Bus Shite

[martc]

20 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

I don't think the STLs were ever fitted with cab doors, certainly not before the war.

What was the logic behind this, other than parsimony? Did they have a cab heater? Suely, even back then they should have realised a cold and/or wet driver was a danger to the passengers, other road users and themselves.

20 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

Headlights are still not compulsory in areas with street lighting and speed limits of 30MPH or less. Back then PSVs were allowed to drive around with only the N/S headlight on after dark if the driver chose.

I guess with all the cabin lights on there's no need for the headlights. Do you need to put the headlights on if the cabin lights are off?

[83C]

1 minute ago, martc said:

What was the logic behind this, other than parsimony? Did they have a cab heater? Suely, even back then they should have realised a cold and/or wet driver was a danger to the passengers, other road users and themselves.

Given that when I left the industry ten years ago things like heating and staying dry were still considered optional for drivers, I seriously doubt driver comfort was a major consideration back then. 

[Cheezey]

I took this photo when walking the dog earlier then noticed this thread. I thought it may be of interest. I see quite a few random brand new buses on road tests locally. 

[Inspector Morose]

32 minutes ago, martc said:

What was the logic behind this, other than parsimony? Did they have a cab heater? Surely, even back then they should have realised a cold and/or wet driver was a danger to the passengers, other road users and themselves.

London had its own licensing body that looked after buses, trams, and taxis who were, shall we say extremely conservative to the point of making  the Amish look technologically advanced. Not only were cab doors banned until the RT but windscreens were only allowed from around the late 20s. They also looked upon pneumatic tyres with suspicion and only allowed them relatively late, compared to the rest of the country.

Cab heater? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[busmansholiday]

4 hours ago, Cheezey said:

I took this photo when walking the dog earlier then noticed this thread. I thought it may be of interest. I see quite a few random brand new buses on road tests locally. 

Presumably you live near Alexander's factory in Falkirk?.

 

[busmansholiday]

5 hours ago, martc said:

I guess with all the cabin lights on there's no need for the headlights. Do you need to put the headlights on if the cabin lights are off?

No, you can just drive on sidelights. Don't forget back then the electrical systems were powered by a dynamo so didn't charge all the time. 

[Cheezey]

16 minutes ago, busmansholiday said:

Presumably you live near Alexander's factory in Falkirk?.

 

Yeah, I see buses on the road from both local factories. I’ve heard there are around a hundred redundancies ongoing. 

[busmansholiday]

2 hours ago, Cheezey said:

Yeah, I see buses on the road from both local factories. I’ve heard there are around a hundred redundancies ongoing. 

Yes, one of the problems with these Government grants for new milk floats is you don't have to spend the money in the UK. Result is people are buying cheap Chinese buses instead of UK sourced vehicles.

[Inspector Morose]

21 minutes ago, busmansholiday said:

Yes, one of the problems with these Government grants for new milk floats is you don't have to spend the money in the UK. Result is people are buying cheap Chinese buses instead of UK sourced vehicles.

Generally, because they don't rattle and crash about like a bunch of skeletons wanking in a biscuit tin, are generally quite efficient and their delivery isn't measured in generations.

Anyway, the money spent on buying "British"? Straight to the American owner, it goes. 

[busmansholiday]

17 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Generally, because they don't rattle and crash about like a bunch of skeletons wanking in a biscuit tin, are generally quite efficient and their delivery isn't measured in generations.

Anyway, the money spent on buying "British"? Straight to the American owner, it goes. 

Unfortunately you are correct.

[SunnySouth]

On 02/11/2024 at 18:35, Inspector Morose said:

Generally, because they don't rattle and crash about like a bunch of skeletons wanking in a biscuit tin, are generally quite efficient and their delivery isn't measured in generations.

Anyway, the money spent on buying "British"? Straight to the American owner, it goes. 

Part of the issue here of course is that the likes of dear old Alexander Dennis are not competing on a level playing field. There is a reason that the Chinese outfits can supply magically cheap products in double quick time, ship them half way around the planet and still undercut your local UK based manufacturer with a factory just up the road, and it isn’t simply “the market”. If UK operators get a taste for cheap Chinese bus imports then very few competitors have much chance of retaining a market share, that’ll likely be the end of one of the precious few reamining “safe” British industries. Supply chain issues after Covid, and the likes of Huawei being banned from certain markets for some pretty shady behaviour are clues as to some of the pitfalls of taking another step towards this sort of total dependence, if and when anybody can be bothered to look beyond the pricetag.  

As for rattly products from Falkirk, it’s surely the legacy of the latter years of diesel bus production - operators wanted buses to be lighter as fuel prices shot up at the same time as emissions regs were making engines both thirsty as fuck & gutless fuck all at the same time, and chassis were getting heavier and heavier. It was a pretty harsh set of requirements vs realities, and the only place to go was to build bodyshells out of cardboard to save some weight. If your early electric range is essentially the same buses with motors in place of engines, then you’re going to get the same lightweight bodies but without the engine noise to hide the rattling!

[83C]

@SunnySouth I do largely agree with you but I would add that the British bus industry has been loading the gun for some self-inflicted harm for a while - it’s almost where the British car industry found itself in the 1970s when people woke up to not having to buy a shonky BL product. 

20 years ago I passed my PSV test and the day after I got taken to Gloucester depot to collect a brand new Dennis Trident II with ALX400 body to ferry over to Cheltenham. VX04 GHH/18084, one of a batch of 10 for the 94 Cheltenham - Gloucester service. Since it was brand new and at the time the most expensive vehicle I’d driven by several orders of magnitude, I stopped for a look around. There were metal shavings and pop rivet pins on the seats in the lower saloon, rubbish in the bins and on a seat upstairs, one interior light had already failed and the height warning plate in the cab had fallen off. To be fair they must have nailed the rest of it together ok as it only came off the road late last year, and others in the same batch are still in service. However it wasn’t an isolated incident, and that’s before we get to some of the utter shite allowed to depart the Optare factory pretending to be fully functioning vehicles.

It’s not like there hasn’t been competition from overseas, but most operators want cheap above all else, something the likes of a Mercedes Citaro is definitely not. Plaxton were onto a good thing for a long time supplying the Beaver-bodied Vario, beloved of rural operators for being cheap, rugged and easy to fix but they managed to build in some inherent design flaws including weakening the bulkhead by cutting it down to fit their windscreen and body with the end result of many Varios wobbling around with a suspiciously thick band of seam sealer over the gearbox tunnel where the bulkhead had cracked. The Plaxton body was also a bugger for doing what all Plaxton products do - rot. Anyone who has had the pleasure* of trying to keep ahead of the rust on something like a Paramount will be entirely familiar with the speed and extent to which a Beaver can turn to ferrous oxide. 

I’m out of the industry now (thank fuck) so I’ve no idea if the Chinese kit is up to the drill or not. But if I were a British manufacturer I’d be very worried because it doesn’t really matter - the Chinese stuff could be as crap as the home-grown stuff but so long as it’s cheaper, it’ll find operators willing to pay the money.

[Metal Guru]

On 02/11/2024 at 18:53, busmansholiday said:

Unfortunately you are correct.

Hold on a second! Only wee wee can make such pronouncements. 

[SunnySouth]

19 hours ago, 83C said:

@SunnySouth I do largely agree with you but I would add that the British bus industry has been loading the gun for some self-inflicted harm for a while - it’s almost where the British car industry found itself in the 1970s when people woke up to not having to buy a shonky BL product. 

20 years ago I passed my PSV test and the day after I got taken to Gloucester depot to collect a brand new Dennis Trident II with ALX400 body to ferry over to Cheltenham. VX04 GHH/18084, one of a batch of 10 for the 94 Cheltenham - Gloucester service. Since it was brand new and at the time the most expensive vehicle I’d driven by several orders of magnitude, I stopped for a look around. There were metal shavings and pop rivet pins on the seats in the lower saloon, rubbish in the bins and on a seat upstairs, one interior light had already failed and the height warning plate in the cab had fallen off. To be fair they must have nailed the rest of it together ok as it only came off the road late last year, and others in the same batch are still in service. However it wasn’t an isolated incident, and that’s before we get to some of the utter shite allowed to depart the Optare factory pretending to be fully functioning vehicles.

It’s not like there hasn’t been competition from overseas, but most operators want cheap above all else, something the likes of a Mercedes Citaro is definitely not. Plaxton were onto a good thing for a long time supplying the Beaver-bodied Vario, beloved of rural operators for being cheap, rugged and easy to fix but they managed to build in some inherent design flaws including weakening the bulkhead by cutting it down to fit their windscreen and body with the end result of many Varios wobbling around with a suspiciously thick band of seam sealer over the gearbox tunnel where the bulkhead had cracked. The Plaxton body was also a bugger for doing what all Plaxton products do - rot. Anyone who has had the pleasure* of trying to keep ahead of the rust on something like a Paramount will be entirely familiar with the speed and extent to which a Beaver can turn to ferrous oxide. 

I’m out of the industry now (thank fuck) so I’ve no idea if the Chinese kit is up to the drill or not. But if I were a British manufacturer I’d be very worried because it doesn’t really matter - the Chinese stuff could be as crap as the home-grown stuff but so long as it’s cheaper, it’ll find operators willing to pay the money.

Some good points! I’d offer my own tale in reply; around the same time as your creaking Trident was making its debut our place received a batch of Scania Omnicity single deckers. The incumbent stock being Volvo, and Scania occupying a similar ‘byword for quality’ position in the rankings, hopes were high. Sadly this was short lived, as the things were dreadful. The suspension was absolutely appalling, they were packed full of electrical gremlins, and the bodywork appeared to have been made out of cheese. They went nicely and were cumfy to drive - except when the suspension failed to ease them over bumps - but you’d have had to have been heroically optimistic to describe them as a good bus. A particular highlight was the lot of them having to go back for new emergency doors, as the ones they came with very obviously didn’t fit properly and the constant rattling about on the catch would trigger the sensors, causing the handbrake to refuse to release and thus stranding the bus at random. Really quite a significant design / quality control issue. They bowed out a few years ago, managing about 15 years or so in service and seeing out their days with saggy back ends and plenty of angle iron plating over the cracks in the floors at the back. The memories came flooding back when a few years ago I endured my first ride on one of those horridly ugly, flat fronted intergal Scania coaches, “Omniexpress” I think? God it was awful, I was genuinely quite shocked at how a ‘touring coach‘ could crash and bang quite so badly over every bump in the road. A long trip on one must be pretty tedious, let alone a week or so of “touring”.

Another tale that comes to mind is Brighton & Hove and their batch of Volvo deckers with comedically gutless engines, which somebody ordered for a particularly hilly route along the coast. No doubt drivers’ opinions of those weren’t great either!

My point is that all manufacturers, even the ‘quality’ ones, have struggled to turn out high quality stuff in the past couple of decades. I don’t drive them any more, but I’m not entirely convinced that ADL get a fair battering for their stuff; to my casually observing eye they just seem to be typically plastic “modern bus” shite?!

[MantaGTE85]

We're still driving '04-plate 47-series Optare Solos on the local town routes here in Exeter. They are getting very tired and patched up now, with random warning lights and buzzers going on and off whilst driving them. At least the start-inhibit Greenroad function works perfectly though. 

[busmansholiday]

Nice that people still care.

 

[Yoss]

24 minutes ago, busmansholiday said:

Nice that people still care.

 

The Bluestar website says that their drivers will stop at 11am or as soon as it is safe to do so on Sunday and Monday. 

[lesapandre]

On 04/11/2024 at 20:26, SunnySouth said:

Some good points! I’d offer my own tale in reply; around the same time as your creaking Trident was making its debut our place received a batch of Scania Omnicity single deckers. The incumbent stock being Volvo, and Scania occupying a similar ‘byword for quality’ position in the rankings, hopes were high. Sadly this was short lived, as the things were dreadful. The suspension was absolutely appalling, they were packed full of electrical gremlins, and the bodywork appeared to have been made out of cheese. They went nicely and were cumfy to drive - except when the suspension failed to ease them over bumps - but you’d have had to have been heroically optimistic to describe them as a good bus. A particular highlight was the lot of them having to go back for new emergency doors, as the ones they came with very obviously didn’t fit properly and the constant rattling about on the catch would trigger the sensors, causing the handbrake to refuse to release and thus stranding the bus at random. Really quite a significant design / quality control issue. They bowed out a few years ago, managing about 15 years or so in service and seeing out their days with saggy back ends and plenty of angle iron plating over the cracks in the floors at the back. The memories came flooding back when a few years ago I endured my first ride on one of those horridly ugly, flat fronted intergal Scania coaches, “Omniexpress” I think? God it was awful, I was genuinely quite shocked at how a ‘touring coach‘ could crash and bang quite so badly over every bump in the road. A long trip on one must be pretty tedious, let alone a week or so of “touring”.

Another tale that comes to mind is Brighton & Hove and their batch of Volvo deckers with comedically gutless engines, which somebody ordered for a particularly hilly route along the coast. No doubt drivers’ opinions of those weren’t great either!

My point is that all manufacturers, even the ‘quality’ ones, have struggled to turn out high quality stuff in the past couple of decades. I don’t drive them any more, but I’m not entirely convinced that ADL get a fair battering for their stuff; to my casually observing eye they just seem to be typically plastic “modern bus” shite?!

Flixbus run Scania to Paris I think. Now I know why the ride was so awful - literally banging along the road.