were mostly if not all Guy Arabs. I didn’t travel on them very often, but do remember occasional journeys from Wick to the village of Halkirk some 16 miles away where I had some relatives. To my child’s ear the engines were very noisy. I recollect they often had a whining sound and seemed to struggle just to pull the thing up to something in excess of walking pace. Gear changes were often, shall we say, noticeable. I remember the bench seats upstairs with the access gully on the right and the buses always seeming to lean over to the left as they shoogled and swayed along on the less than perfect surfaces of rural Caithness roads in the 1950s. The lean was probably due to the camber of the road – but I didn’t know that then either. I just thought they were knackered old wrecks which couldn’t stand up straight.

1%20-%20Highland%20Guy%20Arab%20-%20JS.jpg

A Highland Guy Arab in Caithness, standing up straight!

When I was 14, in the early sixties, my family moved to Glasgow, to live just off Great Western Road near Kelvinbridge. By this time I was a keen cyclist so I proceeded to learn my way around Glasgow on my bike. I used to come home from school, dump the bags, get on the bike and vanish for a couple of hours. Nowadays this would be considered madness – a 14 year old taking off on a bike in the city, no helmet, no protective gear, no means of contact, no idea where he was going, often after dark. When I went out on the bike I couldn’t tell my parents where I was going anyway as most of the time I didn’t know myself – I was exploring new territories. But in those days nobody thought twice about a kid out on a bike – in fact I was complimented on how much of the city I learned in a very short time by this means.

Very quickly I began to notice the buses. The colours, sounds and shapes were different from what I had known. I liked the squarish fronts, the broader and longer bodies than Highland’s old stalwarts. They went much faster and they made a much better noise. They sounded powerful, not struggling. Some had doors at the front, and some even had their engines at the back! Glasgow Corporation, generally known as The Corpy, buses stopped a lot, which gave me plenty opportunity when cycling to tuck in behind them and be sucked along in their slipstream. Some older ones had a single brake light in the middle of the rear, and I used to pedal like mad as close as I could get to the back of the bus with my eyes fixed on that light and my hands on the brake levers, ready to brake the bike the instant that light came on. I particularly began to notice the blue double deckers which always appeared to be faster and continually overtaking the Corpys. When I tried tucking in behind them I had to pedal even more madly to keep up, often being left trailing. I thought even then – it would be Fun to drive these blue buses!

When I first started this cycling caper, nearly all the city centre streets were two way. Within a few years an extensive one way system was introduced, which created streets with four lanes in the same direction, such as Sauchiehall St, Bath Street, Renfield Street and Hope St. I still have a picture in my mind of whizzing along the middle of Sauchiehall Street with a wall of four Corpy buses in front, sweeping round with the bike leaning as far over as it would go into Renfield Street and then peddling madly down the hill in Renfield St overtaking everything I could. That often meant passing between buses which were in adjoining lanes, by riding along the lane dividing lines between them. There was very little space on either side! I had read somewhere that with the new system, if a driver came on to Sauchiehall Street at Charing Cross and maintained a steady speed of 24 mph, he could pass right through to the south side of Jamaica Bridge without being stopped by lights – they were apparently set to change in sequence. I had a speedometer on my bike so I tried a few times to hold to that speed but it never seemed to work. Still, I can tell you that getting sucked along by buses was a grand way of slicing through the traffic. Great fun, but verging on suicidal!

2%20-%20GVVT%20Clutch%20of%20Corpys%2011Oct14%20(1)%20-%20CM.JPG

This photo taken by myself shows a sextet (no risqué interpretations of that word intended) of former Corpy buses, lined up at the Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust garage in Bridgeton, Glasgow on 14/Oct/2014. They were being prepared to go out on a day tour around Glasgow, to be seen by the public and a grand day out for the crews and their invited passengers. All of these buses are preserved in full running order, and all of them would have been on service in Glasgow in my early cycling years. The line-up includes, second from the left, Leyland Atlantean fleet number LA1, the very first rear engine double decker to hit the streets of Glasgow, which actually came into service as long ago as 1958! I like to call a number of corpy buses grouped together a Clutch of Corpys, for the simple reason that they haven’t got a clutch between them – at least, not a manually operated one. By the 1960s all Glasgow Corporation buses were semi-automatic, which means the driver only had a gear selector but no foot operated clutch pedal. The driver selected the gear he wanted with the selector and the change was achieved automatically.

Any service buses which were not Corpy buses were regarded as country buses. These always seemed to be in a hurry and didn’t seem to stop much at all. Often I watched on Great Western Road as a Corpy bus would pull into a stop only for two or three blue buses to go bombing past it at full pelt, as if they were racing each other into the city. In later years I learned – they were, and I got stuck in to the races myself! On Dumbarton Road I watched red buses heading for Balloch or Helensburgh chase each other past the Kelvin Hall. On the east of the city green buses roared along making for mysterious and distant lands such as Easterhouse or even Edinburgh, and on the south side buses of a different shade of red hurtled out of the city towards distant destinations to the south and southwest. Frequently I cycled round the old Buchanan/Killermont St bus station where I would stop to watch blue, red and green buses squeeze into the various tight fitting stances, then come squirting out through the single exit on to Buchanan Street. At the old Waterloo Street bus station red buses – pretty much all Central SMT – piled in through the single entrance from Wellington St. and emerged into the open air again through one of the even tighter stances on to Waterloo St. The more I watched them the more I thought it would be fun driving one of these things but at that time I didn’t seriously imagine it would happen – but happen it did.

As the years went by I passed through school then went up to Glasgow University. At the age of 20 I discovered that summer jobs could be got as conductors on the country buses. For those unfamiliar with the buses of years past, every bus then had a driver, who drove, and a conductor who ruled the vehicle and all who stepped inside. Together they were known as the crew. Officially, the conductor was the boss. Conductors, male or female, were nicknamed clippies as their principal task was to extract fares from passengers and clip the tickets of those who already had them. The bus was not supposed to move unless and until the clippie had rung the bell. The bus was not supposed to reverse unless the clippie was guiding it with various toots on his or her whistle reinforced with waving arms. In reality, the drivers ran the show. The bus moved when they were ready and stopped where and when they stopped it. And it was the driver, not the conductor, who got booked and suspended if caught by an inspector running sharp i.e. arriving at a timing point early or leaving one early. I wanted to be a driver – but drivers had to be 21 years old and I was only 20. So I was happy to go for a conductor job for that summer.

The nearest country bus depot to me was in Milngavie (pronounced Milguy) so I went out there to apply. I was taken on – and from that moment my real enjoyment of buses began. I hesitate to use the phrase love affair with – I feel that phrase is overused – but I am sure readers will understand. This was 1967.

Milngavie was a depot of the Alexanders Midland company which operated the blue buses I had seen belting along Gt. Western Road when I first came to Glasgow. That summer I trained as a conductor and worked in Milngavie Garage until the resumption of University in the October of that year. At the end of the University session the following year I was 21, went back to Milngavie and asked to become a driver. I was again taken on, trained and licenced, and worked the summer. For