There can be few sights more incongruous than that of a half-century-old bright red Manchester Corporation Leyland PD2 making its way through lush, green Derbyshire countryside on a warm sunny day with the word FOG displayed in huge letters on its via blind. But that was one of the attractions of the June 2009 Chatsworth Preserved Bus Gathering, and not without good reason. For that bus belongs to an era when fog was a prominent and regular part of Manchester life, and I remember it well.
Although neither as famous nor as colourful as London's "pea-soupers", Manchester's November fogs were every bit as thick. As children we used to walk in front of cars, guiding them through the side streets until they reached the main road. Of course, we could hardly see the road ahead any better than the drivers could, but those streets were our playground, and we knew the colour of every front door and garden gate, and the position of every broken kerbstone. The murk was so thick that my father once walked straight into someone, said "I beg your pardon", and then realised that he was talking to a lamp post.
But for all their density, Manchester's fogs sometimes tended to be very patchy, probably owing to the varied topography of the cityscape. In the north, muscular Leyland double-deckers roared up and down hills, as the undulating moorland (then heavily disguised by cosy Victorian terraces, but now all too obvious in the greener, bleaker world that is supposed to be so much better for us) rose inexorably towards the Pennine foothills. On the other side of the city, Gardner-powered Daimlers some with only five cylinders purred and crooned demurely among the pancake-lands of the southern suburbs. It may have been the effect of these ups and downs on the fog that inspired that via-blind display, to explain the disruption of the bus service to would-be passengers waiting in places where there was no fog to be seen.
I remember one occasion after work in the 1960s when I was trying to get home from Cannon Street in a particularly thick one. There seemed to be no buses heading my way at all, but I noticed that across the road the 26s were coming and going every ten minutes like clockwork. So I crossed the road and boarded one. As the PD2 climbed slowly up Waterloo Road through the aptly-named Hightown, we suddenly came out of the fog into a beautifully clear evening. I alighted at Higher Crumpsall and headed for home on foot, across what should have been the Irk Valley but there was no Irk Valley to be seen. As I descended Ash Tree Road I stopped in disbelief. Looking up, a full moon was shining out of a starry sky. Looking down, I couldn't see my feet!
But my most abiding memory of buses and fog goes back to childhood, when my parents would take me with them to visit their friends in other parts of the city. During one of these visits, in Moss Side, the fog descended. After saying our goodbyes we groped our way to the bus stop and waited. With nothing for company but a haloed mercury-vapour street lamp, we stood in the chill silence for a very long time. Now and again a sound would approach, and my father would say "This is it". Well it could have been, but it wasn't. It was just another disappointment in the shape of a car, a van or a taxi. But then I heard something different.
I've mentioned Leylands and Daimlers, but there was a third bus-presence on the streets of Manchester in those days. If Leylands were the macho boys, and Daimlers the sweet seductresses, a Crossley resembled nothing more than a kindly old granny with a smoker's cough. And that was what I had heard a distant, wheezy chuffing sound. "This is it!" I announced. A fog light pierced the gloom, followed rapidly by a destination display beneath a pair of windows, and then the magnificence of an entire illuminated mini-world of civilisation, gently chuffing through the desert of fog.
This was indeed it. Granny Crossley had come to take us home!
Peter Williamson
05/2010
Many thanks indeed Peter for such an enjoyable and colourfully written account of the Manchester fogs. I can relate easily to your views as I have virtually identical memories that we bus crews faced in those far off days which, understandably, today's younger folks can scarcely be expected to credit.
I remember particularly one dreadful evening on the Otley to Leeds route of Samuel Ledgard when I was a conductor. The running time for a single journey was 35 minutes for the ten miles, and on that occasion I had walked the greater part of the trip just in front of the nearside mudguard and I could hardly see the rural grass verges or indeed the kerb edges when the City boundary was reached. In fact although the ex London Sutton Depot "HGF" Daimler was doing its best to behave demurely at walking pace I had some fear of being scooped up from time to time. Well, we arrived in Leeds after well over two hours in the impenetrable gloom, by which time I literally resembled a coal miner after a double shift underground - my face was totally black with the soot that the fogs contained in those pre Clean Air Act days. I hope you will all believe the following verbatim furious quote from the fur coated bejewelled "Hyacinth Bucket" type aristocrat at the head of a weary queue :-
"Well really !! - I KNOW its foggy but where on EARTH have you been ??
I was never in the habit of being rude to passengers, but the temptation was enormous to reply "We just stopped off at the Dyneley Arms for a quick one and a game of darts."
I must in conclusion say how much I enjoyed Peter's character descriptions of the three leading constituents of the Manchester fleet - I've heard all sorts said about Crossleys, particularly the twenty one post war examples in Leeds, but I have a new soft spot now for kindly "Granny Crossley."
Chris Youhill
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