Podcast 198 - School coach classics
Added 2024-02-18 18:00:13 +0000 UTCJonny and Richard dredge up some childhood transport memories. Also in this episode, how sportspeople speak in interviews, old and new Renaults, a small Dacia trouser disaster, farewell to Steve Wright, taking the long way round to look at an interesting car, snow day skyving, and slightly too much information about islands.
Comments
Our school coaches were Plaxtons Paramounts (say it in the Fawwwds voice) with the obligatory dusty high-back seats. We used to compete to see who could slap the seats the hardest to get the most dust out of them
David B
2024-02-26 09:36:03 +0000 UTCHearing about School buses reminded me that our local bus company somehow managed to purchase the actual bus used in the Italian Jod back in 1973 see link below https://www.facebook.com/share/p/AfuYY8aepNNkquNT/
Brian Shaw
2024-02-21 12:30:53 +0000 UTCThe pigeon owning operator of cross channel trains surely Les Huttle Any relation to “pigeons in flight” nom de plume Graham Fellows?
Rob Stannard
2024-02-21 09:28:43 +0000 UTCI've remembered another coach tale. The Islands of Malta and Gozo were home to a number of old British vehicles including old lorries and buses that had been exported from the UK. The Maltese bus cooperative was made up of owner drivers and until the reforms of public transport in 2011, they had a lot of coaches from the 1960s and 70s still in daily use. Some friends and I took many trips out there hunting down old cars, trucks and buses. The buses were especially interesting as the drivers often modified them in terms of fitting more modern truck engines to boost performance. You might board what looked like a 1970s Bedford and then find out it had a DAF engine from a truck grafted in, plus massive air horns and a host of religious paraphernalia around the driver. On one occasion a friend spotted a coach by the side of a road that he used to drive in the early 1980s sowe stopped to have a look. The driver appeared and we engaged him in a broken English conversation. We got around to discussing the coach being repaired by the main bus dealer/mechanic who was called Manuel. My pal wasn't quite getting through and his South Yorkshire accent was only adding the language barrier as his repeated asking "do you know Manuel?" resulted in the bemused driver saying "no no my friend, is automatic!!" We returned to our hire car in fits of uncontrolled laughter and still repeat that retort whenever we see each other.
John Hammond
2024-02-20 21:52:48 +0000 UTCWhen you were talking Johnnys daughter being on a school coach and it breaking down, I thought you were going to say that one of the windows had fallen out. This happened on when I was at school. Probably less common on modern coaches where the windows are held in with more than a rubber seal.
Jon Parry
2024-02-20 09:39:53 +0000 UTCOur school bus driver was a bloke called Dave, who quickly became known as Dangerous Dave because he insisted on driving the narrow country lanes of North Cornwall absolutely flat out, conditions be damned. Once, the combination of dire rain and 50 sweaty, shouty children caused some serious steaming issues and the windscreen was almost completely opaque with mist. Some of the older students protested, asking him to stop and at least give it a wipe, but he ploughed on. At one point he swerved away from a hedge so violently that all of the windows fell open at once with an almighty bang, followed by loud screaming. It was not a fun time to be one of the final stops on the route. Years later when I learned to drive and was off exploring, we discovered that the ‘depot’ where the buses were stored was a bit of wasteland next to a grotty looking pub just outside of Liskeard, and some of Dave’s driving suddenly made more sense. Also, Greg is a cool dude. I too used to sit at the front and watch the (abnormally floppy) pre-selector shifts on whatever early 80s buses our school sourced in the mid 2000s.
Daniel Thorn
2024-02-19 21:33:16 +0000 UTCI loved Steve Wright in the afternoon. My favourite sketches were those with Cap'n Fishy, particularly one with a lady saying something along the lines of "I used to have problems preparing fish until Captain Fishy gave me a boner" :-D Younger Chris was in fits of laughter and it still draws a smile now. RIP Steve.
Chris Squirrel
2024-02-19 18:10:22 +0000 UTCLike many, we also had journeys to and from school provided by a local coach company using a tired fleet of Plaxton bodied Leyland Leopards and the odd AEC Reliance. The elderly fleet was gradually replaced with a selection of more modern vehicles includinga couple of late 80's Neoplan tri-axle double deckers which at the time, looked and felt like spaceships compared to the grotty stuff used previously. A small issue with the Neoplans was discovered when the 'tough' lads on the back seat of the upper deck noticed they had sliding sunroof panels. A game of 'bus surfing' began where they would stand on the seat backs and climb through an open sunroof, run along the roof and back down through another sunroof further up. This was a great game for a couple of days until one of them climbed onto the roof of a moving coach only to have his mates close the sunroofs behind him! Luckily a passing motorist managed to alert the coach driver to the situation and he was let back inside. The next day the sunroofs were bolted shut!
Sam Houghton
2024-02-19 17:45:51 +0000 UTCBBC Springcrotch really does sound like a porno, particularly if one is aware of how that acronym is known outside of the UK!
Tom Howroyd
2024-02-19 16:42:52 +0000 UTCAs a kid the hierarchy on our bus to school (The Bluebird to Huntly) was this- cool kids to the back regardless of year or age. I count myself lucky as a cool kid. Although the bus was actually a public bus and most of the kids tended to gravitate to the back. However my parents then moved and I was forced to move schools. Resulting in me being collected by a minibus and then a bigger coach. This had the unfortunate consequence of downgrading me to the front to middle of the coach. I never did manage to get back to reach the dizzy heights of the rear on the coach to my new school- Banff Academy. No longer being accepted as cool.
Christopher Adams
2024-02-19 16:41:07 +0000 UTCAccording to my September 1977 edition of Parker’s, (which was a goldmine of model specification information back then) the R5 TL had a floor gearchange option from October 1975 onwards. The GTL introduced in April 1976 had it as standard. Looks like it was standard across the range by January 1979, according to the Renault brochure in my collection that was printed then. I hope you find this unteresting…
Scott
2024-02-19 15:38:06 +0000 UTCThe Leyland Leopard was a pretty durable piece of kit, mechanically they were pretty reliable if they had the Leyland 0.680 engine and at least on the flat they'd sit at 80mph on a motorway (in the days before coaches had electronic limiters). You could always tell a Leopard before it came into view because they had such a raucous exhaust note, combined with the mechanical hiss if they had the air operated gear change. The biggest issue were the 1970s built bodies by the likes of Duple, Willowbrook and Plaxtons which suffered from rot in the frames. Plenty of stories of the overloaded boots falling out of Duple and Willowbrook coaches whilst on the go because the framework around them had just rotted away.
John Hammond
2024-02-19 15:10:51 +0000 UTCOh, and speaking of trips to farms in coaches reminds me of one school trip, in which after driving along a long, narrow road with the coach being smacked every few seconds by tree branches we eventually came to a steep, tight junction with an awkward camber to it. The driver spent a while struggling with this and trying different approaches, all of which seemed to end either with the coach coming to a halt on the steepest part or at a point where it couldn't go any further without hitting a tree. After a good 15 minutes or so, something finally must have snapped as the coach driver backed up, wound on several rotations of dry steering, then absolutely clouted the throttle pedal, finally climbing over the ridge with a lot of noise and an absolutely massive one-wheel peel as the rear left became unloaded. (Or whatever the equivalent is when you've got two tyres per side). We'd have applauded, but it didn't seem like he was in the mood for it.
Matt Kimber (Timberwolf)
2024-02-19 14:49:33 +0000 UTCOur secondary school in the mid '90s used a cheap coach company whose fleet consisted of superannuated Leyland Leopards which other, less optimistic coach companies might have considered well beyond the end of their useful service life, often still bearing 1970s liveries in an exciting range of faded browns and oranges. The back seat was reserved for the "hard lads" (given the time period, imagine plastered-flat hair, puffy bomber jackets and the obligatory Dreamscape record bag) but on a trip involving multiple coaches you might get lucky and end up with all of them stuffed into one coach of concentrated trouble while you were on the one for all the nice kids who were good at science, and could scramble for that coveted five-abreast bench without fear of a decking. One consequence of this is that a knackered Leyland Leopard inevitably has somewhat compromised rear suspension, and therefore you are now at the extreme end of a vehicle with a very large overhang and very little body control. A particularly punishing driver combined with a visit to some rural environment with poor roads like a farm could result in some quite dramatic "air time", usually followed by the futile attempts of a single teacher to run up and down the aisle of the coach with a too-small stock of sick bags trying to attend to the sounds of imminent disaster.
Matt Kimber (Timberwolf)
2024-02-19 14:22:01 +0000 UTCI also used to go into school on a 'school bus' run by the lowest bidder local coach company in rural Shropshire. This was in the early 2000s but the buses still had bench seats and no power steering. Breakdowns were frequent. One driver, Jim, was an older gentleman and a sort of Wurzel character. One day Jim was taking us down the A53, and he pulled over in a lay-by. We thought we'd broken down again but no, Jim just stood up, went into the aisle, pointed out the window at a pile of manure in a field and said "look at that pile of shit kids!" Then he got back in his seat and continued driving
Ben Oliver
2024-02-19 12:47:20 +0000 UTCSatan's single-exhaust 6-series (debadged, obvs).
Rup (FastAsFunk)
2024-02-19 12:29:39 +0000 UTCProfessional racing drivers describing 'parking their breakfasts'. "For sure it was quite difficult. Always I'm pushing really hard but it's difficult you know. As a team we had 14 boiled eggs each. It was a good strategy but maybe we should have had some orange juice, you know. Okay, a prolapsed arrschole it's not the result we were looking for but always we are learning and next time we come back better".
Rup (FastAsFunk)
2024-02-19 11:34:10 +0000 UTCMy first (Legal) drive as a P plater was an EBII manual S Pack. Such a reach over to that gear lever ;-)
Matt Stanford
2024-02-19 11:05:16 +0000 UTCBullocks Coaches from Cheadle was our go to school trip coach. I lived in Cheadle Hulme throughout my school days, we used to get a coach to Hathersage Road baths in South Manchester for swimming
Mike Taylor
2024-02-19 10:00:37 +0000 UTCSounds about right.
Graham Dallas
2024-02-19 09:07:38 +0000 UTCAll this talk of School Buses and I had to cycle to school every day, a 6 mile round trip through rain, hail & snow. It was East Yorkshire in the 80s though so I didn't think anything of it!
Mark Elliott
2024-02-19 08:56:26 +0000 UTCThe pre-facelift W124 was (theoretically) available with column shifted versions of any of the transmission options, four and five speed manual, four speed auto. There are photos of RHD examples but I've never heard of anyone having actually seen or owned one. LHD examples pop up for sale now and again.
Battles
2024-02-19 08:23:39 +0000 UTCA family who went to school with us (East Central Scotland) had the ex-Italian Job bus as a race car carrier for years. It was passed around the racing communities for years. Finally scrapped at a yard in Leven, I heard.
Battles
2024-02-19 08:18:41 +0000 UTCWe used to do coach trips to go do things like kayaking, of course that meant that the school bus had to tow the kayaks too, think there was 20 odd or around that number, so not an insignificant amount of extra weight. One of the prime rivers to go kayaking we had to drive through where the big mental hospital was and the town had the reputation of what we at the time would call "spastics" very un pc now... We would make the usual imitations of what we thought people in the hospital might be like, licking windows and arms out of the bus and what not. We got to the river and got a right dressing down, the teacher was very chill usually but did his nut, "don't you know that the bus has the schools name on the side of it!!!", that kinda thing, needless to say on the trip home we was very quiet and didn't go peep... The next lesson the teacher got up in front of class, and reminded us of how we behaved and what not and produced a letter, we all thought crap he's going to have another go at us because someone in the public complained.. he started to read the letter, "I was quite surprised the other day I was traveling at the legal speed limit of 110 kph and got the shock of my life as I was overtaken by your school bus while it was towing kayaks"... We did have a good laugh at the teachers expense.. He was known to have a heavy foot, on another trip was sitting over the rear wheels (all our camping gear was on the rear seats) and could smell some smoke.. turned out it was the brakes starting to get way over their optimal operating temp...
Stephen Voss
2024-02-19 07:15:35 +0000 UTCWas just thinking about that Commodore ute the other day (I am a deeply interesting person) When they re-introduced the ute on the Opel-based Commodores, the ute variant had a slightly higher roof so you could wear your hard hat while in the vehicle if I recall correctly.
Stephen Voss
2024-02-19 07:03:16 +0000 UTCn.b. May consider coach one day, hoping to result in an anecdote to rival those given this episode (while still making it there on time, of course).
Charlie Stevens
2024-02-19 06:58:02 +0000 UTCIn defence of not using the train to get to Paris. When trying to get back from Le Mans last year, Eurostar comprehensively failed to get me home by cancelling the last three trains of the day, forcing us to sit below the concourse of Gare du Nord and not telling us anything for 2 hours. The result being I didn't get home until the evening of the next day (by flying back). So, they're on my personal blacklist and this year I'm flying Vueling.
Charlie Stevens
2024-02-19 06:45:59 +0000 UTCI learn to drive manual in my first car. 94 ED Futura 4.0 manual. The under dash hand brake got canned in all the period road tests I think it’s great as the centre console looks clean and uncluttered. But was hard at first to do hill starts, coupled with the extremely short travel clutch.
Thomas E
2024-02-19 00:15:04 +0000 UTCThat French train jingle (SNCF) was also noted by David Gilmour out of Pink Floyd, who recorded it on his phone and used it as the basis for the title track from his "Rattle That Lock" album. Highly recommended as a motivational running track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1v7hXEQhsQ
Geoff Evans
2024-02-19 00:10:34 +0000 UTCI’d be driving over to the live show if it weren’t right after a material amount of dentistry and a frozen mouth. Terrible timing for me but it’s much appreciated you guys coming over the border.
Jim Galbraith
2024-02-18 23:15:21 +0000 UTCViewed a house in 2005ish, family said their mum had smoked in the kitchen only for decades. The ceiling was as yellow as a 70s Chevette.
Jim Galbraith
2024-02-18 23:02:44 +0000 UTCAlso, the bus driver for my Primary school bus P6/7 (Scotland) played Salt n Peppa Let's talk about sex loudly every morning on the way in
Wooooody
2024-02-18 22:52:16 +0000 UTCNot so much a Coach breakdown as a coach driver breakdown - I've never been to Pairs. On our school trip to France for a week the bus driver got so pished every night he was sacked the morning we were due to leave for Paris. It took so long to get a local replacement we'd to skip the city completey. Possibly a more awkward call home for him than snapping the key with his belly.
Wooooody
2024-02-18 22:47:33 +0000 UTCWhere I was in secondary school in Devon in the early to mid 2010s, we had a company who'd run coaches to and from a village to the school for the kids, and they were also used for school trips. They always sounded pretty awful, and I remember hearing about them breaking down probably about once a month. Only the cool kids were allowed at the back of the coach when I went to school, risking an argument or a fight if one of the uncool kids tried sitting at the back. I normally tried just sitting near the middle, finding someone I'm actually friends with. This was only ever different if the teachers set a seating plan for a school trip, it was all very much like an inbetweeners episode.
Julian Hale
2024-02-18 22:19:36 +0000 UTCAlternative gear lever locations - in 'straya you could option a bench seat in the front of our large cars (Falcon, Kingswood/Holden/Commodore) - which necessitated a column shifter - three on the tree (or four, but that doesn't rhyme) or an auto if you must, or, for the sporty or luxurious ones you could option BUCKET seats and four on the floor or a hydo/torque/supermatic-jet-age-branding-flite auto. The Falcon was -across the board- fitted with an under dash umbrella handbrake, while Holden specified an outboard traditional handbrake lever during the 70s which was pretty exotic, honestly. Not sure what they did in the 90s with the larger Opel-based Commodores, but they managed to bludgeon a bench seat in when they released the ute variant. Anyway, hill starts in a manual Falcon were good value - you'd have to lean forward a fair way to release the brake all the way, while co-ordinating your left foot and right toe. Just as well the (by then) 4L six had all the torques down low. Pretty hard to stall actually.
Matt Stanford
2024-02-18 22:05:16 +0000 UTCOur school bus, operated by Tillingbourne Coaches off of out of Cranleigh, Suwwey. Regular driver was the colour of nicotine, smoked whilst driving - arm out the window, and wore the reaction/vari-tint glasses. His professional nemesis was the villainous pre-selector gearbox on the Plaxton Dart. For some reason he could not, or would not, get his head round it. At the time I was only interested in girls and the Stone Roses, so I failed to appreciate that I might have needed to know why and how he failed to operate a thing that did all the work for him.
Duncan Hamilton
2024-02-18 22:03:31 +0000 UTCThe RCMP has just about retired the last of them (10yrs/180K kms, but some were late entry). You can’t buy the decommissioned ones anymore though, they are crushed.
Brendan McAleer
2024-02-18 21:34:07 +0000 UTCShrill Voice DJ, 2 more for them later
Vincent McDonnell
2024-02-18 21:09:20 +0000 UTCU2 Stuck in an Ignition Barrel You Can’t Get Out Of
David Wilson
2024-02-18 20:54:57 +0000 UTCSure. :D
Andy Pinchock
2024-02-18 20:46:24 +0000 UTCA few bus/coach stories. A colleague of my Father’s ran a couple of amateur rally cars in Scotland in the early 80s and apparently had the actual Italian Job bus as a car carrier. Another tale relates to an independent bus/coach company who had a few school college concessions. During the winter in NE Scotland, as presumably an anti-freeze cost-saving endeavour, they used to keep the coaches running all night long to ensure the engines didn’t freeze up. Another story probably reaching back into the 70s was another local bus company who had 1 or maybe 2 sets of MOT legal tyres, to the extent that the local MOT station/Plod marked the wheels to ensure that each bus carried their own set of road legal boots.
Graham Dallas
2024-02-18 20:05:19 +0000 UTCCrown Victorias were assembled in St. Thomas Ontario. Come on over to Canada Jonny and Rich! 🇨🇦
Ed Nicholson
2024-02-18 20:02:22 +0000 UTCAmazing to hear Hardings coaches referenced on Smith & Sniff! I think they're still around but they used to be based at a place in Redditch called Tanners Croft that's at the top of my road
Stuart Richards
2024-02-18 19:44:23 +0000 UTCU2 - “I’m Going to Poo With or Without Loo”
Craig Stoker
2024-02-18 19:34:55 +0000 UTCI don't count them as breakdowns as I'm a practical man who keeps a reasonable toolkit on his coach, but the most common thing to go wrong is fucking windscreen wipers become detached. Atleast half a dozen times I have had either one of the wipers either become completely lax and drag on the floor or fly off into traffic. It's because nobody has developed linkages strong enough to cope with the weight and length of the wiper arms for such a big windscreen (except mercedes tourismos)
Nathan Henstock
2024-02-18 18:38:23 +0000 UTCYes coaches do break down constantly. I left my previous employer after 6 pretty major breakdowns in 5 days. Now, thankfully, I have an assigned coach now, a 2019 VDL Futura and only broken down three times in 2023
Nathan Henstock
2024-02-18 18:33:26 +0000 UTCRight, it's my turn. Ive been driving coach trips for three years now (all by accident but that's not important right now) and I could never pee Infront of the pax. Yes all coaches even brand new ones have keys and they are all absolutely tiny. They're all absolute chodes. I once snapped a key in the fuel filler cap of a 2023 neoplan tourliner. Yes I am a professional Robert.
Nathan Henstock
2024-02-18 18:28:16 +0000 UTCIt's how I start my working week.
Jono
2024-02-18 18:25:12 +0000 UTCJust signed up, perfect timing for the early episode! On my way back to Scotland from Bristol in a newly acquired and truly sweet, sweet Nissan Elgrand 🚐. Love your work 👌
Fraser
2024-02-18 18:19:11 +0000 UTCNow listening, Richard's rice crispies and milk bit at the begninning had me in stitches. Reminded me of Fry and Laurie's F1 driver. https://youtu.be/cR1Q0MvAAZg?si=IRh__jRCPwmIEniL
Paul Renowden
2024-02-18 18:19:05 +0000 UTCI’m just watching the Hartge (Hartage) barn find.
Nathan English
2024-02-18 18:03:28 +0000 UTCFirst 😊
Andrew Barnes
2024-02-18 18:02:01 +0000 UTC
