The Maintenance of Headway - Magnus Mills

“Yes, I know.”

“Who booked you?”

“Wilson,” said Jeff. “Same as last time.”

“He was in trouble himself yesterday,” I said. “I expect he went on the warpath, looking for a few victims of his own.”

“How early were you?” asked Edward.

“Seven minutes,” Jeff replied. “There was so much pandemonium yesterday I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“But Mick did.”

“Yeah.”

Jeff looked quite forlorn, so I treated him to a mug of tea while Edward provided sympathy.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen is you might have to go and see Frank.”

“What shall I say to him?”

“You won’t have to say anything,” said Edward. “He’ll do all the talking.”

Frank Lowe was the garage operating manager, although in reality he didn’t do much actual managing. The entire bus system worked on a set procedure and most of the day-to-day administration was handled by his sidekicks in the duty room. Frank’s role was mainly as a figurehead. He added a personal dimension to a largely impersonal regime. Like all bureaucracies, everything on the buses had to be signed for. We signed for our uniforms, our lockers, our starter keys and our payslips. When we went on holiday, we even had to sign a declaration stating we would come back again afterwards. (This was to ensure the garage had enough drivers available at the end of each holiday period.) Frank, however, added the occasional tender touch. For example, every year at Easter all the bus drivers were given a chocolate egg, paid for from Frank’s petty cash allowance. Admittedly our eggs had to be signed for, but it was the generosity of spirit that counted.

For the most part Frank was regarded as a ‘kindly’ manager. I remember meeting him on my first day as a new recruit at the garage. He invited me into his office and gave me a short lecture about punctuality.

“Look at this duty,” he began, proffering a time card he’d picked at random from a pile on his desk. “Signs on at 5:58 in the morning. That’s a funny time to start work, isn’t it?”

I assumed the question was purely rhetorical, so I nodded my head in vague agreement but said nothing.

“Most people start work on the hour, don’t they?” Frank continued. “Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock and so forth. Not 5:58.”

This time I shook my head.

“You sign on at 5:58 for a reason,” said Frank. “The reason being that the bus departs at 6:13. That gives you precisely fifteen minutes to find your bus and prepare it for the conveyance of passengers.”

“Do I have to put the fuel in?” I asked, somewhat naively.

“No,” he said. “The engineers will do that. But for reasons of safety you have to check the entire vehicle. Then you have to put water in the radiator. Then you have to set the destination blinds. Then you have to adjust the driving seat and mirrors to fit your personal requirements. The whole process takes precisely fifteen minutes.”

At this point Frank gave me a measured look and leaned back in his chair.

“Now let’s imagine what would happen if you turned up late,” he said. “Imagine you arrived not at 5:58, but at 6:04. That means your bus wouldn’t depart until 6:19. And let’s further imagine that one of your passengers is a train driver who is supposed to be at work at 6:44. He’s also got fifteen minutes to get his train ready. It’s scheduled to leave at 6:59 but because you’ve made him late, he doesn’t get going until 7:10. Which means the train behind him gets delayed. And the train after that. See how it accumulates? See the potential for outright bedlam? Your failure to be punctual could make a million people late for work!”

Frank sat behind his desk and bristled with imaginary rage.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s alright,” he replied. “Don’t let it happen again though.”

Another of Frank Lowe’s tasks was to find appropriate punishments for early running and related misdemeanours. In the days of the VPB, of course, the solution had been simple. Drivers who persistently ran early were paired up with conductors who were known to be very tardy on the bell. Likewise, injudicious conductors were placed with slow drivers. The system worked successfully for decades, but the introduction of one-man buses meant a change in tactics was required. After some thought, Frank decreed that early running drivers would be transferred from double- to single-decker vehicles. This was the busman’s equivalent of being cast into outer darkness. Single-decker routes were notorious for their tedious convolutions. They rarely went directly from A to B, but instead proceeded in no end of twists, turns, loops and figures-of-eight. Few drivers liked working on them and usually the mere threat of a transfer cured the problem of early running.

Needless to say, such punishments had their limitations. In the case of Jason, for instance, they failed entirely. After a few months working with Gunter he had been teamed up with an elderly conductor called Mr Otis in an attempt to slow him down a bit. Mr Otis was a company employee of many years’ standing, but after only a few weeks he threatened to resign rather than continue being hurled around the bus by Jason. Several other conductors also tried and failed. Subsequently Jason had been put to work on single-deckers. This, too, had met with no success. On one occasion he went over a humpbacked bridge so fast that the vehicle’s underside left a tell-tale scrape along the tarmac. Finally, as a last resort, Frank took Jason out of service and gave him a job shunting buses inside the garage. Such a position was considered the lowest of the low, but it still didn’t have any effect. Jason’s shunting was so quick and efficient that all the other shunters began to fear they’d be made redundant. Accordingly, they went on strike and the matter was only settled when Jason was moved back to double-deckers.

None of these stories offered any solace to Jeff. He sat at the table nursing his tea and contemplating his fate.

“One thing’s for certain,” I said. “You won’t get the sack.”

“No,” said Jeff. “You told me that before.”

“To get the sack you’d have to do what Thompson did.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“Thompson?” said Edward. “I don’t remember him.”

Seven

There had been further sightings of the articulated bus. Several times of late it had been seen among the traffic flowing slowly down the bejewelled thoroughfare. Jeff spotted it circumnavigating the arch on a Wednesday morning during the quiet spell. Observant tourists took photographs of it at the circus. Then, one lunchtime, a few of us watched from the canteen window as the vehicle made its stately way past the garage in the direction of the southern outpost. The trials were obviously nearing fruition, and as we resumed our places at the table there was much speculation about what the future held.

“Buses are an evolving species,” announced Edward. “We’ve come a long way since the horse-drawn variety.”

“I suppose the next phase will be a double-deck articulated bus,” I suggested. (The model currently undergoing tests was a single-decker.)

“Surely it would be too big,” said Jeff. “The sewers would most likely collapse under the weight.”

“Buses can never be too big,” said Edward. “Not in this country.”

“Why?”

“Because people in this country don’t like sitting next to other people. Especially strangers. When it comes to buses, the more space the better. That’s why double-deckers were invented in the first place.”

“So why were single-deckers brought in?” enquired Davy. “I’ve often wondered.”

Edward gave him a penetrating look before replying.

“Low bridges,” he said at length. “During the industrial era they laid down miles of railway and built bridges everywhere. Buses had to go all round the houses to avoid them.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Davy. “Low bridges.”

“The bane of the double-decker,” I remarked.

“Indeed,” said Edward. “The situation was tolerated for decades, then eventually someone suggested introducing single-deckers. Can you imagine the reaction? There was a public outcry!”

“I’m not surprised.”

“The traditionalists were in uproar. Nowadays we take single-deckers for granted, but at that time they were thought to be quite rudimentary. I doubt if the Reverend Birkett would even have recognised them as proper buses.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Edward was referring to the Rev. W.E. Birkett: naturalist, progressive thinker, amateur musician and, of course, creator of the VPB.

The genesis of the VPB was well known. It had begun life as a series of drawings in a storybook the Rev. Birkett prepared for his children one snowy Christmas, years ago. This told the tale of a resolute bus on a mission to deliver some presents which Santa had left behind. Only as an afterthought did Birkett submit his sketches to the Board of Transport. It so happened that the design committee was seeking a replacement for the ‘old heavies’ and Birkett’s ideas fitted the bill perfectly. The gentle curves of the bus were entirely in keeping with the age of austerity in which the Board presided. The new vehicles were commissioned at once and the Rev. Birkett soon became a household name. Meanwhile, the VPB [Venerable Platform Bus] won the accolade of ‘national treasure’. It featured many notable innovations, not least the fact that the bodywork comprised a metal alloy which rendered it completely rustproof. There was much more as well. The driver in his cab had all-round vision through a myriad of windows. The gearbox was automatic with ‘smooth’ manual override. The flooring was ‘sure-grip’ rubber. There was a sturdy safety pole in the centre of the boarding platform. The saloon windows could be wound open or closed according to the individual desires of the passengers. Finally, it had a heater which worked properly. Each vehicle was painted red and stencilled with its own serial number; also the words METROPOLITAN BOARD OF TRANSPORT.

The VPB heralded the golden age of the ‘characterful bus conductor’. These individuals could often be seen performing on their platforms as if they were turns at the theatre, entertaining their passengers with no end of helpful yet amusing announcements. Some, it goes without saying, were more successful than others. There was once a conductor called Borrowdale who thought it would be of general interest to describe the various attributes of the bus during the journey.

“This bus consists of a lightweight timber frame clad with a single layer of tinplate,” he proclaimed on one occasion. “It is presently conveying its maximum payload of sixty-eight human beings.”

Such disquieting observations had a tendency to empty the vehicle rather than attract passengers. However, he was quite correct about the lightweight timber frame: if your bus was packed to the gunwales and you drove round a sharp bend you could clearly hear it creaking under the strain.

Gunter was another ‘character’, though he had no interest whatsoever in the needs of his people. Instead, the bus was run wholly to his own requirements. If he considered the weather too cold, for example, he went round closing all the windows, deaf to the wishes of any passengers who wanted them open. This was especially so in the upper saloon, which he preferred to be filled with cigarette smoke rather than fresh air. Likewise if someone asked for the heater to be switched on, but it didn’t suit him, it remained switched off. Gunter liked to show who was in charge of the bus, whereas other conductors acted as if they had just come along for the ride.

Broadly speaking, the VPB was a very sociable bus. A common sight in the bejewelled thoroughfare was a conductor on his platform deep in conversation with the driver of the bus immediately behind. (Such conversations were best carried out when both vehicles were stationary.) Sometimes there would be a whole column of buses held up for a while at traffic lights, allowing messages to be passed from one end of the line to the other. Usually these messages related to the latest cricket or football scores, but occasionally they warned of inspectors who’d been spotted lurking in certain locations.

This host of assorted aspects made the VPB very popular indeed. It was a world-famous, double-decker bus, and by comparison the single-decker paled into insignificance.

“What about trees?” said Jeff.

“What about them?”

“‘When trees hold sway, buses keep a low profile’.”

“Well, of course,” Edward conceded. “You’ve just quoted one of the oldest sayings in the book. Certainly, the single-decker earned its rightful place in the menagerie of buses.”

“Did it ever pose a threat to the VPB?”

“Never,” said Edward. “That dubious honour fell to the advent of pneumatic doors.”

He glanced at his watch, stood up and walked away from the table, leaving the rest of us to ponder his words.

“I thought Edward favoured doors on buses,” said Jeff.

“Yes,” I said. “He does.”

“So what did he mean by ‘dubious honour’?”

“He was a reluctant convert,” I explained. “He still has his doubts.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I’m glad there are doors on buses,” said Davy. “Imagine driving along the bejewelled thoroughfare without any. There’d be people piling on every time you pulled up at the traffic lights.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ve got those long bus stops which take three buses at a time. If you couldn’t keep the doors shut you’d have sheer anarchy. It would be nothing less than a free-for-all.”

“Funny enough, I don’t mind how many people get on my bus,” said Jeff. “It’s getting rid of them again that’s the problem.”

We all agreed about that. Dropping people off was a drag, the trouble being that the rear exit doors would only operate if you stopped and applied the hand brake. By contrast, the front doors swished open at the mere touch of a foot pedal. My personal preference was for a double-decker bus with just one set of doors at the front. There were still a number of these buses at sundry outlying garages, but lately they were becoming few and far between.

“Why didn’t they equip the VPB with doors?” said Jeff. “Then they could have had the best of both worlds.”

“Don’t ask me,” I said. “That remains one of the great unanswered questions.”

Eight

The road was clogged with slow-moving traffic. I’d been sitting behind the same lorry for almost half an hour as we inched glacially towards the southern outpost. On the back of this lorry was a sign that said: IF YOU CAN’T SEE MY MIRRORS I CAN’T SEE YOU.

I had read these words so many times during the past thirty minutes that they’d become stuck in my head. I’d even set them to music and convinced myself I had the makings of a pop song: