Hi all. Does anyone know how Driver training was conducted and from where,in the heyday of the RM? Was each garage responsible for training its own drivers or was there a central training garage? Thanks, Andy

Everyone went to the famous Chiswick driving school, reputedly the BEST bus driver school in the world.

I never went there, but was fortunate enough to have been taught by those who had, as I was a railwayman not a busman in the early 1970s!

When it went "private" the companies were responsible for their own training. these days from what I've heard all they do is teach bus drivers how to pass the test, not how to drive.

Remember the snow a couple of years ago? No buses at all in London, yet look at pictures of the winter of 1962 and 3' deep snow with buses being driven through it!

The training buses were allocated to garages for maintenance purposes. They may have also been parked at night at a different garage again. The DM I learned in was based at Wandsworth but kept overnight at Kingston or Norbiton.

I think there was a Routemaster allocated to Hanwell, my base garage, but I had to look at other buses that dropped in with faults from time to time in most of the garages i have worked at.

There was, on my training bus, three of us learning. One just started, one on week two and one on the final week leading to their test. The week two trainee took the bus from Chiswick, where I had initially met the instructor, and drove as far as Park Lane. I was then told to take over. I think it would have been even more terrifying if I hadn't previously learned to drive within the garage confines. At least I knew the size of the vehicle already!

I think there was still over a hundred garages when I started at LT in 1985. If there was a trainer for each garage there were perhaps a hundred trainees going for test each week.

I cannot comment on the standards now but do I remember and use many of the invaluable things I was taught then and when I mention some of them now, I just get blank looks!

My bus number (if any): RML2276, M1001, T806

100 garages? Including LCBS perhaps. There has never been any thing near 100 central garages in LT days. There were 71 in 1965 when I joined LT.

Buses were allocated for maintenance purposes but could also be move around if it didn't affect garage manning levels for the convenience of the instructor. Not all garages had a trainer, some garages only had one trainer, others like Stockwell a number.

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458 RM 1585, (M 961, M 271 - both sold) and several RTs

Everything changes with the passage of time, as we get older we sometimes tend to think of a rosy past. I have known good instructors over the past 40 odd years, however no matter how good they are once a driving test is passed it is the individual that cares about what she or he is doing behind the wheel is what counts.

I am not convinced by this argument about the buses of the 1960's driving through deep snow and I saw in the winter of 62/63 RT's slipping and sliding around with little traction. Engines at the front, engines at the rear, much heavier modern vehicles, more street furniture, more hazards, more pedestrians and crucially a lot more traffic under bad weather conditions being around, it all adds up to a different scenario nowadays.

62 garages by the look of it, now I have had a count up, with another handful that had closed in the preceding few years taking it to almost 70.

I think I probably had the earlier 10 ish garages per district but the later quantity of companies in mind. But thank you for querying my error anyway. Much preferable to it being wrong but ignored.

We had a garage contact list which I think was produced by a cleaning company or cleaning product supplier (or something like that). It showed each district, a list of garages, DEM's and GEM's (and maybe DOM's and GOM's), foreman I think plus phone numbers etc.

Has anyone got one of these in their collection?

David

My bus number (if any): RML2276

I`ve got one of those lists that breaks down the entire LT operating empire into the areas, locations and senior contacts. I got it on arrival at Central Division HQ in 1973. Bound to be many long closed garages on it and other things too indicative of a very different LT to that of the post 1986 fragmentation. I seem to recall that immediately prior to the split that created London Country there were 69 Central Area garages and 28 Country Area.

Regards driver training, Chiswick was the absolute hub of this. All instructors were based there but not vehicles as no facilities to maintain vehicles for regular road use existed. Therefore training buses were allocated to garages all around the fleet with Instructors being assigned to a particular bus which would be on the strength of the garage nearest to the instructors home or to one in the near vicinity depending on circumstances.
All garages had to adhere to an agreed ratio of engineering staff to vehicles as Brian said. That was always just as an important consideration as available space in allocating buses to garages. It was entirely possible to have spare space in a garage unused because other factors precluded an increase in manning levels to allow extra buses to use that space. In an instance like that it was possible for a Driving Instructor to park his vehicle in a garage close to his home having obtained permission from the Day Foreman as parking was entirely different to being on the strength of that garge. Such a bus would have to go back to its designated garage every four weeks for routine inspection or for other unscheduled work to be done on it.

Some garages were always `up to the limit` with service buses and as these had to take priority such garages could go for years without a training bus being allocated. This was the case when I worked at Tottenham, Riverside, Putney and Stamford Brook. No trainers at any of these then. The latter looked after the Skid Bus but as this wasn`t a road licensed vehicle it didn`t count.

Every so often a massive programme of service changes would cause a vast number of inter-garage transfers and whilst the service buses involved in this would be obvious to see and record, less obvious were the training buses. Sometimes dozens of these would have to move as a `Mexican wave` of vehicle transfers for service suddenly took a garage to the limits of its manning or space capabilities forcing out the less important trainers. I have the vehicle tranfer sheets for the massive changes that took place on Sept 4th 1982 and again on June 24th 1983 and the amount of training buses that moved homes on those two dates is enormous.

Training buses were very useful to take a garage up to the limit of manning levels ratio to vehicles if the number of buses there for service fell short of the permitted total. But the most bizarre example of this had to be at Mortlake when the service reductions of Sept 4th 1982 left just 26 buses for service. In order to avoid redundancies or compulsory transfer, the engineering staff level remained the same but ten RMC trainers arrived! There certainly weren`t ten Instructors living nearby so most of those buses lived elsewhere for the most part and came back only for routine inspection etc. In those months prior to closure, staff at Mortlake were clinging to false hope that extra work could be found to make the garage viable and Neil T used to say that if only it were possible the 715`s which ran through Barnes should be reinstated to run from Hertford to Guildford and we could run it as we now had enough RMC`s! If only!

Thank you Neil for an accurate and concise view of driver training and the allocation of training buses.

Just a couple of points, Mortlake's complement of buses post 1973 was always below the minimum staffing levels in the garage manning scheme, as was Abbey Wood I believe, so the arrival of the trainers was perhaps to give more work without affecting the manning levels there and perhaps prevent staffing hikes at other garages.
The idea for the garages was to keep staffing levels as constant as possible by keeping in the the same manning band and not losing buses so it dropped out of a band to a lower one, as that would have meant transfers of staff to other garages and from nights to days etc which disrupted people's lives. Hornchurch once dropped out of a band and after going to great lengths to try and prove the run-in would not work with the reduced staffing level, a couple trainers were drafted in to balance the books and restore the status quo.

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458 RM 1585, (M 961, M 271 - both sold) and several RTs

Neil/Brian

I recall manning level changes caused me concern within a very short time of joining LT as almost immediately a slight reduction in buses put me in the position of being surplus. I was initially based at Norbiton as a cover electrician but some months later managed a transfer to Hanwell. Even the closure of Southall, loss of one of their electricians and transfer of buses to Hanwell (along with the other ex Southall electrician) didn't help and I was still the most recently employed electrician.

It was for that reason (and my willingness) I was sent all over Cardinal garages carrying out modifications, rewires, accident and fire damage repairs and other work that Aldenham was no longer able to do. This in turn created the Stamford Brook Accident Centre where I was eventually transferred although (officially part of the FFD team to keep the books balanced).

As you say it only takes a slight reduction of vehicles to make the difference.

Neil, If you are able to, would you please email me a copy of the garage list.

David Colin

My bus number (if any): RML2276, M1001, T806

David

Not that easy regarding the sheet listing the entire LT operating spectrum.
First I`d have to find it. As I recall it`s about A3 size or bigger and I don`t have a scanner. I`ll see if, when I have time to find it, I can maybe photograph part of it and post it on here.

I should have mentioned in my previous post that the 10 RMC trainers came to Mortlake in one go and were additional to several other trainers (one of which was an RML) that belonged at Mortlake to provide the extra work needed for the manning levels as were.

I've sent avid a listing of garages by district circa 1960, it hss Hendon as a District shed!

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458 RM 1585, (M 961, M 271 - both sold) and several RTs

Thanks for all that guys - most helpful. Of the many RM publications out there,training is rarely mentioned (?) - unless someone knows different ?.......
Could l have a copy of that list please, Brian? Cheers, Andy

Driver training is not as such an RM issue, it didn't change much from using STLs, RTLs", RTW, RTs , RMC' DMs etc, a lot of us who drove in the RM era only did training on RMs as type training, learning to drive on pre-selector boxes on RT types and having an hour or so on an RM. Will E mail list over later.

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458 RM 1585, (M 961, M 271 - both sold) and several RTs

I pity the poor souls who had to train on some of the DMS fleet. I bought a few from AL in about 1999, and gorblimeyguv, what a rough ride THEY were! Luckily we sold a few on the be set fire to in "London's Burning".

I think if I were sent to train on one, my answer would have been to walk away.