I’m pretty sure I am not imagining this – there is a definite correlation between an interest in military history and a fascination for public transport and I have often puzzled over why this is so.
My own interest in buses, trams and trains, I think,
preceded my obsession with things military by about a year. Beginning some time
in about 1975 my best mate Carl – similarly obsessed – and I used to get up on
a Saturday morning and immediately after breakfast we would take the bus into
the Pier Head on the Liverpool waterfront for a day of bus spotting.
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| Buses at the Pier Head in the 1970s; hideous building, but you know I quite miss it |
There were several angles to our bus passion. Like most spotters we had a thing for the livery and model of the bus itself. That racing green that the MPTE* used on its buses - or oftentimes a lighter green with a yellow stripe running along the middle – was a thing handsome enough; but when there was a change in the livery due to promotion or advertisement, well, that was enough to excite us beyond measure. One of these promotions I remember particularly well - the Old Higsonians series which was run alongside adverts in the Liverpool Echo and even (I think) on Granada TV for the watery local brew, Higsons, and featuring legendary Merseysiders like Ann Field, Doc Road, Phil O’Monic, Rock Ferry, Count Erode and of course Pierre Head. You had to be there…
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| Some of the Old Higsonians; how we laughed. |
If changes in livery left us entranced, changes in model left us scarcely coherent. At times of heavy usage the MPTE would blow the dust off some of its older stock and instead of the usual 1970s workhorse the Atlantean we would suddenly get an old open-platformed Routemaster roll into view as we waited at the bus stop. The other kids probably watched us with a mixture of amusement and pity as we jabbered excitedly over this unexpected treat. Thankfully Carl was hard enough to deter most physical manifestations of our peers’ amusement; on my own I would probably have been bounced off said bus repeatedly until a Dave-shaped dent gave it an additional rarity value.
What I think distinguished us from other spotters though was
the sense of the exotic with which we regarded those buses on a Saturday
morning. Taking up position right at the top of Water Street, where the street
opened up onto the broad space in front of the river, we would watch the buses
debouch from the narrow street like an invading army (you see what I did
there?). Water Street was the only inbound route for buses to the Pier Head and
at the time there were well in excess of 100 routes terminating there, which
meant that there was a constant flow of buses to be seen coming up in that
green and yellow stream, from all over the city. Some of the route numbers I
remember even now, over 40 years later – 72 from Hunts Cross, 78 from Halewood,
17C from Fazakerley. Despite the fact that none of these places must have been
more than a few miles from where we lived, the lack of any reason – or any easy
route – to get there made them seem places far distant; so limited were our
horizons that Speke or Garston might as well have been on the moon.
Bizarrely, we always romanticised one route in particular –
the 12C to Cantril Farm. Cantril Farm sounded to us like some untouched bucolic
quarter of Liverpool, silent but for the birdsong and the lowing of cattle and
the occasional rumble of the 12C bus. It wasn’t until later that I discovered it
was a recent overspill development that in the decade or so since its creation
in the 1960s had already become a byword for inner city decline – it was
interesting and instructive to read Red Dwarf’s Craig Charles’ memories
of growing up there.
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| The 12C; they must have just finished cleaning the straw off it. |
From hanging around the hideously ugly 1970’s Pier Head bus terminus lusting over the buses we graduated to hunting down books about trams and trains and – for my wealthier mate Carl at least – acquiring gorgeous Hornby train sets that he would set up in his grandad’s old shop. As always the key was in part the visual kick – I defy anyone to set eyes on a 1930’s period Liverpool Corporation Streamliner tram and not lose their heart completely to its luscious curves - and that always faintly exotic sense of the far-flung routes along which these lovely creatures actually ran. There’s something about a bus or train ride for me even now that will always carry some echo of the starry-eyed trips of my boyhood.
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| A 1930’s period Liverpool Corporation Streamliner tram...Mmmmm... |
The thing is though that I thought this transport/war thing was just us, and I don’t think it is really. As I grew older I became used to seeing military and transport on neighbouring shelves not only in budget book shops but in W H Smiths. And there are also bookshops that cater explicitly to that happy mix of interests – for example the Ian Allan Book and Model shop in London’s Waterloo, where basically half of the shop is books about buses, trams and trains and the other is military books and models. The Pen and Sword publisher list also shows a very pointed blend of military and transport, only more recently branching out into other historical themes.
I guess the clue might be in the word ‘model’. Most of us
wargamers will at least go through a phase where we are as concerned with
modelling as with gaming, whether it’s gently removing the decals for our
dogfight doubles in that little bowl of warm water, or producing the gorgeously
detailed armies I see so often in the wargame blogs I follow (there but for a
shakey hand and dodgy eyesight…) Similarly public transport is a mecca for the
modeller, from those big elaborate Hornby train sets to the stunning – and correspondingly
expensive – new tram model kits available from the Spanish company Occre. But
still, not all bus- or train- enthusiasts are modellers, and nor are all
military history enthusiasts.
Is it just about the passion for detail? Is it the same
impulse for correct detail that makes someone wary of identifying the wrong
tank on a Normandy battlefield or the wrong regiment on a Peninsula one, that potentially
makes them also keen to understand the differences between an Altona and a
Ringbahn single deck Liverpool tram?
What am I missing? Or am I missing anything – maybe this
military-transport overlap is something I have made up and similar links can
just as easily be found to other interests. I would be interested in anyone
else’s thoughts.
*The Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive set up at the
end of the 1960’s to replace the Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport –
the ‘Corpy’.
Maybe it’s also a Liverpool thing. M.Foy of Prometheus in Aspic fame is/was also a ‘bus spotter’. It’s not something that ever caught my interest.
ReplyDeleteThe buses round our way were not that interesting and mostly didn’t travel far - the most exotic destination being Immingham via the 45š. The most exciting it got was spotting a green Lincolnshire Roadcar company bus (ferrying joskins into town), as opposed to the usual blue and cream GCT (Grimsby and Cleethorpes Transport).
Indeed, the first time I became aware of the PinA blog was when a friend pointed me at a June 2015 post about the death of a transport historian called T B Maund who co-wrote a series of five volumes about Liverpool Transport that I still cherish. Maybe Liverpool just had a particularly exciting bus network. That said I have just had a look at some images of those old Grimsby buses and I have to say that blue and cream livery is damn fine. What can I say, I'm a total bus floozy.
DeleteOne thing for sure in NE Lincs (Grimsby area) nowadays is that if you have been waiting a while for a bus there's absolutely zero chance of two arriving together. Public transport, generally, in the area is shockingly bad. It was quicker to get to London by train 100 years ago!
ReplyDeleteHi Tony. I don't know about Grimsby but in Liverpool the deregulation of the bus services back in 1986 caused a nosedive in quality. Literally overnight all the old established bus routes vanished and suddenly nobody knew how to get anywhere. Out of the wreckage a number of private companies shook themselves down and started offering their services but timetables seemed to remain largely notional for a while. I can't remember if private buses were more expensive, but the service was crap. Reading now about some of the bus wars that took place in some cities as rival companies tried to undermine each other, it's scarcely believable.
DeleteWhile it probably wouldn't bother most other people, the romantic in me laments also the loss of that sense of corporate pride, the liveries and the coats of arms and suchlike. It seemed a stage in the decay of that clear civic pride that seemed such a thing to those responsible for public services in earlier times.
I don't know what the Liverpool services are; I was last up there briefly a couple of years back and found the whole experience so depressing that the bus journeys don't really stand out.
Are you really in Baku? How do the bus services there compare?
Hi Dave,
DeleteYes, I live in Baku (well just outside the city actually). I first came here in 2004, and at that time it was a bit of a post-Soviet mess. Essentially, the bus transport system then was effectively a competition. People bought tatty old minibuses ( Russians call them Marshrutka) and ran an ad -hoc service. It wasn't unusual to see buses crawling very slowly waiting to fill up before they were prepared to go very far. I lived in Tbilisi for eight years and it was pretty much the same there. More recently here things have improved dramatically. Bus transport is now back mainly in state hands and the system is excellent. Many buses are new and have air conditioning. Routes are extensive throughout the city and quite frequent. It costs 30 kopek (about 12p) for a ride, regardless of the distance involved. The metro system (mainly built in Soviet time) is also very good and costs the same.
So, in comparison to what people are subjected to in most of the UK lately the transport system here is now absolutely superb.
Shows what can be done when there is the will to do it!
Indeed. The utter mess that resulted from privatisation of rail and bus services here, done without any doubt for ideological reasons rather than any belief that it would benefit the poor bloody customer, has confirmed me in the belief that such services should remain in the public domain. If you have just one bus route or train service that will take you into town it's hard to see how you are now in the liberating position of being able to vote with your feet and exercise your choice as a consumer. Grrr.
DeleteI'm not sure I've been anywhere where you pay so much for such poor services as here. My last foreign trip was a business trip to Basel where the trams were all free!
Excellent post - great stuff. For what it's worth, a former schoolfriend of mine (who later became Prof of Psychology at a Welsh university which I shall not name) once told me that it was a common thing for kids from working or lower-middle class (that must be us then?) to be fascinated by bus services and train services, since they were big and reliable and useful to our lives, and represented a level of organisation and corporate guardianship which was usually lacking in our everyday urban lives (Liverpool was generally chaotic in the 1950s and 60s), not to mention the fact that they were smartly painted in an official uniform, with heraldic coats of arms, and ordered into numerical lists. All us OCD bods from the cities were almost certain to be fascinated!
ReplyDeleteThis prof chap confessed that he used to collect bus tickets when he was a kid - I don't know how that worked, unless you collected one from each bus company? Skelhorne Street and Preston and Crewe - sites of pilgrimage.
Cheers Tony. You know, he might be onto something with the uniforms and numbering, the transport institutions were perhaps more similar to military ones than I supposed in the days when they represented a more obvious corporate presence. And certainly my own home life was often chaotic enough that neat lists of route numbers could be a reassuring glimpse of something neater and more organised. Collecting bus tickets seems like an odd thing - would they not mostly be exactly the same except for the bus company name? - but then, as is clear from my post, we all of us have some interests others would find eccentric to say the least!
DeleteI am reminded of a rather amusing military/transport mash up from my youth. My brother Mike once bought the Airfix 'B Type' bus model kit which you could build either as a civilian vehicle or as a military 'Old Bill' Bus as used to transport troops in the Great War, with boarded windows and carrying soldiers as opposed to civilians. Mike could never decide whether he wanted the civilian or military versions so used to switch between the two, until he was left with a mishmash, a boarded up khaki bus carrying old ladies and kids to the Western Front. Happy days.
Apparently, the Prof used to bring back bus tickets from his holidays, or trips away, to exotic places like Paris, Rome, Douglas IOM and Llandudno (Crosvillia?). This often required him to take a bus trip just to get the ticket. That's not proper collecting, is it?
DeleteIt does seem a bit questionable. I can remember going to Paderborn back in the 1970s to visit my sister and the first thing I tried to do was collect route numbers for the buses from the airport to places like Detmold and Bielefeld. They had articulated buses there...mindblowing.
DeleteExcellent post, Dave, and it's being discussed as far away as Baku! Confession: I too have form in this area, as a former junior member of the M&D and East Kent Bus Club.. although this was much influenced by a school fellow who was completely obsessed with trains and buses. We sadly fell out later, but I see from t'internet that he stuck with it, and is now the HR Director of a railway company! (some of my commuting colleagues may regard managers of railway firms as being on a par with war criminals, of course..)
ReplyDeleteBut I was equally nerdy about airliners, too. I think a lot of it is in the lists, isn't it? You could get books ( inevitably from Ian Allan ) with the lists of every bus/loco/aircraft in the fleet, and there was the challenge of spotting and underlining them all - and I think also a sense of ordering one's world, as you say, which I think is recognised as important to those 'on the spectrum'? Which may be all of us.. Also perhaps it gave a reason to be out and about on one's own or in a group but not getting in trouble, a small step towards adult freedoms?
I think one reason I didn't stick with the buses was that this was in the period of Nationalisation, whereby all the local firms with varied liveries and equipment were merged into National Buses, with a choice of plain green or red, and only the dreaded Leyland National, poor devils. Military History and Wargaming was much more colourful, and a Tiger Tank beat a Bristol VR, easy.
Cheers Dave! I didn't know about your earlier flirtations with the world of buses - that really does reinforce my notion that if you scratch a wargamer you will find a transport enthusiast within (and the wargamer will probably also hit you for scratching him/her).
DeleteI was kind of treading lightly around any suggestion that most of us wargamers (in fact, most of us men?) might be somewhere on the ASD spectrum, whether officially diagnosed or not. It does seem very likely to me though. This includes me of course, and one way I used to impose order on my all-too-chaotic world was to compile regnal lists, of Popes, Emperors, Kings, Prime Ministers, which I would then earnestly try to learn by heart. When I was at Uni my brother and I would play Who was Pope, he would name a year in the middle ages and I would have a stab at guessing who was Pope in that year. Given the rate at which Pontiffs came and went it says something about the depth of my obsession that I was able to get it right a good amount of the time. Couldn't do it now, mind!
My interest in buses and trams now is mainly nostalgic and aesthetic - I have several books of colour photos of old buses and it gives me pleasure to look at them. A Tiger Tank vs a 1930-s era Liverpool Corpy Streamliner now? Hmmm...what colour is the tank painted?