ROOF
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There`s nothing too remarkable about this picture taken on July 10 1982. But the location has a story regarding an embarrassing lack of judgement......
It`s the bus stand at Lower Feltham used, at that time, by Routemasters on the 237`s and Leyland Nationals on the 117`s. A typical housing estate bus terminus. Roads not too wide and often an obstacle course provided by badly parked cars. Because of this it was usually the case that a bus wouldn`t be able to get past one already on the stand.
Imagine, then, the driver of an RML finding his way off the bus stand blocked by a broken down Leyland National and an assortment of parked cars. Possibly the need to get out of there on time had something to do with the imminent end of his shift so, with the conventional exit unavailable, a different strategy was tried. Adjacent to the bus stand was a fair size grassed area with flower beds. Not horticulturally magnificent but a valuable bit of greenery to enhance a brick and concrete environment - popular with locals. Onto the grass went this RML in an attempt to pass the broken down National on the nearside.
It must have been just after a lengthy period of rain and within yards the bus sank into the soft ground. Panic possibly took over and attempts to reverse off only made things worse with the bus becoming firmly bogged down.
When the Running Shift guys from Hounslow arrived to get the National going, they tried to extricate the RML but only managed to dig it in even deeper a few feet further forward. So a tow truck was summoned. Inevitably that needed to get to the front of the RML and in successfully pulling it forward to safety those guys managed to trash the remaining part of the grass area that `team Hounslow` hadn`t got around to. By the time they had finished the area looked like it had hosted a badly mis-managed amateur ploughing match! It took weeks for the ground to recover and locals rarely missed a chance to have a sarcastic pop at any crew on a 237 that had to wait for a 117 to leave so that they could. `Do you want me to nip home and get a shovel so that you can take a short cut?` was a favourite!
