Magnus Mills - The Maintenance of Headway

As we approached the garage I noticed several buses either parked on the forecourt or in the process of being turned around. These were obviously the vehicles which had been displaced following the earlier disruption. Overseeing the operation was Mick Wilson, who I thought looked rather pale. I wondered if it was him who had bungled. Clearly Breslin thought so. The moment we arrived he disembarked and marched over to where Mick was standing. A conversation then ensued during which Mick turned even paler. From my bus I observed the rare spectacle of a senior inspector taking his junior down a peg or two. Then the pair of them disappeared into the annexe for a further debriefing.

Meanwhile, I was now very late for my break: I had been due to hand the bus over almost half an hour previously. The relief driver was Jason, who was standing at the side of the road with a big grin on his face.

“You’ve done me a favour there,” he said. “I’m finishing on the way back, so they’ve told me to spin her round at the arch. Lovely.”

Moments later he was installed in the driver’s seat and revving up the engine. I watched as Jason and his terrified passengers sped into the distance, then I headed upstairs to the canteen. Seated at our usual table was Edward. I joined him and described my recent revelation concerning Breslin.

“Oh yes, he’s quite human,” Edward remarked. “He may appear rather gruff at times but you’d probably be the same if you’d made a career out of waiting for buses.”

“I suppose so,” I said. “I’d never thought of it like that before.”

“Breslin is a true professional.”

“Luckily for me.”

“Luckily for all of us.”

§

The following day we were sitting at the same table when Jeff came into the canteen.

“Is there a difference between early running and running early?” he enquired.

“Not really,” I said. “Early running is the generic form. Running early is the deed itself.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I got booked again.”

“That’s twice in a fortnight.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Who booked you?”

“Wilson,” said Jeff. “Same as last time.”

“He was in trouble himself yesterday,” I said. “I expect he went on the warpath, looking for a few victims of his own.”

“How early were you?” asked Edward.

“Seven minutes,” Jeff replied. “There was so much pandemonium yesterday I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“But Mick did.”

“Yeah.”

Jeff looked quite forlorn, so I treated him to a mug of tea while Edward provided sympathy.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen is you might have to go and see Frank.”

“What shall I say to him?”

“You won’t have to say anything,” said Edward. “He’ll do all the talking.”

Frank Lowe was the garage operating manager, although in reality he didn’t do much actual managing. The entire bus system worked on a set procedure and most of the day-to-day administration was handled by his sidekicks in the duty room. Frank’s role was mainly as a figurehead. He added a personal dimension to a largely impersonal regime. Like all bureaucracies, everything on the buses had to be signed for. We signed for our uniforms, our lockers, our starter keys and our payslips. When we went on holiday, we even had to sign a declaration stating we would come back again afterwards. (This was to ensure the garage had enough drivers available at the end of each holiday period.) Frank, however, added the occasional tender touch. For example, every year at Easter all the bus drivers were given a chocolate egg, paid for from Frank’s petty cash allowance. Admittedly our eggs had to be signed for, but it was the generosity of spirit that counted.

For the most part Frank was regarded as a ‘kindly’ manager. I remember meeting him on my first day as a new recruit at the garage. He invited me into his office and gave me a short lecture about punctuality.

“Look at this duty,” he began, proffering a time card he’d picked at random from a pile on his desk. “Signs on at 5:58 in the morning. That’s a funny time to start work, isn’t it?”

I assumed the question was purely rhetorical, so I nodded my head in vague agreement but said nothing.

“Most people start work on the hour, don’t they?” Frank continued. “Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock and so forth. Not 5:58.”

This time I shook my head.

“You sign on at 5:58 for a reason,” said Frank. “The reason being that the bus departs at 6:13. That gives you precisely fifteen minutes to find your bus and prepare it for the conveyance of passengers.”

“Do I have to put the fuel in?” I asked, somewhat naively.

“No,” he said. “The engineers will do that. But for reasons of safety you have to check the entire vehicle. Then you have to put water in the radiator. Then you have to set the destination blinds. Then you have to adjust the driving seat and mirrors to fit your personal requirements. The whole process takes precisely fifteen minutes.”

At this point Frank gave me a measured look and leaned back in his chair.

“Now let’s imagine what would happen if you turned up late,” he said. “Imagine you arrived not at 5:58, but at 6:04. That means your bus wouldn’t depart until 6:19. And let’s further imagine that one of your passengers is a train driver who is supposed to be at work at 6:44. He’s also got fifteen minutes to get his train ready. It’s scheduled to leave at 6:59 but because you’ve made him late, he doesn’t get going until 7:10. Which means the train behind him gets delayed. And the train after that. See how it accumulates? See the potential for outright bedlam? Your failure to be punctual could make a million people late for work!”

Frank sat behind his desk and bristled with imaginary rage.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s alright,” he replied. “Don’t let it happen again though.”

Another of Frank Lowe’s tasks was to find appropriate punishments for early running and related misdemeanours. In the days of the VPB, of course, the solution had been simple. Drivers who persistently ran early were paired up with conductors who were known to be very tardy on the bell. Likewise, injudicious conductors were placed with slow drivers. The system worked successfully for decades, but the introduction of one-man buses meant a change in tactics was required. After some thought, Frank decreed that early running drivers would be transferred from double- to single-decker vehicles. This was the busman’s equivalent of being cast into outer darkness. Single-decker routes were notorious for their tedious convolutions. They rarely went directly from A to B, but instead proceeded in no end of twists, turns, loops and figures-of-eight. Few drivers liked working on them and usually the mere threat of a transfer cured the problem of early running.

Needless to say, such punishments had their limitations. In the case of Jason, for instance, they failed entirely. After a few months working with Gunter he had been teamed up with an elderly conductor called Mr Otis in an attempt to slow him down a bit. Mr Otis was a company employee of many years’ standing, but after only a few weeks he threatened to resign rather than continue being hurled around the bus by Jason. Several other conductors also tried and failed. Subsequently Jason had been put to work on single-deckers. This, too, had met with no success. On one occasion he went over a humpbacked bridge so fast that the vehicle’s underside left a tell-tale scrape along the tarmac. Finally, as a last resort, Frank took Jason out of service and gave him a job shunting buses inside the garage. Such a position was considered the lowest of the low, but it still didn’t have any effect. Jason’s shunting was so quick and efficient that all the other shunters began to fear they’d be made redundant. Accordingly, they went on strike and the matter was only settled when Jason was moved back to double-deckers.