Tales from the past (Read 8,545 times)

[Deleted]

A bit of self indulgence for me, but I realised that I have now spent over 25 years in the industry, and I have some stories that might be of interest. I'll post them here, every now and again, but if it gets boring, let me know and I'll stop!

It struck me how the county's major bus operator has gone from being a monopoly to a shared player in that time, and that some of the decisions taken a long time ago, have led to the situation we're in today.

Let's start at the beginning. After the 1984 Transport Act was published, the PTE was pretty quick off the mark getting the preperations made for the initial fray. In May 1985, Bradshaw and Allwood were appointed, via a competition, to come up with a new identity and marketing brief for the new 'SYT co' as it was being referred to. There initial idea, was to call it 'Teambus' and that everybody was part of the team. That was a non starter, and that evolved into the SYT image that launched on 4 November 1985 with the catchy 'SYT around South Yorkshire' advertising campaign.

That was the easy bit. The hard part was deciding the actual shape of the business after de-reg. All services had to be registered for the end of February 1986. SYT would be hampered from the start. No services made a profit, data was patchy (Wayfarer wasn't universal until July 1986) and the cost base was difficult to establish.

The PTE had a 'black book' of job descriptions, and during 1986, each department had to decide which part of the empire they wished to keep, palm off back to the exisiting PTE, or make redundant. No real decisions on the shape of the actual operation could be made until the tenders were awarded, and some of those weren't finalised until de-reg weekend.

The PTE had invested heavily in a computer modelling database which took all available data it could find (mainly from surveys undertaken in the summer of 1985) with sample weeks from waybills etc. to make decisons on the commercial network. That in itself was problematical as drivers were under instruction from the T&G not to issue 'nil fare' tickets to pensioners and only about twenty crews in Rotherham and Doncaster were issued with Almex machines that could hold stored data on magnetic tape.

The computer model decided what was likely to be profitable, and what would need to go out to tender. 80% of exisiting mileage was considered profitable. The computer model did not allow for tactical registering of non profitable mileage, as this would upset the end profit calculation for the business plan. Each PTC had to submit a business plan to the Secretary of State before the end of August 1986. The planned profit was £1,000,000 in the first year.

This led to big gaps in the network that should really have been registered. PTC's were also banned from bidding for tendered work outside there area of existing operation. SYT was less affected by this that, say, Merseybus, as the former PTE had gone as far as Greater Manchester, Humberside and Nottinghamshire. In effect, the only tenders won 'out of district' were the 14 from Holmesfield and the Shireoaks/Rhodesia services in Worksop.

The big talk was if YTC and SYT would compete head on. YTC were already engossed in producing their sale plan from the NBC and were unable to undertake any other analysis work on competing services. In Doncaster, the PTE decided to withdraw from the main Skellow corridor, and retreat to Owston Park.

Costs had to come down if SYT was to survive. The logical solution to cutting costs is to remove manpower and remove facilities. These plans never really took off. The human side was dealt with by 'Policy D'. This gave generous redundancy terms for those who wished to go at de-reg, with out upsetting the agreements of the T&G. That was plainly a mistake. A complete root and branch re-negotiation of the conditions should have been undertaken at this time. That could have been done with out re-negotiatiing wages. Such silly items such as guaranteed layover at terminus points could have been removed without much difficulty. Many other schedule abnormalities existed that could have been removed, reducing the headcount without decreasing the guaranteed paid week. It took some months to come up with a minibus drivers agreement from the summer of 1986 prior to being implemented.

Facility reduction should have seen then end of Halfway, Leadmill, Dunscroft and Central Works, but the shareholders didn't want to risk throwing the whole system out, if the next general election returned the Labour party to power, so, Central Works was closed. Another plan existed to close Leadmill and move the allocation to Queens Road. Central Works had been virtually rebuilt in the 1980-84 period and the roof had only been completed in 1985. This would have made the sale of Leadmill possible, and as it was on an inconvenient site, would have been operationally convenient. As an aside, the PTE had looked at moving Central Works to what is now the ROM building on Brightside Lane, but that plan came to nought.

What the new SYT hadn't seen was West Riding coming over the hill to take the tenders away. They were looking on doing something more purposeful with Charlotte Road after de-reg, and buses were a good way of getting cash in to help with the overheads. They hadn't figured on the NBC plan to carve coaching out of the West Riding Group, but that's another story.

As summer turned to autumn, the higher management decided that buses still in PTE livery, needed to have some form of SYT image on them. The poor decision to introduce the interim livery was rushed and poor in application, making the new image seem dowdy and tired within a year.

Too late. De-reg was less that a month away and as the last conductors bade farewell, the final parts of the commercial SYT were coming together and had to be housed somewhere. Queens Road was out, Exchange Street was too expensive so it was off to Meadowhall for everybody.......except that the builders hadn't finished, and wouldn't until September 1987. Most people stayed in Exchange Street, the district offices or in temporary accomodation at Amos Road. It was time for the off!

[The Captain]

Do keep indulging!. Some of these younger chaps that get excited about Magicbus and FSYs ducks have not and will not see another bus war like we did from 1986 to 1995 when YTC bought out the last independents and it calmed down!.

I note with interest the reference to West Riding which under the Sheffield & District name was the only real threat to SYT and heads and shoulders above any of the independents in terms of professionalism and delivery of service. In buying the business off West Riding and putting S&D/Sheafline/SUT in one pot some of S&Ds staff became the nucleus for other companys however.

There was some harsh lessons learned quickly by SYT straight after de-reg not least the state of some buses (Ailsas/DMS style Fleetlines and fairly new MCW Metrobuses) as well as gaps left in the network for other operators to jump in. Also its headless dive into Minibuses which left a painfull legacy within engineering!!. Looking forward to the next part!.

[riderleeds]

what a fantastic read! as the captain says, the youngsters dont know about all this and definatly looking forward to next part!

[Deleted]

At de-reg, each garage became a business unit. They each had to make a profit to survive. To achieve this, all the routes still in the SYT fold were re-distributed to enable each garage to have a fair crack of the profitability whip. In the main, each route had a parent garage, and the previous policy of shared scheduling was abandoned. Anomalies existed within this such as service 69 and 277/8 which were shared between the districts.

Each garage had a team of schedulers and traffic staff and looked after their own tender bids within the main SYT framework. There would be no inter garage rivalries on the tendered front, which did happen elsewhere.

If the traffic side of the business was trying to come to terms with the new regime, the engineers were in shock. Each garage had an Engineering Manager with full responsibility for that side of the business. At de-reg, the heart of the engineering function had been removed, and although each major garage had been rebuilt to enable MT work to be carried out at location, a lot of experienced staff had been made redundant.

The engineers had got use to a 30% spare capacity. In essence, if you needed 100 buses for PVR, 30 buses would be required as spares. This was a reaction to the 1970's when buses and parts were in short supply. For example, the 'DMS' fleetlines were ordered by Sheffield Transport in 1973 - that's four years from ordering to delivery, and then with different bodies to that initially specified.

By the first week of de-reg, the white flags had been put out and the engineers hastily introduced some Fleetlines to Greenland, Lepoard's to East Bank, more Fleetline's to Midland Road and Ailsa's to Doncaster. Unfortunately, none of this was in the budget, so the rocky road to cost control had already been broken!

The computer model had got a lot of things wrong. Some of this was put right in January 1987. Things like the 24 to Totley were increased in frequency and other minor changes were introduced.

Competition had come in small forms. In Doncaster Leon Motors had won a small amount of tendered work, Glynn Pegg had started to operate on the Stainton contract, only to throw the towel in quite early and in Sheffield Grove's had put on some old wrecks on the Shiregreen. The real threat came from the powers that be in Wakefield. Sheffield and District had won a sizeable amount of tendered work and found that a lot of it was commercial.

They proved to be competent and the vehicles were well maintained and kept in excellent condition. It was no secret that the newly privatised company wanted to increase its market share and they quickly moved onto the Fulwood and Lodge Moor corridor.

The first minibuses were introduced in January 1987. In Sheffield, Herries tried a high frequency network in Burncross and High Green. It was mainly staffed by drivers who had been made redundant under 'Policy D'. In fact, this policy had become a major headache for the new SYT as a large number of excellent employees simply walked out of the PTE into Sheffield and District.

Doncaster went into battle with Coachcraft on the Armthorpe corridor. Well it would have done, if the drivers hadn't gone on strike, due to the local T&G not recognising the minibus agreement.

The minibuses purchased were Dodge (Renault) S56's with Reeve Burgess bodies. They weren't the first choice. Engineering wanted the new MCW Metrorider, but you could get more buses for your money with the S56's. They weren't perfect, and SYT quickly started to fit retarders and bigger brake drums.

A fares increase helped calm nerves in March 1987 and the company was 'on budget' for the profit target predicted in the business plan. However, the seeds of further problems were there. The service network was a relic from corporation days and in the new devolved structure, difficult to evolve. A large number of services went to CBS, which was OK when there was a sizeable retail and entertainment objective on Flat Street, but with the movement of most shopping to the Moor and the markets, CBS was well away from the action.

Herries had a go at changing this. The Parson Cross circle network (79/89) had only recently been extended from the 'no mans land' of Bridge Street into the City Centre. Now it was diverted via Hillsborough and extended to Moorfoot. Unfortunately, the timetable was too tight and after a couple of months it retreated to Flat Street, but the Hillsborough diversion remained off peak.

Into this situation, the newly privatised NTE Coaches launched a new service 100 from Manor Top to the City Centre under the name SUT. The new owners of NTE was the emerging ATL group who had already bought and 'revolutionised' Yelloway and were now looking to expand. Out went coaching and most of the stock (they even sold vehicles they didn't actually own!) and in came various Leyland National's.

The route picked was clever. Through the heart of the huge Norfolk Park estate. SYT operated every ten minutes with the 70/71 Prince of Wales Road Circulars. What SUT did was route the service through the heart of the shopping area at the Moor and then through a loop at the markets. SYT was slow to respond. Bargain fares had been charged on the Shiregreen services, but weren't put into place on the 70/71. SUT ran the first week for free.

When the reaction did come, it took the form of re-routing part of the 23/32 via Norfolk Park, but the five minute frequency did little to stem the tide and the fact that people wanted the convenience of being able to get to the shops. SYT didn't move into the City Centre until November, and then it was Arundel Gate.

Other problems surfacing at the time involved engineering. It was widely acknowledged that some of the garage engineering functions were poor. One singled out for particular criticism was Rotherham. By June of that year, the fleet at the garage was in such a poor condition, immediate remedial action was required as the MOT pass rate had dipped below 90%. Various members of management were released from their duties and re-assigned and a through root and branch appraisal of the garage functions were undertaken. This was certainly a long term problem which was never fully rectified.

Service changes during the year were aimed at increasing the use of minbuses (with their lower cost) and removing sizeable chunks of double deck work. Rotherham got minibuses in late June and Greenland implemented a large network review of east Sheffield in that month as well.

All was not rosy. Mounting teneder losses and further competition was eroding the bottom line. A sizeable tender loss for September comprised the Dinnington network in the evenings and on Sundays to East Midland (who were also looking to increase their presence) and the inter-peak bath bus contract in Sheffield.

The numbers weren't adding up. Out of the seven garages, only three made a profit (EB, LE and DT), one was marginal (HE) with the others loss making. The radical cost cutting that should have been done earlier was now coming back to haunt the operation.

Eyes were cast up the road to Yorkshire Rider. The cost cutting and re-organisation had been on a smaller scale as the majority of the surgery had been carried out in the 1981 to 1986 period when the PTE operations (and the other operators in MetroBus) had only recieved subsidy for loss making journeys. They were making money and looking for an ESOP. This is where SYT had to get to.

The bullet had to be bit. For operations, the whole network had to be reviewed (unfortunately, the set up didn't allow for widescale network change, and this had to wait for another day), for the engineers, they had to make do with even fewer spares (down to 12% at some locations) and for everybody, a reduction in wages and overheads.

Overheads meant facilities. It would have been easy to go back to the original plan and close three garages, but, politics had come into play. The shareholders were represented on the management board by non-executives appointed by the local councils and headed up by former NBC man Robert Brook. The representatives were heavy on the Rotherham and Doncaster side, and that would weigh heavily in the decision making process.

It was recognised that a big garage had to go. As Sheffield had four garages (Halfway was under Rotherham's wing) it would probably be one of these, but Rotherham was one of the poorest performing and was very expensive to operate.

Plan A would have seen Rotherham closed and its work being distributed to Greenland, Halfway and Doncaster. This was a non starter due to the non-executive influence on the board. Doncaster seemed to forget de-reg ever happenned and carried on much as before. The real battle was in Sheffield and that is where internal politics came into play.

Plan B meant that Greenland should have been the logical choice. It was bleeding cash, had a hard line workforce and poor engineering standards. It was, however, run by a charasmatic team and had become the main base for engineering having the paint shop, test lane and glass fibre shops as well as the Training School. Herries was breaking even, but was seen as 'placid' and engineering standards were very good. Leadmill was a difficult site to operate, based on three physically seperate locations, but was profitable, had very high engineering standards (despite the weakness of the MCW Metrobus, which made up its entire allocation) and was seen as being key to the future of the company. East Bank was highly profitable (based on profit per passenger mile operated), but it was widely known within SYT that the garage team and directorate did not see eye to eye about policy.

The Dronfield network had never been a money spinner. The wrong side of the border for concessionary travel and high car ownership made this large tract of housing difficult to serve. It was also shared with another partner, Chesterfield Transport, and they wanted to make changes to the network. Internal policy dictated that minibuses would be better at generating a profit and that by splitting the network with Chesterfield would stop competition. However, Chesterfield weren't over impressed with SYT winning tenders in the town and winnning the majority of the coal contracts for Markham Colliery, and they wanted more of the network than a junior partner could expect.

EB management wanted none of it but were over ruled by the directorate. That didn't go well, so when the need for closure came about, it was purely down to bitter internal politics, rather than sound headed business. The management team at EB offered to purchase the garage and operation from SYT, but, unsurprisingly, were turned down.

All was reveiled to an unsuspecting workforce prior to christmas 1987. The battle for business just got real.

[ateam]

A great read so far, very interesting. Thanks

[The Captain]

Excellent piece. For all those blaming First for the state of First South Yorkshire you have to go back nearly 30 years to find the original starting point for todays problems-costs v profits is not a new issue, indeed the similarity from 1987 to today is remarkable: Huge operating costs at OG and RO but low standards in engineering and even less in terms of vehicle spares-the figure of 30 buses spare per 100 at de-reg now stands at something like 31 spares per 285 bus at OG!.

Leadmill iirc had the best met PVR fiqures for years on end even though as mentioned the fleet was 95% MCW Metrobus, i would imagine in the next post the reason why Mainline did everything it could to obliterate the East Bank name and reputation as well as split the workforce up far and wide will become apparent. If the SYT management had dealt with East Banks maverick management team then there would have been no Terrier or Sheafline and the most profitable depot would never have shut.

[buswatch]

As said already an excellent read - more please!

More of this and less of redline stuff we get from junior members.

[xtopher]

Agreed. A beautiful read. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us.

Nice to see some informed posts again from the more intelligent members of this forum as opposed to the utter drivel in some areas.

[riderleeds]

Absoloutley fantastic read this Is, I grew up with SYT (born 82) and worked at Greenland for a small time, it's brilliant to read the background and facts stated above

And also agree re the drivel that sometimes appears on here!


Again thank you for sharing this

[Deleted]

Christmas 1987 had not been a happy one. SUT had won all the tendered work over the Christmas and New Year holiday in Sheffield and a shell shocked workforce was coming to terms with the tremors of the East Bank closure.

One thing was for sure, the majority of the traffic staff at East Bank were going. Some junior members survived the cull to be sent to Rotherham on temporary contracts, but the writing was on the wall. Cost reductions meant that official staff (those who worked in clerical positions) had to work an extra hour per week and lose a pound an hour of their wages. Drivers were given the chance of redundancy, transfer to 'Keyboard 88' (which meant reduced pay and longer shifts) or consolidating their earnings into a flat hourly rate. The engineers were faced with the stark choice of accepting reduced wages and longer hours or being sold off into a seperate business that had to compete for SYT's work.

Keyboard 88 eventually became the new starter rate which had similar conditions to minbus drivers. Consolidation meant that the flat rate applied on all days of the week with no enhancements for overtime. The engineering dispute kept going through the spring into early summer. They had decided to work to rule and ban overtime. the directorate decided to give everybody 90 days notice unless they signed a letter accepting the new terms, conditions and wage rates. In the end, the engineers signed upto the scheme, but throughout the spring and early summer of 1988 most days found garages short of buses by anything upto 20% of the PVR.

Most rank and file and junior managers felt that the directorate were out of touch with reality and were aloof from the situation facing SYT. In fairness, the directors were all career bus men from the finest corporation traditions and were simply carrying out the policy of the shareholders, which in this case were the four councils of South Yorkshire.

Service changes were minimal for the first four months of the year. When East Bank closed in the April of 1988, the chance was taken to iron out some of the problems associated with garages losing money. Greenland gained a large slice of East Bank's lucrative routes. Herries got on with the task of adapting to the 75/6, Leadmill got a share of the 24 as well as the 1/34/8/9 combine. There wasn't enough room in the four remaining garages to absorb all the work, so Rotherham gained city work on the 1/24/34/38/39 as well as all of the 69 and the 287/8/X7 group. Doncaster got all of the X24/X25/X77 and Halfway gained all of the Beighton and Halfway express network.

As part of the cost cutting plan, all non essential mileage was de-registered if it didn't make any money, or was deemed irrelevant to the business. In the main, this was evening and Sunday work which SYT won back on temporary four month contracts.

The heavy reduction in mileage also took a hold of the fleet composition. Many of the oddities that had been inherited from the PTE were withdrawn, but the big surprise was the mass withdrawl of the 1980 batch of two door Metrobuses. Their were sound engineering reasons to remove them from the fleet. Body corrosion was already a problem and Ensign were offering £18k per bus to take them off SYT's hands. That money was badly needed to pay the redundancy costs associated with the manpower reductions.

The next major programme was to try and get Doncaster into profit. It was as if de-reg had never happened at Leicester Avenue and minibuses featured rarely in any service scheme. The service netowrk could be traced back to trolleybus days and some prime minibus services were still being operated on six minute frequencies, with big buses. Beckett Road, Hexthorpe, Hyde Park were all areas that should have been given the Nipper treatment. Service amendments and an influx of new Mk2 Nippers at Greenland made the resources available and the deed was done during the summer. The opportunity also arose to purchase the shares of H Wilson, trading as Premier, which would give SYT the monopoly on the important North East corridor to Thorne and beyond. A motley bunch of vehicles were acquired, many never to operate, but for the small outlay required, it gave a valuable rise to the profit and loss table. By the end of 1988, Doncaster was making a profit of 4p per mile.

Green eyes had been cast at Sheffield and District from late in 1987. They had found that the majority of the tendered work they had was commercial, and set about making it their own. They had also got a fleet of brand new Leyland Lynx single deckers, which reduced the engineering costs and had a brand new home on the Dore House Industrial Estate at Orgreave (prosaically called Handsworth Asda on the blinds). Whilst there was a respect at junior level for S&D, the directorate wanted to get them out of the area. They were strong, and looked like making inroads into the area.

A deputation was sent to Wakefield to see what could be done. The loadings observed were fantastic and if SYT could find a local partner, to get around some of the restrictions on PTC's operating out of area, a commercial operation in the heart of the enemy territory seemed like a good idea. The partner was found in Compass Travel and SYT sent a number of employees to work on a commercial network in the area. Some tendered work was already in hand and this was built on by using redundant Leoopard's and National's refurbished at Herries. Some of the SYT staff went 'native' and when they returned a year later they were changed men and difficult to work with.

A big problem was tenders. SUT had been good at winning tendered work and in August S&D picked up a huge swathe of work that SYT had ditched in the April. This even extended to Rotherham, which affected the bottom line. YTC had picked up some school work from Yewlands (that ended the cordial relationship between the two operators) and Chesterfield had won some Stocksbridge schools work. A number of SYT employees had, by now taken their redundancy packages, and the Chesterfield tender was won by 'Duff bus'. I you were around at the time, you'll know who that is! We reckoned that they must have put in a loss making price as the cost of running a bus from Chesterfield would have been huge.

SUT had expanded and were covering the best part of Greenland's commercial network. But all was not well with the holding group and Yelloway had gone into oblivion and Airebus wasn't far behind. A real innovation was running Neoplan's on the X32. That was a sound piece of thinking as the unco-ordinated response by SYT/YTC and West Riding didn't dent the service too much.

The closure of East Bank had been good for the balance sheet, but it unleashed two competitors on the Sheffield scene. Terrier was the one to watch. It started small and had enormous commercial and engineering experience. The other, Sheafline, suffered from being over ambitious, poorly organised and handicapped by lack of knowledge. Both came onto the scene in the late summer/autumn of 1988. Terrier concentrated on the Crookes corridor whilst Sheafline (it was going to be called Sheffield Citybus) went for Wybourn, Totley, Shirecliffe and Hemsworth.

Some new blood was desperately needed at Amos Road and in came Bob Montgomery as OD. He was a no-nonsense, commercial busman who knew how to get things organised and run correctly. That led to secret plans being made in the October of 1988 to press forward for the coming year.

The profits were coming in slowly, but at the end of the financial year 87/88 SYT lost £5.5 million.

[Deleted]

'You've pissed on my chips'. Not exactly the words Bill Cottam expected as a congratulatory phone call from one of the Directors at SYT on the successful ESOP for Yorkshire Rider. Half said in jest, half in envy, it was no secret that the directors fancied being their own boss, but SYT was a million miles away from that step.

Bob Montgomery assembled his team and with other members of management from Finance and Engineering, decided that SYT needed an action plan.

For a week, this group of senior managers were locked away in a meeting room at Amos Road armed with a white board and writing pads. They had to analyse what SYT had done wrong and how to steady the ship and getting in moving again.

The plain facts were that the tendered market was over competitive. Too many players were going after the work on offer at ridiculously low prices. The high costs involved with SYT prevented seriously low bids being made. The best thing for the company to do was to exit this market altogether. SYT had to stand on its own two feet, and if it picked up some tenders along the way, then so be it.

To get to this aim, the network had to be reshaped. This would consist of a core set of high frequency routes, simple to understand on good territory. A secondary set or routes would be converted to minibus and would also run on a high frequency, the costs being absorbed by lower wages. Thirdly would be the non core work that would be operated upto a point that was commercially viable. What was needed was a low cost operation. The T&G wouldn't entertain this notion from within SYT, so the company would have to find an operator that could be used to furtherance these requirements.

The core network was to be branded differently to the main fleet. The first stab was to paint an Atlantean overall blue and the name 'Steel City Line' was mooted. It lacked the required 'oomph' and the second suggestion 'Sheffield Citybus' was even worse. Events, however, overtook the plans.

Greenland was now in profit, but the majority of that profit was coming from one route - service 52. By now, four operators were operating over the whole or part of the route and this was having a serious effect on the finances of the garage. Losing a second Sheffield garage would have been a fatal blow.

The 52 should have been a 'core' route, but on its current frequency (every 6) it would have just have been a different coloured bus to add to the mix. The commercial team pushed for a more radical solution. Minibuses, every 3 minutes, with drivers on a seperate set of terms and conditions, even becoming an operation within an operation.

Bob Montgomery wasn't convinced. He had experience with Bee Line of high frequency minibus operation, and whilst they had been close to breaking even, it had proved difficult to justify to UTI, Bee Line's owner, that further investment was needed. Montgomery was not a man to be ignored. Much to the chargin of the other directors, he had owned his own bus company and had vast quantities of commercial experience.

One Wednesday in November, various minibus manufacturers pitched up at Amos Road to show their wares. Most surprisingly, Northern Counties produced one of the better designs for the S56 and the order was duly signed. However, Lincoln City Transport had recently withdrawn a good quantity of virtually new Reeve Burgess bodied S56's which were almost identical to the last batch bought by SYT. The plan was set, SYT was going to 'blow the competition out of the water'.

[riderleeds]

This is a fantastic read, especially for me owning one of the only s56's new to SYT left to survive, just goes to show how important they were

I cannot wait for the next bit, your knowledge is fantastic , keep it up as I'm loving every word!

[The Captain]

It blew the competition out of the water on the 52s all right! E-reg Lynxes bolstered by brand new F-reg Lynxes run by Sheffield & District with SUT chucking the odd bus in on the Woodhouse side and Terrier raking it in on the Crookes side and all these Minibuses in between. The Northern Counties Dodges 220-239 soon got a reputation- "Scuds" said it all. The E-BCT Dodges 240-254 from Lincoln soon got moved onto the 92s running against the 25 when the much better G-reg Mk3 Dodges turned up. On the plus side Unit 52 were well run, well organised not only by long serving Inspectors like Ray Barnes but the new recruits that rapidly rose throught the ranks running it in the top cabin at Greenland-Dave Carnall/Stuart Henshaw/ Martin Hoole spring to mind. The use of an open radio system where drivers could inform control of the "competition" or leapfrogging stops etc to spread loadings out without queing on Band 3 was kept on right up till Greenland recieved the first BLEs from First in its B10Ms 601-625.

[riderleeds]

I always wanted a scud, sadly no more, fond memories of when they stopped at bus stops when nearly new, the front bonnet came down

P.s wasn't the G regs mk2's??

Really loving this history guys, keep it up

[The Captain]

Oct 16, 2012 20:53:09 GMT riderleeds said:

I always wanted a scud, sadly no more, fond memories of when they stopped at bus stops when nearly new, the front bonnet came down

P.s wasn't the G regs mk2's??

Really loving this history guys, keep it up

Dodge S56 101-189 Mk1s

Dodge S56 190-219 Mk2s

Dodge S56 220-239 Mk2 (Northern Counties)

Dodge S56 240-254 Mk2 (ex Lincoln)

Renault S56 301-344 Mk3

Renault S56 345-350 Mk3 (H-reg)

Renault S56 351-389 Mk4

The first lot of Dodges had no retarder and Torqueflight gearboxes which resulted in barely a weeks use out of a set of brakes. Some got modified and some got sold on. The Mk2s came with Allison boxes and revamped cowlings. Upgrades of gearboxes/brakes and other componants came with each mark.

388/389 were delivered with the n/s seats facing inwards to create more standing room with the 52s in mind, but the 52s got converted to B10Ms as they were delivered. Some of 190-219 were also modified for use on Park and Ride dutys operating out of the closed East Bank depot before being put to store. At least 199/203/204 were reinstated at Greenland in 1996 with reduced seating capacity. If you got out of a Mk3 and jumped in the odd Mk2 lingering on by 1996 you stained the cab seat on realising that there was no retarder-they didnt stop where you expected them too.