When we were coming out of school (Myers grove) in the 60's the buses all used to line up to take the kids away as quickly as possible.

At that time nearly all of the buses were the rear open platform type - Of course all the lads fought to get upstairs - once in a while we were surprised by a bus with an unusual seating arrangement - instead of the centre aisle with two seats either side, this one had the aisle down one side of the bus and really long bench seats - it were a real laugh, but we did not get it very often.

I think it was nicknamed the 'Monkey bus' - and seem to remember my mate telling me those sorts of buses were used for the football matches.

Can anyone remember them? - and were they just kept for footie matches etc? - I guess they could take a few more passengers than the usual ones

I remember using something like that but only 1 time.

Just consulted the bus expert in our house. Apparently these are lowbridge buses - the aisle down the side is a sunken gangway with the long seat a bit higher and they were designed to fit under bridges which were particularly low. Sheffield only had a few of these buses because it didn't have many bridges which were too low for standard height buses - however, there was a particularly low bridge at Anston that needed them. Mostly they only ran on the number 6 route but they appeared occasionally on other routes in emergencies. Possibly this is where the idea of being used for football matches comes from - when a lot of buses were needed at once, any old thing that happened to be in the garage would have to turn out. I'm told these buses were much more common in some areas than they were in Sheffield - Midland General had lots of them running in east Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire

thanks TWA

i think this is a fine example of forums at work - now it has been explained it all makes sense.

have been talking to my old Mum since the original posting - her family is from Chesterfield and she said they had quite a few of these buses out there.

traveling to thorsby market on sunday i saw 3 of them i think they were off to some kind of convention..as we over took them my son waved at the driver of the front bus....in true bus driver fashion he ignored my lad.

Originally posted by docmel
When we were coming out of school (Myers grove) in the 60's the buses all used to line up to take the kids away as quickly as possible.

At that time nearly all of the buses were the rear open platform type - Of course all the lads fought to get upstairs - once in a while we were surprised by a bus with an unusual seating arrangement - instead of the centre aisle with two seats either side, this one had the aisle down one side of the bus and really long bench seats - it were a real laugh, but we did not get it very often.

I think it was nicknamed the 'Monkey bus' - and seem to remember my mate telling me those sorts of buses were used for the football matches.

Can anyone remember them? - and were they just kept for footie matches etc? - I guess they could take a few more passengers than the usual ones

I was a conducter on the buses in the mid seventies, only worked on this type once or twice but i hated them, you had to sqeeze past people getting on and off to colect fares upstairs

Originally posted by GJ2004
I was a conducter on the buses in the mid seventies, only worked on this type once or twice but i hated them, you had to sqeeze past people getting on and off to colect fares upstairs



i always wanted to be a conductor....i'd travel on the 52 bus with mi mam going to banners a few times a week..for some reason i was fascinated with the conductors ticket machine...most of mi mates wanted to be footballers ..not me....good god just thought..if i'd have fulfilled my ambition..when the conductors were fazed out i might have become a driver....sentenced to a life of misery and shouting at pensioners....leaving children stranded and being a total ignorant sod to law abiding car drivers.....phew,what a lucky escape

Originally posted by kirky
i always wanted to be a conductor....i'd travel on the 52 bus with mi mam going to banners a few times a week..for some reason i was fascinated with the conductors ticket machine...most of mi mates wanted to be footballers ..not me....good god just thought..if i'd have fulfilled my ambition..when the conductors were fazed out i might have become a driver....sentenced to a life of misery and shouting at pensioners....leaving children stranded and being a total ignorant sod to law abiding car drivers.....phew,what a lucky escape

perfectly right, my brother is a bus driver and has been for the last 20?????years and he is just as you have described glad i didnt stick it out myself ( they wouldnt let me be a driver :cry: i was a rebel)

my mate was a driver as well he parked his bus in the hole in the road!

Sheffield, in particular the 51 route (because of it's hills) has allways been a popular place for bus manufacturers to test there product, I can remember when I was the inspector in Campo Lane in the late seventies, at one time as many as 6 different buses were on test, Leyland Titan, Dennis dominator, Van Hool, Volvo, Seddon and a Foden. The Seddon was an absolute disaster as it's brakes were simply not up to the job. The early Dennis used to have starting problems, so the drivers were instructed not to turn off the engine at terminus, the Van-Hool was a strange bus with it's Volvo engine at the front at the side of the driver, but still with a convential front entrance. When these were used as one-man operated buses, the drivers used to complain about the noise and heat from this arrangment.
The Dennis, with it's Rolls-Royce engine eventually solved teathing troubles, and went on to become the main double deck bus in Sheffield.

Some of the old Sheffield buses were coachbuilt by Park Royal Vehicles of london

Try these two links:

http://www.p-r-v.fsnet.co.uk/prv_site/site_index/prv_site_frames.htm

http://www.p-r-v.fsnet.co.uk/all_site_index/site_index/site_frames.htm

Look at the AEC bridgemaster

I have said this before on another thread.
When I was 11 or 12 , 54 years ago, I used to be able to identify buses by the sound of the engine.
I remember Crossley, Guy,Daimler [I think] Regent & Leyland

Originally posted by docmel

Can anyone remember them? - and were they just kept for footie matches etc? - I guess they could take a few more passengers than the usual ones

This type of bus was very common in Lancashire. I travelled on Ribble, Manchester, Preston and Burnley buses in the 50s and most seemed to have this seating arrangement upstairs.

Weird arrangement really because if you sat by the window you got hemmed in by three (or four if you were just a kid) other people and they all had to shift if you wanted to get off before them.

When I was 15 I was traveling home from work at Chapletown,on the upper deck of a bus , when the Conductor came down the isle to collect the cash, the bus stopped to pick up more passengers I was at the front of the bus holding out the fare in my hand. The conductor went to the rear of the bus to ring off, and then went downstairs again not collecting my fare.
A few of my mates said "your lucky there you've got a free trip".
So i sat back feeling rather smug...Not to be.. At the next stop I spotted a terrible sight "The Bus Inspector" This was not just an ordinary inspector .. this one had a reputation for kicking you off the bus at the next stop if if your ticket didn't tally...He was known as "The Terror of the Ticket Chewers".. After combing the lower deck for offenders..I heard him coming up the stairs..I then heard that dreaded sound.. "TICKETS PLEASE" i froze with fear Ticketless what would i do???..when he got to me and I couldn't show him my ticket I tried to stutter out my explination why I didn't have one..but luckily the rest of the passengers came to my aid and explained to the inspector what had happend..I then found out the inspector was a reasonable Guy, and he went back downstairs and gave the conductor a bollocking..as result the conductor came back up the stairs to collect the fare..and just to keep face he said to me (aloud so everyone could hear) "so it's you causing trouble again" I always felt bad about that, Co's I was innocent (well almost).

Originally posted by kirky
i always wanted to be a conductor....i'd travel on the 52 bus with mi mam going to banners a few times a week..for some reason i was fascinated with the conductors ticket machine

I used to want to be a bus driver, but I thought all two and five pences they collected back then was their wages and I quickly thought ugh im not going to get rich doing that job, lol.

maybe busman or the likes maybe able to tell us what happened to these. were any preserved?

At least one Glasgow lowbridge bus has been preserved, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowbridge_double-deck_bus), and there may well be others. Here's a photo of an upper deck (http://www.classicbusdepot.com/busimg/tdeck.jpg). As TWA756 wrote, Sheffield never had many of these buses (my 1957 "Ian Allan" book lists only ten, numbered 1283 to 1292) as there were few very low bridges on bus routes, but the No 70 Upton service used these buses, due to a bridge that used to be at Darfield (it's no longer there). When I was going to and from King Ted's on the 8/9 Inner Circle in the early 1960s a lowbridge bus would occasionally turn up, having been pressed into service due to a shortage of the usual buses, and they were sometimes used on private hire for the same reason, such as when we were going to and from the Whiteley Woods playing fields.