Tom Gallacher
Member
I don't know if there is already a thread along these lines so if there is Mods please feel free to move this to it.
Reading through some of the threads on here, especially those about days gone by, reminded me of a bus journey that I had some years ago and I wondered if anyone else had a similar experience.
During the 70's I was in the Royal Navy based in Rosyth. As I lived in Glasgow I used to go home every weekend travelling home on the Friday evening and going back by train early on the Monday morning. For some unknown reason one Sunday in November I decided that I would travel back up to Rosyth by bus and duly caught the Glasgow-Dunfermline express service that left Glasgow around 7pm.
As far as I remember the only two scheduled stops were at Cumbernauld and Kincardine and the journey time was approx 1 hour. The bus was a single decker (probably Leyland Leopard) belonging to Alexander's Fife and was crewed by a driver and a conductress. There was only a few passengers on the service and I decided to sit at the very front n/s seat. This was all pre motorway so the route took us along the A80 with a diversion through Cumbernauld and returning to the main road towards Kincardine. As we were on the outskirts of Cumbernauld a shout came from a passenger on the bus "hey driver, are you not going to Cumbernauld?". The driver had missed the turn off and had turned at the next junction which was the A73 to Airdrie. He stopped the bus and asked "is anyone getting off at Cumbernauld?" Nobody replied so he just put the bus back in gear a continued along the A73. About half an hour later, when we had been wandering all over the roads of North Lanarkshire, we were driving through a small village when he stopped to pick up a passenger. "Do you go to (some village that I'd never heard of) driver?" "no, but do you know how to get there?" replied the driver. "aye" says the passenger. "ok, jump on and I'll take you" says the driver and off we go dropping the new passenger off a few miles down the road.
We then set off again in the search for the road to Kincardine and ended up driving down a country lane which led to a dead end. The driver gets the conductress to guide him back out as he reverses out of the lane back onto the road we had previously been on. Eventually we came across a road sign that pointed us in the general direction of Kincardine and we managed to get from there to Dunfermline bus station arriving at around 11.30pm.
There was a heated discussion between the driver and an Inspector about what had happened and I assume that he was disciplined but the sting in the tale was that the last bus had already left for Rosyth and, despite my protests, the Inspector wasn't interested in my demand that they either take me to the dockyard or at least pay for a taxi.
Needless to say I never travelled this way again.
Reading through some of the threads on here, especially those about days gone by, reminded me of a bus journey that I had some years ago and I wondered if anyone else had a similar experience.
During the 70's I was in the Royal Navy based in Rosyth. As I lived in Glasgow I used to go home every weekend travelling home on the Friday evening and going back by train early on the Monday morning. For some unknown reason one Sunday in November I decided that I would travel back up to Rosyth by bus and duly caught the Glasgow-Dunfermline express service that left Glasgow around 7pm.
As far as I remember the only two scheduled stops were at Cumbernauld and Kincardine and the journey time was approx 1 hour. The bus was a single decker (probably Leyland Leopard) belonging to Alexander's Fife and was crewed by a driver and a conductress. There was only a few passengers on the service and I decided to sit at the very front n/s seat. This was all pre motorway so the route took us along the A80 with a diversion through Cumbernauld and returning to the main road towards Kincardine. As we were on the outskirts of Cumbernauld a shout came from a passenger on the bus "hey driver, are you not going to Cumbernauld?". The driver had missed the turn off and had turned at the next junction which was the A73 to Airdrie. He stopped the bus and asked "is anyone getting off at Cumbernauld?" Nobody replied so he just put the bus back in gear a continued along the A73. About half an hour later, when we had been wandering all over the roads of North Lanarkshire, we were driving through a small village when he stopped to pick up a passenger. "Do you go to (some village that I'd never heard of) driver?" "no, but do you know how to get there?" replied the driver. "aye" says the passenger. "ok, jump on and I'll take you" says the driver and off we go dropping the new passenger off a few miles down the road.
We then set off again in the search for the road to Kincardine and ended up driving down a country lane which led to a dead end. The driver gets the conductress to guide him back out as he reverses out of the lane back onto the road we had previously been on. Eventually we came across a road sign that pointed us in the general direction of Kincardine and we managed to get from there to Dunfermline bus station arriving at around 11.30pm.
There was a heated discussion between the driver and an Inspector about what had happened and I assume that he was disciplined but the sting in the tale was that the last bus had already left for Rosyth and, despite my protests, the Inspector wasn't interested in my demand that they either take me to the dockyard or at least pay for a taxi.
Needless to say I never travelled this way again.