Stockwell Bus Garage Tour

Stockwell Bus Garage is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and, to celebrate, held an Open Day.  You could just go and potter round the garage, looking at the large variety of buses they had gathered for our delight,

plus an extremely large number of stalls selling bus memorabilia, but, as the Swan Whisperer said, we weren't keen enough to want to buy anything (although I was very tempted by a book on the nadir of Southdown Bus Services during the 1950s; those wonderful years when the buses crossed at Castle Goring Gates on the hour and the half-hour; the 9 going to Littlehampton on the half hour and the 10 to Arundel, and both buses going to Brighton on the way back!  But I digress.).  You could, however, also book a guided tour of the garage for a small fee, and the Swan Whisperer had managed to score practically the last available tickets just before we went away.

We gathered outside the Binfield Road entrance just before 2, and our names were checked off on the list.  The tour was absolutely fascinating; our tour guide, Ricardo, who has been a bus driver for 21 years, was knowledgeable and friendly.

  We started off in the check-in area, where drivers checked in for their shifts, and were shown the various notices of diversions, etc, they had to know about.  Then we went upstairs to the heart of operations - the iBus area.  We weren't allowed to take any photographs there for data protection reasons, but it was fascinating, as the controllers knew where all the buses were, and you got the occasional announcement from TfL headquarters saying that so-and-so routes were to be on diversion during an event in Central London that was just starting.... and the controllers could talk a driver who was not very confident through a diversion, and tell someone to wait for a few minutes if they were running late.  If there are fewer than 4 buses per hour they run to a timetable and shouldn't be more than 5 minutes late or 2 minutes early; if there are more than 4, they must leave a certain amount of headroom between buses (so you don't get half a dozen coming along at once).  And so on.

We were then shown the canteen - there is also a games room and a television lounge for drivers between shifts, although the canteen isn't open at night so night bus drivers have to provide their own food - there is no take-away service.  I asked whether there was a gym, but didn't get a very clear answer.

After the canteen, we went back downstairs and were shown the engineering areas, where the buses go in to be washed and cleaned after use,

and also where they go for their monthly inspections or if anything has gone wrong.  The drivers have a long checklist of things to look for every time they take a bus out, and if they are not all correct, the bus doesn't go.  All the engineers can service all the buses, and the drivers, too, are trained to drive all the various kinds.

The tour finished on the upper deck of an open-air bus, so we could see the famed ceiling of the garage, very avant-garde for its time.