After graduate training at Bristol Commercial Vehicles, I started my career at the frugal but efficient Tilling Group's Eastern Counties. When the National Bus Company (NBC) was formed, opportunities increased and I moved to Maidstone and District - an ex-BET group company that liked its heritage, invested in lots of new vehicles but nothing in its maintenance facilities; even worse, Area Manager's seemed to usurp the Chief Engineer. Arriving at Ribble in 1972 was like returning to a vastly upgraded Eastern Counties! Good systems that were engrained, still working with competent staff and well managed. The Frenchwood engineering offices were more like a grand stately home compared to the pre-fab at Maidstone!
Harry Tennant had been Chief Engineer since 1949 and presided over this efficiency yet was happy to try new things ("last time we did it that way - ... this happened, but let's give it another go"). When I was appointed as Assistant Chief Engineer, a new post of Works Manager was also created to assist in managing a time-consuming shop steward at the central workshops, so Ron Hopkins was able to free me of my predecessor's travails. The four Area Engineers had their patches under full control so my post was basically a monitoring and coordinating post and overlooking the Certificate of Fitness situation and liaison with Leyland and the Assistant Traffic Managers.
I enjoyed working with Harry Tennant. At that time, work study bonus incentives had had to be introduced as being the only way allowed to raise wages to retain skilled men. Harry was not very tolerant of the work study staff. In earlier times, he and Assistant Engineer Ron Holding (by the 1970s Ron was Chief Engineer at Crosville) had set to on a Saturday morning to replace the cylinder head gaskets on a Leyland engine and knew just how long it would take. He expected the same of his managers and their skilled staff without the need for work study engineers. When, in my time, the work study scheme was extended to cleaners, I set about using the experience at Maidstone to set down cleaning procedures, only to be told very forcibly, that Ribble has perfectly acceptable cleaning procedures and the purpose of the work study scheme is simply to pay more!
Harry did insist that all letters sent out were signed as H Tennant. I said that I was not prepared to sign his name but would sign my name and add "for" H Tennant. He agreed. The history to this was that as a teenage lad I had written to the Bristol Omnibus Company for a holiday job and had received a reply from E Hardy, Chief Engineer. I was very impressed that the Chief Engineer had sent the letter but was devastated when I turned up for interview to be told that the little squiggle alongside the signature meant that the lowly Personnel Manager had written and signed it. I decided then to refuse to sign anyone else's name thereafter!
While starting his bus career with Leyland, Harry was not averse, over many years, to prod the company into new ways. In early times he had put Sentinel underfloor engined vehicles through Leyland town on service to point up the lack of a similar local product. He didn't like the very flexible Panther chassis and, before NBC was formed, got BET to order Bristol REs instead. Then not liking the thirstiness of Leyland engines, bought another batch with Gardner engines. When British Leyland were a near monopoly supplier, he got NBC to back him fitting a 680 engine into a Leyland National to prove to Leyland management that it could be done, so as to replace the fixed-head 510 engine that was proving so costly to run and maintain. Frenchwood Works also undertook for NBC the conversion of a specially purchased short Leyland National bus to operate on electric power, towing a trailer full of batteries. It first ran in 1975 and spent some time with Crosville on the Runcorn Busway. It has taken around 45 more years for a battery electric bus without a trailer to operate in service!
When we went to Duple to discuss the first large order for Dominant coaches, Harry took with him the coach seat back profile that he had developed as the standard for Ribble coaches. He insisted on it being the profile to be used. He also insisted that the vehicle electrics fuse panel should be accessible for maintenance from outside the cab as was the case on Bristol VRs at the time. I added in that there should be an external access flap for screen washer refill. These became features for all the NBC order, not just Ribble. Harry had also decided some years before that the traditional illuminated company name across the back of coaches was not desirable. I'm not sure whether it was a response to having to mask it before spray painting or the maintenance of the glazing.
My contacts with Leyland Bus were regular, mainly with Graham Dandridge. It was a period when they were the monopoly supplier and were showing little signs of taking much notice of operator feed-back. One repeated item was a campaign change of the differential unit in the 30 Standerwick VRL double deck coaches over two winters. The Leyland 680 Power Plus engine running with a high gearing ratio soon pointed up weaknesses that were not seen in lesser powered stage vehicles, leading to substantial redesign at Bristol (by then part of Leyland Bus). Besides all the growing pains of the Leyland Nationals, one recurring problem was newer Leopard coaches running out of power on motorway inclines, whereas the VRL double deck would happily overtake. A sign of terminal malaise was not alleviated by the answer that the Power Plus version of the 680 engine cannot be fitted into the Leopard.
When I arrived, the introduction of one-man operation of double decks was getting underway. From experience at Norwich and Maidstone, I was aware that this was accelerating and that all converted vehicles needed formal inspection by the Ministry. So when I found that the rear engined double decks going through overhaul at Frenchwood to renew the Certificate of Fitness (at 7 years old) were not all being converted, I insisted that they were. The traffic department had them reallocated to Kendal as soon as available.
The company operated Almex, motorised Setright and hand operated Setright and I suspect other ticket machines, so making vehicles able to operate universally without local conversion work was quite a conundrum if you wanted to be able to exchange buses between depots for maintenance, displaying all-over adverts or interworking. I set up a sub-committee of the drivers' trade unions with the Assistant Traffic Manager through which we consulted on cab equipment. The works designed a suitable cash tray which could take brackets to suit all of these and we got designs approved for universal operation. I was taken aback when the Traffic Manager thanked us for getting him out of a particular problem with new equipment and in return he was taken aback when told it had been agreed for the whole company - Merseyside to Carlisle, Blackpool to Burnley! This enabled Ron and me to take samples to the bodybuilders and for new double decks to be certified for one man operation before delivery.
These were large batches of Leyland Atlantean AN68 double decks with Park Royal and ECW bodywork. I visited the factories, usually with Ron Hopkins, to see progress and agree details. The Park Royal version suffered a serious failure around the rear bulkhead and underwent a campaign change, but the ECW bodies seem to have been stronger.
Ribble had formerly had its own architect but NBC had regional architects' offices, so Harry Tennant took over buildings functions. This was the norm in the Tilling Group and the smaller BET companies. Ribble always struck me as having more up to date facilities than my previous companies but they never inspired me as appearing modern, light and airy places in which to work! Skelmersdale depot was built and opened during my time, but I had little to do with its design.
Visits around depots were always interesting. I usually went to monitor how things were going on and made a point of visiting traffic supervisors to get the customer's view of engineering's performance. Northern area was a favourite! On my very first visit I was surprised to find two Bristol MW buses parked in Penrith garage in full dark red Ribble livery - they seemed very out of place, then I realised their parentage from the Darlington registrations and they had come with the rationalisation by NBC in Carlisle. Later, I was not popular for pointing out the last two coaches from Grange or was it Ambleside that were still in Ribble cream when National white second repaints had been running for ages! Area Engineers were left to programme vehicles into the spray paint facility at Frenchwood, so these had been deliberately omitted for old times sake as they were still in good condition. Another Harry Tennant-ism - Ribble vehicles were either wholly in Ribble red with the bubbly fleet name or National Bus poppy red and National decals - no mixtures, unlike many companies that did intermediate transformations. When on these visits, I first began to notice that the earlier Leyland Nationals appeared to be changing to a pink livery. The initial orders were delivered in dark red but were repainted in NBC poppy red at Frenchwood before entering service awaiting an agreement to operate single decks with over 47 seats as one man. So Area Engineers were asked to spot the pink ones for early repaint while Ron Hopkins tackled the paint suppliers.
Always check your facts. I recall an area engineer, new to Ribble, wanting to make a point that a driver who had seized an engine on the M6 should be sacked. I had a look at the fuel and lubricating oil consumption of the vehicle - a fairly old Leopard, and suggested that he did too: 100 mpg lubricating oil consumption doesn't look like a driver problem to me!
Harry was promoted out of operating buses to the new position of NBC Regional Chief Engineer in October 1974. To replace him, Syd Lamb asked to 'come home' to Ribble, transferring from Chief Engineer of Midland Red. When National Travel North West was formed to include Standerwick, depot engineering and support remained with Ribble. As National Travel Group had its own engineering central management, I saw us as providing a service to the local management and we had no control over the vehicles ordered. Hence we found ourselves operating three Willowbrook Spacecars. Syd didn't think we should accept this state of affairs but didn't get anywhere changing it!
In April 1974, I went to Derby to chair a meeting of the NBC companies that provided breakdown and vehicle replacement services to the Motorway network. Ribble, especially Dawson Williams, the Central Area Engineer, knew all about the police control room systems, but we found that the United Counties company which covered the busiest southern part of the M1 had been unable to provide breakdown assistance for some time and knew nothing about police control rooms. In January 1978 I departed Preston to take up the post of Chief Engineer at United Counties and I had a great time installing working systems to replace the "we used to.." " we ought to.." responses that greeted my initial questions around the patch and reinstating a breakdown service to the M1! That's another story.
Geoff Pullin
07/2021
23/07/21 - 09:10
Very interesting Geoff, thanks for writing. Perhaps I should do similar for my four years at PMT - never one of the glamorous BET Companies.
Ian Wild
23/07/21 - 09:13
Many thanks for putting together this fascinating write-up Geoff.
I hope you will do some more in the future.
David Slater
27/07/21 - 06:42
An Excellent piece. I think we don't see enough articles written from an engineering point of view.
Re the part at the end about United Counties, one of their RE coaches broke down at Braintree while on its way to Clacton on Sea in 1972.
I was gobsmacked to see that the recovery vehicle was a cut down Leyland Titan TD2 dating from the early 1930s. If that was their standard of tow truck then I'm not surprised that they couldn't cope with the M1 motorway.
Nigel Turner
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