Buses on severe gradients

[Ken H]

I have never driven a bus and have rarely driven an automatic car.

I got a stagecoach 508 bus from Hartsop Lane near Patterdale to Kirkstone Inn today to get back to my car after a walk.
(As an aside what a nice stone bus shelter at Hartsop with a bench.)
When we got to the steep bit the bus was going up and down the gearbox. I have seen that before on the Settle-Malham Dales bus.
In the old days drivers were instructed to put it in 2nd for the whole hill. Up or down.
What are drivers instructed to do these days?

 

[Contains Nuts]

I have never driven a bus and have rarely driven an automatic car.

I got a stagecoach 508 bus from Hartsop Lane near Patterdale to Kirkstone Inn today to get back to my car after a walk.
(As an aside what a nice stone bus shelter at Hartsop with a bench.)
When we got to the steep bit the bus was going up and down the gearbox. I have seen that before on the Settle-Malham Dales bus.
In the old days drivers were instructed to put it in 2nd for the whole hill. Up or down.
What are drivers instructed to do these days?

There is little the driver can do on most modern buses as there are only usually three options on the gear selector - drive, reverse and neutral.

 

[Gloster]

One afternoon a couple of years ago one of Southern Vectis’ small single-deckers (Enviro 200?) was put on the Newport-Ryde service. Going up the hill out of Newport the vehicle was constantly changing up and down a gear.

 

[Rail Bus]

14/15 in Llysfaen is steep

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

I used the rather nice Johnsons Excelbus route 7 to get to Oxhill and back on Saturday.

On the return leg back to Banbury, we really struggled getting up the incredibly steep (and long) hill on Tysoe Road in an Enviro 200.

It almost felt like we were going to stall and roll back down at certain points - the wooded section (see Street View attachment) was the worst, and we were crawling up there at walking speed whilst the engine sounded like it was going to explode.

Street View attachment:

52.086458,-1.494218 @ Instant Street View

52.086458,-1.494218 @ Instant Street View

www.instantstreetview.com

 

[Brooke]

Same here in Switzerland: I was on a bus (Irisbus) from Aigle (~400m) to Leysin (~1200m) at the weekend.

Constantly up & down the gears on the way up, which seems to cause a loss in momentum at times, especially in the steep grades.

 

[NorthOxonian]

The various routes which enter the North York Moors have some fairly harsh gradients. I've never done the 840 or 95 so can't comment on them, but the X4 just east of Saltburn and the X93/X94 just west of Fylingthorpe are both present difficult banks for buses to negotiate.

 

[Whisky Papa]

There is little the driver can do on most modern buses as there are only usually three options on the gear selector - drive, reverse and neutral.

Going back to my driving days, the Olympians with 3-speed Voith boxes were almost in this category. It was actually possible to lock out third gear, but this was only of any use descending steep grades. Going uphill, the box would constantly strive to change up from first to second, even if there was clearly no hope of making any progress in second. The momentum would be lost, it would drop back to first and after a few more seconds, repeat, basically making the driver look a complete idiot. One of the mechanics explained that first gear was only intended to get the mass of the bus moving from rest, and was actually only a fluid coupling ie it relied on oil being turned by an impellor to transmit the torque. This oil soon got very hot so the box would change to second to allow it to cool. This may have been fine in the Low Countries, but was completely useless in the Pennines. I recall crawling at walking pace up Brunshaw Hill out of Burnley one miserable winter Saturday morning with a full load of football fans bound for a match in Rochdale with one of our three Voith vehicles , when one of the ZF-boxed Cummins Olympians would have had little problem in the same circumstances. Got to Rochdale, dumped them all - then a customer boarding the return journey told me the match had been called off...

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

'I can't torque, I have lost my voith!', croaked Bertie the bus
..
In an automatic car one selects 3 or 2 to hold speed back going downhill, what does/did one do driving a bus?

 

[anthony263]

The 404 from pontypridd to porthcawl has a ery steep climb up from Graig towards Beddau

 

[VEP3417]

When i was younger and at college we used to ride Bristol VRs. They seemed to cope alright, although they were a bit slow and noisy with a full bus of people. One day we had one and it seemed quite a lot quicker than the others. It sounded to me like they had fitted a Leyland Olympian engine of some sort as it used to accelerate quite nicely and quickly which was very pleasant but still noisy

Also talking about hills, one of the VRs i think fried its gearbox trying to get up a very icy hill one time. The driver really was trying to get up there. I suppose you don't really want to slide backwards at speed in a bus.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It feels like we've done this thread before. In mentioning Whitby, there were historically signs at a number of locations (Goathland - Mallyan Spout, Ruswarp - Blue Bank, Sandsend - Lythe Bank) where United/Tees drivers were instructed to stop, engage lower gear, and then proceed, with further signs to tell them when to engage 2nd gear.

At the first two locations, the signs were still extant last time I was there.

 

[Whisky Papa]

'I can't torque, I have lost my voith!', croaked Bertie the bus

Love it!

In an automatic car one selects 3 or 2 to hold speed back going downhill, what does/did one do driving a bus?

The same, although the built-in retarder will do most of the work. ZF gearboxes could hold in quite a low gear, second I think, and Voith likewise as I mentioned upthread.

 

[Bletchleyite]

'I can't torque, I have lost my voith!', croaked Bertie the bus
..
In an automatic car one selects 3 or 2 to hold speed back going downhill, what does/did one do driving a bus?

Buses can have hydraulic retarders fitted - these are the norm (usually controlled by a stalk on the steering wheel) in Switzerland where things are rather hilly!

 

[Busaholic]

'I can't torque, I have lost my voith!', croaked Bertie the bus
..

 

[RJ]

The idea is that modern buses do all the shifting automatically.

One of my fleet has gearhold buttons but a previous owner mutilated the wiring loom to kill them! So what I do on steep gradients is keep it at the top end of the appropriate gear by simply engaging the kickdown and easing off before it changes up. There's a certain period of time you can do this without it shifting up or causing a noticeable recoil/drop in speed.

 

[aswilliamsuk]

It feels like we've done this thread before. In mentioning Whitby, there were historically signs at a number of locations (Goathland - Mallyan Spout, Ruswarp - Blue Bank, Sandsend - Lythe Bank) where United/Tees drivers were instructed to stop, engage lower gear, and then proceed, with further signs to tell them when to engage 2nd gear.

At the first two locations, the signs were still extant last time I was there.

Last time I passed, the sign at the top of Blue Bank was certainly there.

Climbing the hill back out of Goathland always looked like a trial, with experienced drivers on Coastliner knowing /exactly/ when to hit the power as they left the bridge and rounded the corner onto the hill itself.

Another one from me comes from my younger years - Far Dene off the Penistone Road south of Huddersfield - the road into Highburton (once upon a time on the 236 route to Barnsley, and currently the 233 that becomes the D1 Denby Dart this weekend). The hill is a long slog from the off, a sharp left turn off Penistone Road (these days with traffic lights) and then you start climbing immediately, the top portion being 16.6% (or 1 in 6 in old money) at least. VRTs left Huddersfield quickly, replaced by Olympians and Metrobuses, and while the Olympians really struggled on that hill, the Metrobuses made lighter work of it. Yorkshire Rider Fleetlines and Atlanteans used the hill on school journeys to Shelley High, and they really struggled on it, barely making walking pace as they wheezed up.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Last time I passed, the sign at the top of Blue Bank was certainly there.

Climbing the hill back out of Goathland always looked like a trial, with experienced drivers on Coastliner knowing /exactly/ when to hit the power as they left the bridge and rounded the corner onto the hill itself.

This is the one from Goathland next to the 25% sign in 2011 https://www.google.com/maps/@54.398...4!1so5Hcq32QXd6slUealMZpYA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Nice bit of NBC script!

 

[Geordie driver]

We had a number of vehicles that wouldn't get up certain banks when fully loaded, both semi and full auto. Even some that would were reduced to less than walking pace. I was led to believe this was due to the vehicles power being reduced to save fuel and money. It wasn't unusual for passengers to have to walk the steepest bit.

As said, most buses are 3 buttons, the driver has very little input, no one wants that constant chopping and changing. Would anyone accept that on a private car?

 

[johnnychips]

This is the one from Goathland next to the 25% sign in 2011 https://www.google.com/maps/@54.398...4!1so5Hcq32QXd6slUealMZpYA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Nice bit of NBC script!

They always said something like ‘Compulsary Stop. Engage first gear’ but I have never seen a driver do this.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

They always said something like ‘Compulsary Stop. Engage first gear’ but I have never seen a driver do this.

The United drivers at Lythe Bank at Sandsend always used to. Pull in, auto National into first (hold) and up you went; even better in an LH. That said, I did experience a National fail to ascend it so had to wait for an LH to be sent to take over.

 

[GusB]

There's a climb on my local route, known as Kintrae Brae. It's not a "straight" hill, but a series of short climbs with short sections of flat road in between. There's a fairly sharp bend at the bottom, which prevents anything having a "run" at the hill.

These days most buses are able to manage it with relative ease; the Allison transmissions on the E200s seem to be flexible enough to deal with it. Similarly, there are no problems at all when one of the Volvo coaches is occasionally substituted, either with the i-Shift or ZF gearboxes.

In the past, however, it was a different story. The Olympians with Voith gearboxes were always down to a crawl at the top of the hill, and while they weren't quite as bad, the semi-autos struggled too. There are a group of cottages just after the first stage of the climb, and if anyone wanted to board there, there was little chance of getting above around 30mph on the approach to the final climb.

 

[dan5324]

It’s not always the gearboxes that are designed bad. A lot of the time it’s the operating companies that put fuel economy over safety and absolutely nerf the hell out of engines and gearboxes.
National express owned ops for example. Coaches are limited to 59mph and can only run in eco mode whereas third party run at 62mph with performance mode.