00:00I'm Alistair Dalton, the Scotsman's transport correspondent at the Glasgow Vintage Vehicle
00:05Trust at Bridgeton in the East End of Glasgow. I'm here to talk to Hugh Doherty, an author who's
00:13written a book about his experience as a conductor and driver in the 1970s while a student at Glasgow
00:21University and he comes across with some fairly extraordinary and hair-raising experiences.
00:28I'm Hugh Doherty, I'm a former conductor and driver on the Western SMT and I'm here to tell you all about
00:35that. It was quite daunting, I came from a douce middle-class Irish Catholic home and suddenly I
00:41was thrust into another world where there was a lot of conflict between passengers or punters as we
00:47called them and the crews. You had to know the fair stages, you had to know how the ticket machine worked,
00:53you had to understand what a driver taught me and it was called passenger psychology and that helped
00:59you get through the day and to deal with the punters when they became awkward shall we say and they were
01:06all out for a cheap fare and you had to watch that. I didn't give a half fare as it was known, keep the
01:12ticket jimmy in Glasgow in which the conductor didn't ring up a ticket and half the cost with the person,
01:18one over against the company, one over for the punter. They all got tickets from me, like most
01:25good conductors did anyway and this guy decided when I gave him his ticket that he was going to hit me in the face
01:32with a bottle. I'm wearing a speeding bus going through towards Nitzhill to Barhead, a Friday night, I'm 18,
01:39it's years I think I lasted a fight when I was at school years ago and he smashed the bot on for a
01:46minute. I thought to myself, he's coming for me and then I thought this isn't happening to me and then
01:52I got my ticket machine off the back plate and lumped him with it and that solved the problem. I'm not
01:57proud of that but in those days there was no training in how to deal with that sort of situation,
02:03no radios and he ended up going out the back of the bus and the driver told me at the Nielsen terminus,
02:10it's okay I didn't see anybody coming out the back of the bus, we'll just keep quiet about this. And the
02:15most remarkable thing is the other punters on the top deck just sat there and looked out the windows
02:20as if nothing had happened. I was a shaking wreck by the time I got home and I remember my mommy said,
02:26why are you not eating your dinner son? And it was pretty obvious why I wasn't. One night heading up to
02:31Mernskirk on a Saturday night when I was working at the weekends from university, I had a driver who
02:37actually was an alcoholic. This was known in the garage but he was still let out in the road.
02:43Round halfway up the route he took the side off a woman's car and claimed it was her fault and when
02:50we got up to the terminus he said to me, you're going to write that report and tell the truth as
02:55I'm certainly going to tell the truth, you hit the woman's car, at which point he took out a flick knife
03:01and we were up at Mernskirk, it's dark, there's nobody around, just him and me and he was a really
03:08tough wee character. I thought this is it, he's coming for me so good old set right chicken machine,
03:13held it up and said come on pal more or less and luckily that worked, I just went back in the cab,
03:20never saw him again, he was sighted the next day thank god and I got a really nice young guy and we had a
03:25great shift together after that. The inspectors in our garage were nice guys, once they knew you did
03:31your job that was fine, they left you alone and they knew you didn't fiddle, they would compliment
03:36you and your first stage has all been correct and they were great but the company had the van as it
03:42was called and the van had two very nasty inspectors in it, their job was to catch you out on the road in
03:50the middle of nowhere and one in particular would suddenly jump out in the bushes on their drosson
03:55road round about the beach, they'd just come out the bushes, stop the bus, on you came, snatched your
04:00waybill from you, told the clippy she was, told the driver I was conducting at that time, told the driver
04:07he was running two minutes early, he was getting booked, told me as the conductor that if he found
04:11anything he would get me and in one famous location made me take all the luggage out to see if I had
04:17charged for a pushchair, luckily I had. There also was an inspectress who had taught me in the conducting
04:24school in Paisley, who went out in Paisley wearing a wig and glasses and she would erupt from the seat
04:31and say I've got you pal and get the conductor, maybe just for something as simple as the wrong first
04:36stage in a ticket. So we had nasty hats as we called them and we had decent hats and we always knew
04:43where they were because if your driver put the lights in and out three times you knew there was
04:50a hat at the next bus stop, if the bus going past the driver did that with his hands you knew that
04:55the van was on the road and if he did that it meant the hat was on his bus, so we always knew where they
05:00were. That's before radios and phones we had our own tic-tac system. Well you had to know the jargon
05:06because the first day I worked I said passengers and the Clippy who was training me said punters and
05:13because they come on here and they gamble with their lives and we look after them and they're
05:19all a bit daft and so I thought punters and then we stopped at the side of the road, the driver was
05:25early and I said what's going on now? He said we're hanging it up and to hang it up meant to hang it up and
05:31this is you waited your time until it was time to go into the next timing point and you kept the bus
05:36engine running and the punters are all getting really mad inside which was good fun it was good
05:41to annoy them because they thought you were just trying to keep them late whereas you were just
05:44making sure you weren't booked for running early. If the bus was full you had a full swinger and if you
05:52were really busy going through it you would say to somebody I was gutted, that meant it had been
05:57really busy going through it and they also there were other words hat for inspector and you had to
06:04know all these words and a set right checking machine was not a set right checking machine
06:09but your punch and the punch name went back to the earliest days of the old bell punch machines that
06:15they used originally and a conductor or conductors was a guard which was a railway term but we talked
06:21about guards and the conductors were all the girls didn't matter what age they were and they didn't
06:25think that was sexist they thought that was fine and by god were these strong women nobody messed
06:32about with our conductresses they really could sort a bus of unruly punters out in two seconds and we
06:39admired them for that so it has its own language its own culture its own signs and you had to be a real
06:45busman to be steeped in that and by the time I left the bus in 72 I was and after I left I was just a punter.
06:53Hugh you went on from being a conductor to a driver and this is one of the buses that you would have
07:00driven back in the day what was that experience like? Well it was quite frightening when I'd conducted
07:06I thought that was quite easy driving so I had three lessons and passed my PSV test and two days after
07:13I sat my final exam at university I found myself sitting as we said in Quality Street that meant the other
07:20driver said Hughie son you've moved up to Quality Street you're now one of us you're no longer a guard
07:26it was absolutely terrifying because I'd hardly driven a bus and I was sent out in about two days
07:33after having shunted buses or taken ones out for replacements in the road to drive all the way to
07:39Earned back in one of these buses now they were great buses they were very very good to drive they were
07:45solid in the road and they were known as flyers because the air road was a very very fast road
07:52and before we left my conductor big Ian looked at my shoes he held them up and said I'm just checking
07:58to see if you've got heavy boots on son because we need to boot it on and indeed we did boot it on
08:04but it was quite frightening because at 21 I could see the headlines student driver kills 50 and there was
08:10some very difficult driving in those days on the old a77 long before the motorway you to go out across
08:17the main road on one of these and as you changed from first to second gear the bus nearly stopped
08:24and then picked up you shuddered across the road it was terrifying but I got used to it and I got to enjoy it
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