Amusing/Unusual items taken on buses/coaches

[Martin1988]

Has anyone ever been on a bus or coach journeys where a passenger has brought an amusing item on board (or transported an amusing item themselves)?

I've travelled on buses a number of times with joblots of VHS tapes, audio tapes or vinyl records which I've brought from places like Facebook Marketplace. I've also travelled on a bus back from Bristol to Yate with a Wayfarer Ticket Machine (brought at a bus rally) and on a Megabus from Birmingham to Bristol with a Ramsay Street sign!

Does anyone else have any examples?

 

[TR673]

Earlier this year I visited a rally with a friend who bought a bus stop flag while we were there. Then we travelled home by bus, and it proved to be a rather large and conspicuous thing to have with us - especially when changing buses across the busy city centre. We got some strange looks!

Funnily enough we had the option of travelling by the same operator/route that the stop was branded for, but didn't because of the type of tickets we had. Although we did consider it purely for the entertainment value and whether we'd get away with flagging the bus down anywhere because we had the stop. In hindsight I wish we'd tried it out.

 

[PeterC]

I did once take a kitchen sink!

 

[TheSmiths82]

I think the strangest thing I carried on a bus was a 15" CRT SVGA monitor. I needed a Windows XP Pro machine to run .NET when I was at university 25 years ago but I didn't want to touch my own XP Home machine. So I built a cheap machine mostly out of scrap parts I had in and a cheap processor. I needed a monitor to go with it and a shop in Manchester city centre were selling them for £25 (this was just as flat screen TFTs were just starting to become popular) so I carried on the bus. I am guessing the processor might have been my old 800Mhz Duron which would have ran XP very well back then.

 

[DC21]

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow and West | Bus driver's oven delivery detour

When Coakley buses ran, a driver helped a mate move a cooker and drawers

 

[delt1c]

When I was a conductor with LT working on the 253 from
Aldgate , a couple of passengers tried to get on at Whitechapel with a washing machine, Don't know how they got it on platform
Past the handrail( I was upstairs collecting fares) but had to get the engineers out to remove handrail and get it of.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

During a slightly chaotic house move I once ended up taking an upright vacuum cleaner by bus. Thankfully the journey was possible on a single service.

 

[Trainguy34]

One of my friends has got a 38-inch flat screen TV home on a peak-time bus with loads of school kids before, and it made it unscathed which surprised the both of us!

 

[Dai Corner]

I remember a man bringing some sort of petrol driven machine which judging by the smell still had fuel in onto a bus. I was worried a spark could cause the fumes to explode and was surprised the driver allowed it.

 

[JasonL]

I'm sure some of us seen a picture on the Internet about a man bringing a mattress on a bus in Birmingham?

 

[WY Bus Spotter]

Yes, my mate used to occasionally take a wheeled flightcase on a bus with stage tech equipment in it. The drivers knew him, and would put the wheelchair ramp down for him to wheel it on.

 

[izvor]

Had a motorbike on my bus once. Bus was empty, it was early evening and the lady rider looked a bit desperate, so I relented. She got it on ok and then ... showed a staff pass, so I'm glad I broke the rules for her!

One former colleague who drove buses in Wales said it was not unknown to get a sheep or two on the bus on market days.

 

[DunsBus]

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow and West | Bus driver's oven delivery detour

When Coakley buses ran, a driver helped a mate move a cooker and drawers

A few years earlier, a First Glasgow driver was caught using a bus to move house. It was pointed out to him that the then-current slogan "designed to move you" referred to passengers, and not to furniture!

 

[Megafuss]

I don't know if it counts as an item, but about 10 year ago, somebody boarded a bus I was on with an owl in a cage

 

[Eyersey468]

We once had a coffin on one of the buses a number of years ago,the guy who had died was a big bus enthusiast and his family hired one of the heritage fleet for the funeral

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I once bought a wicker chair from Ikea at the Metrocentre and took it home on the Busways 100; took a bit of manoeuvring around the centre door post on a Scania N113


My late father's depot had a rural outstation. His colleagues there were a bit rustic and they'd do market day services. Not unknown to have a big sack of potatoes in the luggage pen!

 

[Bedford OB]

Don't forget the interesting buses mainly operated in the remote north and north west of Scotland which also had a mail or freight compartment. I remember a journey many moons ago on Peter Burr's service across the far north coast from Thurso which carried, as well as a few passengers, a consignment of live chickens for the Bettyhill Hotel .....

 

[JGurney]

I remember someone trying to bring a goat on a lead onto a 667 (Street to Wincanton, Somerset) but being refused entry, and someone bringing a piglet in a basket onto a bus between Sitia and Makrygialos, on Crete. There were a number of occasions when passengers on Greek buses brought smelly fresh fish on board.

 

[AndrewE]

I remember getting a double-decker from the centre of Swansea on to the Gower and a succession of kids got on with full-size surf boards!

 

[318266]

From my perspective...

• A large bus stop flag I had purchased at the Lothian Open Day last September
• Large flags on bamboo poles returning from a procession. I ought to have taken the train back in hindsight but it was okay in the end.
• A Wayfarer TGX150, which has promptly sat on my desk doing nothing in the nearly 3 years I've owned it.
• My desktop computer, as I had to take it to my then-friend's place in Houston for him to help install a couple things.

 

[Hyebone]

I've carried a ~150cm long plank of wood on board a tram and two buses transporting it from Ikea in Sheffield to Chesterfield. A replacement part for a set of drawers I promise!

 

[The exile]

Tram rather than bus - but the uprights and 5 shelves for an IKEA Ivar shelving unit. The shorter version…

 

[JD2168]

Some things I have seen carried on a bus:
A fish tank plus some exotic animals that had been bought from a pet shop a few weeks ago
A large unpackaged flat screen television stored in the wheelchair bay
A large Double Bass
Other large pieces of musical equipment
A snooker cue

 

[GusB]

I don't know if it counts as an item, but about 10 year ago, somebody boarded a bus I was on with an owl in a cage

I'm sure the other passengers thought it was a hoot!

We once had a coffin on one of the buses a number of years ago,the guy who had died was a big bus enthusiast and his family hired one of the heritage fleet for the funeral

Coffins (empty ones, that is) were a fairly normal source of cargo according to one of the books I recently (The Buses of Northern Scottish, Peter Findlay).

Some things I have seen carried on a bus:
A large Double Bass
Other large pieces of musical equipment

Large musical instruments could be problematic. If the vehicle was a coach with a rear boot or underfloor lockers it wasn't such a problem, but travelling on ordinary buses could be challenging. A friend of mine used to rate vehicles on how "tuba-friendly" they were; ironically, the buses with the widest doors were more difficult to access because they had a pole in the middle.

 

[philthetube]

I once accepted a full size bike on a London bus, (24), someone had pinched the young ladies saddle and I couldn't help but feel sorry for her.

 

[dgl]

Personally I've taken on a bus, a new rolled up single mattress (which also had a train ride) and some other Ikea flat pack, multiple keyboards, a colour laser all in one printer, some computers and an upright vacuum cleaner that I'd brought from a charity shop.

 

[Eyersey468]

I once took an ironing board on a bus

 

[mangad]

Double mattress from IKEA in a bus in Wimbledon. Back in the time before mattresses were sold as a rolled up cylinder

 

[VioletEclipse]

From my perspective...

• A large bus stop flag I had purchased at the Lothian Open Day last September
• Large flags on bamboo poles returning from a procession. I ought to have taken the train back in hindsight but it was okay in the end.
• A Wayfarer TGX150, which has promptly sat on my desk doing nothing in the nearly 3 years I've owned it.
• My desktop computer, as I had to take it to my then-friend's place in Houston for him to help install a couple things.

I've often wondered what would happen if you tried to flag down a bus not at a bus stop using a recently purchased bus stop flag.

 

[175mph]

I've purchased trees and shrubs from B&Q and transported them by bus.