Links to Other Places.

Links to other places

are all now to be found on the right hand side of the main page.

Running Engines at Bus Stops.

I presonally belive that any bus driver that leaves an engine running on a bus stop for more that at most a minute, company rule 2 mins max, should have an inspector park a bus outside his/her front door at 2 am and leave the engine running for the rest of the night.

I went into Brixham today. Brixham is on of our terminuses/termini (not sure which) and had 10 mins stand time. There was a bus, a 12, in front of me on the stop. He had his engine running, no problem, he was due out. Did he go? No.

Now it was a not unpleasent day for the end of October. Several people were sitting in the Square enjoying a quite chat except that the noise of the bus engine would have been drowning out any chance of there hearing half the conversation. After a couple of mins I dicided to see if the driver was having a problem, after all he should have been gone by now. No, no problem, just on his mobile dickhead. Sorry mobile phone.

For an other 7 mins. Bastard.

Sea Front and Engines Running

On Saturday I drove along the sea front. I know I always drive along the sea front but on Saturday I noticed that the waves were starting to come over the sea wall. It was almost high tide and the wind was from the east. This usually means that the sea front would be closed at some time around high tide. Sure enough, half an hour later someone got on the radio and announced to the world, well Torbay any way, which is almost the same thing, that the sea front was closed and we were on the new diversion.

The old diversion was my idea. It involved driving out of town on a nice wide road, turning over the ring road, also a nice wide road and back down an other wide road coming back on to our route in Preston. This missed out the section of the sea front that had waves crashing over it; it also missed out 7 bus stops.

Someone in Higher Management did not like this and invented the new diversion. This only misses out 5 bus stops. And the bit with the sea crashing over it,not even higher management are that dumb. It does involve driving the buses along fairly narrow roads at the same time as all the cars and vans and lorries that have also been diverted. While you are watching all these cars, vans and lorries plus the occasional bus coming the other way it is possible to miss, or should I say hit the branches of trees that have inconveniently grown out into the road way. Trees that line regular bus routes tend to get their branches genetically adjusted by the constant passing of 11 ton lumps of bus shaped metal, but we only use the diversion a few times a year. The trees down there don't know that one day their turn will come.

To cut a short story even shorter, when one of our more experienced drivers came in to work this morning he was greeted with a chorus of, "I love the sound of breaking glass."
So embarrassing

Sun Set in Spitsbergan.

Shortly after midday today, Thursday the 27 October, the sun set in Spitsbergan. It will not rise again until late in February next year.

At the same time on Abbey Sands Beach here in Torquay people were sun bathing and children were playing in the sea. The Temperature was 18C. At 11:30 pm it was still 15C.

Given the choice where would you spend an early autumn break.

Or to put it an other way; should we be worrying about Global Warming?

Cars Parked in the Way

On of the problems we face from time to time are cars that have been parked that are blocking the road. The driver has just nipped out for a moment to the Cash machine, Take away, Doctors, Pub and have left room for all the motor bikes in the bay to get past but not an 8 foot 3 in wide bus. The usual procedure here is to sound the horn and then get a newspaper out and have a read. After a few minutes the driver will then get on the radio and inform control. One such incident yesterday went as follows:-

Driver, "Papa 12 to Yellow control."
Yellow control, "Go" (1)
Driver,"I am stuck in Midvale Road. There's a parked car in the way."
Yellow control, "Have you sounded the horn." (2)
Slight pause followed by the sound of the horn being blown twice coming over the radio.
Driver, very dryly, "That's an affirmative." (3)

Foot notes
(1) We don't go in for correct radio procedure, none of that over and out stuff here.
(2) It is of course illegal to blow the horn on a stationary vehicle unless to avoid an accident.
(3) 'Affirmative'; bus driver slang for Yes.