Simple bus questions - part 1

[Wyrleybart]

Not from the industry so interested to learn stuff !!

I notice the word "board" used in connection with bus routes. Is this a historic thing ? From memory in the West Midlands (WMPTE era) drivers would often have a clipboard shoved down between the windscreen and the dash. Is this the "board" ? I assume it has the route timings on it, ands I am assuming that if there were seven buses on the circuit they might be numbered boards 1 - 7 ?

Thanks for any help

 

[redgate]

Great idea for a thread!

If a driver takes the wrong vehicle out from the depot, does anything actually happen as long as it’s the right sort of bus for the route?

 

[pjnathanail]

Great idea for a thread!

If a driver takes the wrong vehicle out from the depot, does anything actually happen as long as it’s the right sort of bus for the route?

It depends! At some smaller operators / depots, drivers are trusted to choose their own bus / take whatever is at the front. There are often reasons for specific buses being allocated to certain routes however, which include managing their mileages, engineering reasons (e.g. keeping a bus “local” if it’s had a recent fault) or because of other planned maintenance requirements. So generally a word would (should!) be had with the driver - given that, if there’s a reason they can’t take their allocated bus, a quick phone call to an on call manager / supervisor would have resolved the situation.

Of course, those involved in allocating work will know of some drivers (in fairness usually those of the enthusiast mindset - who can be some of the best drivers in a depot for flexibility) who agree to doing overtime conditional on taking a certain bus / bus type, sometimes to create an intentional “rare allocation”. Ultimately whatever it takes to get the mileage covered, and if that means sending a double decker on a trip that would usually have a midibus, fine, subject to all route suitability and contractual requirements being met.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Not from the industry so interested to learn stuff !!

I notice the word "board" used in connection with bus routes. Is this a historic thing ? From memory in the West Midlands (WMPTE era) drivers would often have a clipboard shoved down between the windscreen and the dash. Is this the "board" ? I assume it has the route timings on it, ands I am assuming that if there were seven buses on the circuit they might be numbered boards 1 - 7 ?

Thanks for any help

Boards is one term but I’ve also known them called keyboards or running time cards. My dad’s firm had them in metal frames back in the day but latterly just laminated A4 cards.

They would have reference numbers but that varies from firm to firm. Again, my dad’s firm would have five vehicles on route 25 and they’d have been 25A to 25E but other firms have differing protocols.

Great idea for a thread!

If a driver takes the wrong vehicle out from the depot, does anything actually happen as long as it’s the right sort of bus for the route?

Yes - the driver could be disciplined as that vehicle might be unfit for service or required to be off road for another reason.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Not from the industry so interested to learn stuff !!

I notice the word "board" used in connection with bus routes. Is this a historic thing ? From memory in the West Midlands (WMPTE era) drivers would often have a clipboard shoved down between the windscreen and the dash. Is this the "board" ? I assume it has the route timings on it, ands I am assuming that if there were seven buses on the circuit they might be numbered boards 1 - 7 ?

Thanks for any help

When I was a lad in the 70s and 80s they were known as running boards or running cards

And apropos simple bus questions, we had a lecture at college which began with the lecturer asking “would anyone like to define a bus?”

 

[Roger1973]

Think are a lot of different terms / combinations for these things - time cards (was the London Transport term), running cards, running boards and I've heard other terms. Also, some operators didn't / don't issue a physical board (or whatever) per bus which stays on the bus all day, but one per driver (a duty board, duty sheet, duty card depending on where you are) which stays with the driver until the end of their duty. Some have issued both.

Yes, each bus will have a board number / running number somewhere, although it's relatively rare for this to be visible from the roadside. And again the sequence can vary. As @TheGrandWazoo says, a system like 25A upwards is not unknown, where buses generally stay on the same route all day. With other operators, it's a sequence of numbers, and there's a lot of ways it can work - it may be that 1 is the first to leave the depot and so on, or each group of numbers could be for are a particular route / group of routes, or double deck workings might start from 1, single deck workings from 101, and so on.

On London Transport, each bus has a running number that also identifies the garage (in London, motor buses traditionally have garages, depots were for trams and trolleybuses) and each batch of numbers is a particular route - the bus in this photo is showing 'BW 152' - BW is Bow Garage, running numbers BW 151+ were used for the 'heritage 15' at that time. Usually, a gap is left between each sequence, so one route might be BW 1 to BW 23, the next route would start at BW 31 or even 41, to allow room for allocation changes without having to re-number everything (and there might be a gap if a route had been withdrawn or moved garages.) The lowest number in each sequence may or may not be the first to leave the garage, traditionally the system worked so that for the bulk of the day, buses would follow each other in running number sequence. An increasing number of London operators don't have running number plates on the side of the bus any more, though - their principal purpose was so that roadside inspectors could see what working each bus was on, and that's mostly done by more high-tech methods remotely now. (Up until a certain point in time, each route would start from 1, so there could be multiple buses showing 'BW 1' on different routes, but that was phased out some years ago. Tech systems wouldn't be able to cope with that now.)

 

[erskinebus]

In the big groups, how are buses allocated across fleets? For example, when First pulled out of Cornwall, how did their buses end up where they did? Do other companies put forward business cases? Glasgow gained a number for service expansion, did they have to bid for the buses they got?

 

[Simon75]

How far ahead do most bus companies 'hedge ' fuel ?

 

[Wyrleybart]

In the big groups, how are buses allocated across fleets? For example, when First pulled out of Cornwall, how did their buses end up where they did? Do other companies put forward business cases? Glasgow gained a number for service expansion, did they have to bid for the buses they got?

I assume the large companies have someone in the role of fleet management who switched allocations to get the best out of their assets. I believe some of the Cornish fleet have transferred to Leeds, probably in a cascade process, to shift old buses along or out of the fleet. Not really kept up with it but NXWM is an example who have taken 130 Wright Electroliners over the last few months. These have replaced some ten year old Platinums which have transferred to other garages to cascade. Ultimate the oldest vehicles in the NXWM fleet are the 03 and 04 plate Geminis and Tridents which will be displaced by ALX400s displaced by the electrics. At the same time NXWM are binning the 57 and 58 plate Scania Omnis which I think are being replaced the 22x series single deckers, probahly also displaced by electrics.

 

[Cheers Drive]

Great idea for a thread!

If a driver takes the wrong vehicle out from the depot, does anything actually happen as long as it’s the right sort of bus for the route?

Definitely as I was always doing this at many depots so I could drive what I wanted the T/C traffic controllers would get very annoyed and at Wessex back in 2015 I was adamant I was having the B9tl that day but they chased me down on route and swapped me. Also sometimes it can be bad because the bus might end up on a school run and if you took the bus meant for it they may have nothing suitable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Apr 2026 ==

It depends! At some smaller operators / depots, drivers are trusted to choose their own bus / take whatever is at the front. There are often reasons for specific buses being allocated to certain routes however, which include managing their mileages, engineering reasons (e.g. keeping a bus “local” if it’s had a recent fault) or because of other planned maintenance requirements. So generally a word would (should!) be had with the driver - given that, if there’s a reason they can’t take their allocated bus, a quick phone call to an on call manager / supervisor would have resolved the situation.

Of course, those involved in allocating work will know of some drivers (in fairness usually those of the enthusiast mindset - who can be some of the best drivers in a depot for flexibility) who agree to doing overtime conditional on taking a certain bus / bus type, sometimes to create an intentional “rare allocation”. Ultimately whatever it takes to get the mileage covered, and if that means sending a double decker on a trip that would usually have a midibus, fine, subject to all route suitability and contractual requirements being met.

Yeah that was me in most depots for instance at first hengrove I would often take a muller road depot ALX400 on the 51/21 from Whitchurch because I wanted to drive a decker on that route and it helped the depot as I would take it back to MR and get staff Bus back helped them and I got to be the only guy driving the new alx b7tl on routes they never saw
Same in Bath depot I was first person to ever use a B9tl on the 38/39 338 and 231 and the first person to take an e200 on 231 it’s part of why I love this job