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The Petersham Hole

A collapsed sewer causing a busy road to be closed usually results in bus routes being diverted onto the nearest available and suitable roads. But when in 1979 the main road between Richmond and Kingston at Petersham had to be closed, a most unusual situation occurred. With Richmond Park and its limited entry points and restrictions to large vehicles on one side and a lengthy stretch of the Thames with no crossing point on the other, Routes 65 and 71 had nowhere logical to go. The answer was to run the 65`s as near normal as possible to a point either side of `the hole` with passengers having to walk between buses on either side. Quite a distance and not popular when raining. The 71`s had to be cut back from Richmond to operate south of the `hole` as the 65`s covered the Richmond end of the route.

Here are some pictures that I took on 4 December 1979 - when the disruption had been ongoing for months.



On the Richmond side of `the hole`, the Dysart Arms was the start/finish point.




On the Kingston side of `the hole`, buses performed a reverse into the mouth of a road that immediately narrowed so that just one bus would fit there.









It was not permitted for one person operated buses to ever be scheduled to reverse in service so had the 65`s and 71`s not been RM operated, the arrangements would have been very different. From an operational point of view it might also have been different had the 65`s also been operated from a garage at the northern end of the route in addition to Kingston and Norbition garages as scheduling maybe could have been devised to keep vehicles and crews on one side of `the hole` or the other.

Perhaps Jack and Paul can add some more to how the Petersham situation was managed over many months.

Such a complex disruption to a route caused by both the initial problem and the topological challenges was very rare but just a few years later something similar happened as a result of a seriously overweight French articulated truck breaking one of the main supports of Hammersmith Bridge thus bringing about its closure. The 33`s were curtailed at the south side of the bridge and the 9`s (which ran parallel to eastern end of the 33`s) were split to run either side of the bridge with passengers walking between buses. This was immensely unpopular in heavy rain given the open and exposed nature of a bridge walk. A three bus shuttle ran from Mortlake to the south side of the bridge and from an operational point of view this was easier to schedule as the 9`s were worked by two garages - one at each end of the route. The 72`s, however, being a one person operated route were diverted to avoid reversing and in having to use the next available river crossing (at Putney) were thus running far from normal route.

Re: The Petersham Hole

This brings back many memories. When it first happened, the crews walked through with their passengers and picked up another bus on the other side of the hole, but this was not just the other side of a small hole, there was nearly half a mile walk between the two stops, in all weathers. This would mean quite severe disruption to the schedule to deal with the late running it caused. After a few weeks, emergency schedules were introduced which kept the crews one side of the hole or the other. In general the 65 northern end and the 71 were run by K and the southern end of the 65 by NB. From memory, I think K had only one bus on the 65 south and I don't think NB had any on the northern end. Buses for the northern end generally ran in and out dead via Twickenham to/from the north side of the hole. Few, if any, were scheduled to start or finish in Richmond town centre.

One oddity was that the bus stand at Ham Estate, Beaufort Road had been made operational from the north as well as the south by this time and the only ever scheduled journey ran on Saturday mornings during this period. The first morning 71 ran up to the hole from Kingston did a short to Ham and back (a few minutes journey) before returning to Surbiton as the first through journey.

I may be wrong, memories often play tricks after such a long time, but I am fairly certain that the Sunday BL journeys on the 71 did reverse at Petersham, but it was only one an hour.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Thinking about this a bit more, I think the Sunday 71 had become the 265 by the time of the hole because I remember they sat out their time at Petersham and their passengers used the 65 to and from Richmond, so a 265 in Richmond was a very rare sight as the route was withdrawn and replaced again by a Sunday 71 operation soon after the road reopened.

Another odd situation was that Shillibeer RM2130 spent most of its allocated time at NB during the road closure, so it spent most of its time on the southern end of the 65 route despite being sponsored by North Thames Gas. During the period before the emergency schedules were introduced it also strayed on to the 71 at various times as the inspectors had to make use of whatever buses they had at the hole when a crew turned up with passengers. I assume the buses were returned to the correct garage at night.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Hi Paul

I knew you would add much more to this thread than I could!
When the emergency schedule was made to keep crews to specific sides of the hole, where was the meal break taken for those crews working on the Richmond side?

Re: The Petersham Hole

Hi Neil,

The breaks were still taken at Kingston so we walked through and travelled back as passenger and then returned in the same way. The breaks were quite lengthy because of this but I cannot remember the details and I can't find any of my old schedules at the moment because they are somewhere in my loft which is crammed full of old memorabilia from those days, as well as a large chunk of the Southern Vectis Traffic Office archive which I was ordered to dispose of when I was Network Manager. In the summer it was not unheard of for crews to stay at Petersham and take a leisurely lunch in the Richmond Park (or the Dysart Arms).

It is always great to see your excellent photos and I am particularly pleased to see some of this operation as I did not take any myslef for some reason, I don't know why. If you have any others I would like to see some. If I think of anything else that may be of interest or I can answer any other queries, I would be happy to.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Hi Paul

As the Shillibeer RM allocated to Route 65 has had a mention in this thread, I`ll provide a picture, albeit not an excellent one, of it climbing away from Surbition on 4 April 1979 in the hope that sometimes a poor picture is better than no picture. Had there been more time to prepare for the shot it might have been in focus but I had only just baled out of the car that the bus is overtaking having found it by chance on my way to look at RT`s on the 62`s in their last few days.





Good to hear of your stash of Southern Vectis stuff. What was probably considered to be rubbish fit for the skip years ago is almost certainly now a priceless record of that bus company at a point in time that nobody else had the foresight to keep. A sentiment that I maintain regarding some of the LT stuff in my possession. I wish I had gathered more to build a comprehensive picture of the LT in the years before deregulation. Not sure that Mrs G would agree........

Re: The Petersham Hole

Judging by the poorly set number blind (very unusual for NB at that time when the RMs stayed on the 65 all the time), it looks like it has probably already spent some time on the 71 as I think this would have been the very early days of the Petersham hole.

One aspect of the operation at the hole was that staff cuts sometimes left buses at the hole with no driver to take them back to the garage. A bus movement back paid quite a hefty overtime payment and avoided the walk through to the other side but the challenge was to try and get back before your scheduled finish time and therefore before the bus you would have tranferred your passengers to and travelled on to get back. They were often quite hairy rides round Twickenham.

Mrs W is none too happy with my collection either as it fills my 40ft x 25ft loft, the garage, a large log cabin in the garden and a storage unit I rent. There is a lot of very rare Vectis bits and pieces but also a lot of LT stuff which includes schedules and various files obtained over the years. I also have all the Trade Union files for the old Kingston TGWU branch as I was Garage Rep when K closed and then was NB Rep when I 'retired' in 1986 when the 65 went OPO. I am working through it all very slowly to try to decide the best places for many of the rarer items to move on to.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Certainly brings back memories. Quite a few RMs were drafted in during this period as this also affected service rotas as quite a few vehicles were 'trapped' on the other side and could not be returned to both NB or K and worked on and returned to service. Some buses went to AV or HL for fuel and water but I seem to recall a bit of a union flare up at HL and I believe one or two buses stabled overnight at Chiswick works during a few days of particularly bad weather. But I was not really privy to much of this as we were pretty busy keeping the fleet as operational as possible.

The end of service running was unusual. It was not uncommon for 6 or 7 RMs to run back to base in convoy via Richmond Bridge, Teddington and Kingston Bridge and aided by a staff bus or even a car to import a few drivers to receive a few crews who had shifted from one bus on the northside to one on the South. I heard but never confirmed that on one night 11 buses ran in convoy along this routing blinds lit but saloon lights out.

Re: The Petersham Hole

Paul, I'm sure the Vectis Bus Museum in Ryde would be grateful to receive your archive stuff. I have a couple of friends locally to ashford Kent who go to the Island regularly who I'm sure would take stuff over by car as they are IWSR members.

My bus number (if any): RML2532, BEA MLL721, BEA MLL738, GS67, RT2629

Re: The Petersham Hole

Hi Roy,
As well as living and working on the Isle of Wight for the last 32 years, I am a life member and one of the committee of the Isle of Wight Bus & Coach Museum (don't let some of them hear you call it the Vectis Museum as there are some members who are vigorously anti-Vectis and feel it is too Vectis orientated). I am also a long time member of the London Bus Museum (or Cobham as some of us still prefer to call it) so all the archive that I have collected over many years will eventually end up safely in collections where they should be. My wife and family are well aware of what should happen in the event of my demise. In the meantime I am still in the process of sorting and using the collection for reference purposes myself, but thanks for the offer anyway.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Jack, It is funny how time plays tricks on your memory. I have held off commenting on your post while I try to remember things from the recesses of my memory.

The clearest memories (it operated for about twelve months) are from the period after the start of May when the emergency schedules were in operation. Because the 71 did not run north of the hole, I think the combined PVR was much the same as usual but it may have increased by one or two. The only walking through was for meal breaks and the buses were all scheduled to run out at the start of their working day and back at the end. I cannot remember if any spreadover buses ran back in or not between peaks and can't access the schedule to check. During this period I can certainly remember going to Hanwell for minor problems like wipers and bulbs. If spreadover buses stayed at the hole there would have been little opportunity for routine between peaks maintenance at K as there was only a small allocation on the south side 71 which had little extra peak requirement and,I think, only one bus on the 65 south. Most of the fleet was stuck on the north side during the daytime.

The early days would have been an entirely different matter and probably changed from day to day. I cannot remember how the buses got to the north side for the start of service or back at the end. Certainly some journeys that started from Kingston were instructed to run out dead to start at Richmond and did the same on the return if they were only going to Kingston. When the first crew arrived at the hole northbound in the morning they would have needed a bus to walk through to on the north side but none would be there until the first journey back from Ealing, so some must have either been left overnight or taken out very early, probably in the sort of convoy you describe although I don't remember ever being a part of this. The same would have happened at the end of the day when the last crews from Ealing would presumably have walked through to pick up their journey on the south side and left their buses without drivers on the north side. Again, I don't remember being directly onvolved in that. On the basis of what goes up must come back, buses on the south side would not be a problem as every crew who left one to go north needed one when they got back. So the problem would only have been on the north side. The numbers in a convoy would sound about right as 6 or 7 would have been about right to man the late evening service on the north side and probably as many as 11 to man the peak with Argyle Road journeys and any 71 requirement before it was axed, which I think was before the emergency schedule began but I may be wrong. So if nobody had bothered to get rid of the peak surplus earlier in the evening there could have been 11 there at the end of play.

I also don't remember any loaned buses but there is a film on the internet which has some footage of the hole which clearly shows a Mortlake RM surprisingly operating on the south side with a Norbiton crew.

My bus number (if any): RMC1469

Re: The Petersham Hole

Well, what started as a few pictures has certainly gone on to provide some interesting information!
I doubt there was another instance of a severed route causing the logistical problems as encountered by the Petersham Hole compounded by the routes involved being operated by garages only on one side of the problem. How different might things have been if lengthy single deckers formed the vehicle allocation? The way in which the revised scheduling dealt with the situation was probably the least disruptive option but only because RM`s were involved.

I`d not previously seen that footage of the loaned Mortlake RM. How bizarre that a film crew captures a non K or NB vehicle! Maybe, as Jack said, there was a need to give NB an extra bus in order to help them keep up with routine servicing if normal spread-over downtime was much reduced - or compromised - because of the logistics of getting buses back to base. Surprising that the rear number blind is still in situ on RM 1175 and showing part of a 9. The film date is 1980 but that can be narrowed. A lot of work is visibly ongoing so it`s probably long before the end of the project (the road was closed until September) and with trees completely devoid of leaves plus daffodils being visible in the Richmond section of the film, it was probably shot in mid-February to mid-March at a guess.

Re: The Petersham Hole

For some reason Bermard Cribbins and his song "Hole In the Ground" springs to mind...

My bus number (if any): RML2532, BEA MLL721, BEA MLL738, GS67, RT2629