Bristol VR door opening mechanisms

[AY1975]

AFAIK on pretty much every other type of bus with driver operated doors (as opposed to open rear platforms or manually operated doors) that has ever run in the UK, both the opening and the closing of the doors has been preceded by a hissing sound, but on Bristol VRs the opening of the doors was preceded by a kind of scratching or warping sound. As I recall the closing of the doors was still preceded by a hissing sound, though.

Does this mean Bristol VRs had their own unique door opening mechanism? Did any other types of bus ever have the same system?

 

[820KDV]

Whilst many VRs did sound like that, some had doors which hissed opening and closing, the South Wales Transport ones I can think of (we had a couple of open top examples) and I think the Northern General ones did too. This was a hiss, rather than the groaning open and whistling whoosh close which most I knew did.

Some of the earlier VRs had electric doors, controlled by a location on the gear selector. We only had a few of those at our depot, and being a minority, they led to many a driver seeing the last passenger pass the cab to alight and so they'd select a gear ready to depart, closing the doors on the passenger while doing so.

Another thing about the ones described by @AY1975 was that the emergency controls both had to be in the closed position for the cab control to work. The driver on joining the bus would open the doors using the outside control, step on the platform and reach round to close the doors often leading to passengers thinking that they were being rude by doing so.

I guess it was down to operator choice, and all part of ECWs service. Just look at how many subtle (and not so subtle) variations ECW made to destination display windows across their various bodies.

 

[High Dyke]

It varied. As mentioned above, some were electric, controlled by buttons a bit like the RE had. Later versions had the air type control. Some variations allowed you to only one of the front doors instead of both. Most useful for coralling the school kids.