Bad stuff we did on buses as kids.

[Eyersey468]

Which bus route did he travel on?

Number 11 to the Cemetery Gates, he was good friends with Blakey

 

[yorksrob]

Number 11 to the Cemetery Gates, he was good friends with Blakey

"You've made my day you ave"

 

[Ken H]

Number 11 to the Cemetery Gates, he was good friends with Blakey

Cemetery Gates is a rock climb on Dinas y Gromlech in the Llanberis pass first climbed by Joe Brown & Don Whillans. Named after a bus destination blind. Think Liverpool.

 

[Eyersey468]

Cemetery Gates is a rock climb on Dinas y Gromlech in the Llanberis pass first climbed by Joe Brown & Don Whillans. Named after a bus destination blind. Think Liverpool.

Never knew that

 

[Bayum]

I left my ticket on the bus once…

 

[Eyersey468]

I left my ticket on the bus once…

Ooh you rebel

 

[Dai Corner]

Cemetery Gates is a rock climb on Dinas y Gromlech in the Llanberis pass first climbed by Joe Brown & Don Whillans. Named after a bus destination blind. Think Liverpool.

There is an actual stop called Cemetery Gates in Newport.

Stelvio Park, outside St Woolo`s Cemetery – Bus Times

 

[Busaholic]

I left my ticket on the bus once…

I failed to pay the conductor on one occasion. when he'd not bothered to come upstairs once during a half hour journey, instead waiting at the bottom of the stairs to collect any cash proffered to him as people got off, all of which was properly accounted for to London Transport I am sure.

 

[TravelDream]

Nothing too serious, I think. We also did the bang to seats to make 'smoke' on some of the older buses. Then there's the old rude gesture thing I think most have done.

One more serious situation was when two boys had a fight at the back of the bus and, somehow, fell out of the fire exit. The driver didn't notice and ignored calls to stop the bus until a mile or two down the road. He then turned around, picked them back up and carried on as if nothing had happened! Luckily the bus was going quite slowly and they fell into a bush/ grass embankment without serious injury. This was in the 2000s too so hardly a different time.

 

[Busaholic]

Nothing too serious, I think. We also did the bang to seats to make 'smoke' on some of the older buses. Then there's the old rude gesture thing I think most have done.

One more serious situation was when two boys had a fight at the back of the bus and, somehow, fell out of the fire exit. The driver didn't notice and ignored calls to stop the bus until a mile or two down the road. He then turned around, picked them back up and carried on as if nothing had happened! Luckily the bus was going quite slowly and they fell into a bush/ grass embankment with serious injury. This was in the 2000s too so hardly a different time.

Think you mean without serious injury?

 

[TravelDream]

Think you mean without serious injury?

That I did. Though I couldn't stick one of the boys so maybe luckily was the wrong word!

 

[MotCO]

Nothing too serious, I think. We also did the bang to seats to make 'smoke' on some of the older buses. Then there's the old rude gesture thing I think most have done.

One more serious situation was when two boys had a fight at the back of the bus and, somehow, fell out of the fire exit. The driver didn't notice and ignored calls to stop the bus until a mile or two down the road. He then turned around, picked them back up and carried on as if nothing had happened! Luckily the bus was going quite slowly and they fell into a bush/ grass embankment without serious injury. This was in the 2000s too so hardly a different time.

I assume it was a single decker?

 

[typefish]

The worst thing we did was to not challenge the driver when he charged us child fares

... happened twenty years ago ... a Lothian dual-door Trident

Thanks. I really needed to know that I'm getting old

 

[TravelDream]

I assume it was a single decker?

It was indeed. Hard to believe I know.

 

[LowLevel]

I was never the rebellious type on the school bus but once when I was about 12 I decanted a reasonable amount of my mother's Pimm's No1 neat into a Lucozade bottle and necked the lot on the coach home from school. I fell down the stairs and crashed into the bus stop on the way out. I think the worst part was drinking warm neat Pimm's. Horrible and I felt sick as a dog

 

[Springs Branch]

I wonder if any others had my (and my peers) differing attitudes to youthful misbehaviour on buses versus trains. . . .

Growing up in a family without a car, buses were our main means of getting around in the 1970s. Local buses were a necessary and loosely integrated part of daily life, and we all instinctively knew what time past the hour buses on various routes were due at the stops we used, without ever seeing an official printed timetable. (Bus timetables stayed the same year after year in those days)

On becoming a young teenager and starting to roam around the local area with mates, this familiarity morphed into not quite contempt, but a desire to explore just how far we could push boisterous and annoying behaviour at the back of the bus before attracting too much attention from the crew or - God forbid - a peak-capped inspector. (In extreme cases, when warnings had been ignored, this might potentially involve our group being booted off the bus in some random spot without necessarily having the fare to catch the next bus along - this being the era before Duty of Care and Vulnerable Individuals had been invented).

Much less frequently, we would travel by rail. In the less familiar environment inside a 1st Generation DMU, the unwritten and never-discussed understanding was that a much higher standard of behaviour was required whilst on a train.

I don't quite know why this was the case, since roving conductors on a bus provided more frequent supervision than BR guards - who pretty much stayed put in their van in those days.

The prevailing view was that train travel was more the domain of the well-to-do than were corporation buses, so maybe we were worried about a sharp word from some headmasterly gentleman in a suit, or the two middle-aged matrons in hats sitting with handbags on their laps.

Whatever the reason, our gang always behaved impeccably on the train (I'm talking about bona fide A to B journeys here, not trainspotting outings to bash a Whistler on 1M40). Until, in late-teenage years, we began travelling on the last train back from Manchester to Wigan on Saturday night!

 

[Ashley Hill]

Cycling up behind a bus,pressing the emergency engine stop button and cycling rapidly away. Also staring down the periscope at the driver.

 

[Geordie driver]

I did nearly 15 years on a rota that did schools every week day in term time. As someone up thread said, kids are lively and I never had a problem with that, you are only young once.

Some schools were great, others were terrible. One school had 4 teachers on every bus and there was still bother most trips, I really felt sorry for the teachers.

I used to tell people I worked in education.

So many kids seemed to smoke, even long after smoking was banned on buses. No one ever stopped it, a full load of kids are in charge of the bus, it was head down and get them off ASAP. Try and enforce any rules and no one would back you up.

Kids dodge on to avoid paying, passing passes out of the window to be reused by their mate, throwing stuff off the bus at passing vehicles, fighting, launching the seats out of the side windows ( that would result in me taking the bus back to the school, the only recourse we had). Mostly good fun.

More serious stuff, smoking dope, urinating, defecating, smashing windows, knives,racist abuse, spitting on the driver.

It was the last of these and the lack of support I received from the company that led to me leaving, in some ways those kids did me a favour.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

...Kids dodge on to avoid paying, passing passes out of the window to be reused by their mate, throwing stuff off the bus at passing vehicles, fighting, launching the seats out of the side windows ( that would result in me taking the bus back to the school, the only recourse we had). Mostly good fun.

More serious stuff, smoking dope, urinating, defecating, smashing windows, knives,racist abuse, spitting on the driver...

You drove the St. Trinian's school bus? Respect!

 

[Geordie driver]

You drove the St. Trinian's school bus? Respect!

Thats 15 years condensed into one post, mostly it was great. A bit more support and I would still be there, there is a reason they can't keep drivers and it's not just the wages.

 

[Eyersey468]

Reminds me of the time a bus returned from a school run in a state with eggs, flour, tomatoes etc having been thrown all over the interior. The then depot supervisor got someone to come down from the school. Net result was the parents of every child on the bus were sent a bill for £200 to cover the cleaning. Those who refused to pay were told their child wouldnt be going to that school's 6th form, or in the case of 6th formers they wouldn't be returning the next year. As far as I know everyone paid.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Reminds me of the time a bus returned from a school run in a state with eggs, flour, tomatoes etc having been thrown all over the interior. The then depot supervisor got someone to come down from the school. Net result was the parents of every child on the bus were sent a bill for £200 to cover the cleaning. Those who refused to pay were told their child wouldnt be going to that school's 6th form, or in the case of 6th formers they wouldn't be returning the next year. As far as I know everyone paid.

That's one way to make bus services pay, I suppose!


Being serious, that sounds extremely bad. Collective punishment is not okay, regardless of the damage done. Nor is extortion, which is what the scenario described above amounts to.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Being serious, that sounds extremely bad. Collective punishment is not okay, regardless of the damage done. Nor is extortion, which is what the scenario described above amounts to.

What's the alternative, though? The school paying up from out of non-existent school funds? The bus being withdrawn so that the kids have to walk to/from school?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

What's the alternative, though? The school paying up from out of non-existent school funds? The bus being withdrawn so that the kids have to walk to/from school?

The latter option would be better than billing every parent £200. Presumably this was before CCTV was widespread, so £200 would have been more than it is now. If there were 50 kids from unique households on the bus, the bus company has just raised ten grand. There's no way it would cost that much to clean up flour and eggs, even in the worst-case scenario.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Presumably this was before CCTV was widespread, so £200 would have been more than it is now. If there were 50 kids from unique households on the bus, the bus company has just raised ten grand. There's no way it would cost that much to clean up flour and eggs, even in the worst-case scenario.

Yep, that doesn't quite make sense.

 

[diffywood]

My brother filled a squash bottle with urine and that went out the back side window

 

[mlambeuk]

Pushed and shoved to get on (the buses we had to endure were the transit van style buses). used the tickets as " spit balls"

 

[MotCO]

Surely the better option would be to return the bus to the school with the kids and make them make the bus spotless. (Assumes the damage was known about before all the kids alighted.)

 

[DunsBus]

My brother filled a squash bottle with urine and that went out the back side window

As I mentioned earlier up thread, a Lothian bus driver did the same to deal with a ned who was just about to throw a lit firework into his bus - except that the bottle wasn't lobbed at the ned, it was emptied all over him!

 

[farwest]

As I mentioned earlier up thread, a Lothian bus driver did the same to deal with a ned who was just about to throw a lit firework into his bus - except that the bottle wasn't lobbed at the ned, it was emptied all over him!

Half on the bus. Hanging on the rear of the RT 409 from Caterham valley to Caterham on the hill while on the bike. Conductor very often knocked you off,