A view of the Shambles taken from the south end of the High Street. Does anyone know what the 3 small buildings attached to the Shambles are? c1970s.
Photograph by Len Toulson, courtesy of Neal Toulson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Stockton Corporation Bus Drivers and Conductors had to have official breaks after so many hours and changed over in the Town Centre, the small buildings were the places they clocked in and out for duty. They would often come off a regular service have a break then take out the workers buses or school buses and there were many of those runs.
Conductors would collect masses of change emptying their pouches and loading them into locked boxes after sorting and counting when they got a chance, those boxes would be taken the short distance to those buildings for collection from the Depot.
The Inspectors also had an office there checking in after roving the various routes to check timing and efficiency, the conductor would face reprimand if the Inspector found the duc had not kept up with the passengers, we always had our tickets ready just in case, I dropped mine once and had to pay again.
There would be Drivers and Conductors on the road at five in the morning to take the 6 till 2 workers in to work and pick up the night shift so they did work a lot of split shifts. Once a top job with a pension, some of us daft lads wanted to be bus drivers rather than engine drivers, as with many jobs in modern times now down graded, not really fair when you consider the responsibility a driver has.
Think I might of posted this before but it’s well worth a watch…
There’s a great film that has a section on the buses in Stockton/Billingham here:
http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-just-billingham-no-7-1946/
(bus section starts about 3 mins in)
Great clip of times past, many thanks Jonathan. My father-in-law was a Stockton busdriver for many years
Could they be something to do with the bus service. Driver welfare / break rooms ? etc