FACTORALY - E74 BUSES

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

The bus was first invented as a service to transport a few people from Nantes to a Spa/Mill. Now 604 million people all over the world take the bus. What's the story behind this successful form of public transport? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Hi Simon. How are you today? I'm feeling relaxed, thank you very much. How lovely. I'm not too bad, I'm just getting over a cold and my voice is coming back to me. It was a little bit distant recently. Yeah, it was a little bit croaky. A bit like Toad of Toad Hall. Oh no, we did that on horns, didn't we? That's right. Call back to previous episodes. But now we're talking about something else entirely. We are indeed.

Something which we thought would be boring. Yes. I mean, they are fairly boring. I mean, they're okay. Yeah. It's a fairly nerdy subject, actually. It's one of those subjects that you could get an awful lot of geeks going, ooh, serial number this and patent number that and make and model the other.

I used to be a bus ticket geek. Did you? Yeah. So in the olden days when you had like a bus conductor yes um they would have a machine which they'd strapped around their neck yes and like it's like a sort of a silver aluminium type machine then you she'd turn a wheel and a bus ticket would come out of the top and everyone had a unique serial number on it okay and this is when i was paying four pence,

four old pence for a bus ticket. Bargain. But I would add up all the numbers in the serial number and see if it was a lucky ticket. If it was a lucky ticket, and I have no idea how I calculated whether it was lucky or not, I would keep it for ages.

Oh, great. And you made your own criteria as to what justified it being a lucky number exactly yeah i can't remember why so you couldn't lose no no great so yes like 26 could be a lucky number oh excellent because it's double 13 obviously well obviously yeah yeah that makes sense oh good stuff now before our lovely listeners wonder why on earth they're listening to two random blokes talking about bus tickets. They know why.

Just in case they've forgotten. I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. And together we are... Wild Stallions! No. And you are listening, either on purpose or by mistake, to... Factorily. How would you describe Factorily, Bruce? I wouldn't.

I think it's indescribable. It's a podcast. We love facts. We love, we're nerds. We love useless information or as we would call it, useful information. Indeed. Yeah, so we talk about stuff. We do.

And you lovely people at home listen to us because we are like-minded. You like random facts and you like having knowledge imparted to you. There's that, you see, or there's also the people who listen to us just to get to sleep. Because we can do very nice sleepy voices. Yes, we can. And we frequently do. Yeah, so this episode is all about buses. Yes. They're good for you, buses. Are they?

Yeah, they are. Would you have one prescribed on the NHS? Well, no, they're environmentally friendly. And they have a lower carbon footprint per passenger than any other mode of transportation. Really? They're only responsible for like 2% of road fatalities in the EU. They make the air cleaner. They can help with traffic congestion.

One bus can replace 30 cars. Crikey. Yeah. That's quite a lot of cars, actually. It is a lot. Sweden has decided that it's going to be completely fossil fuel free. And part of that is the buses. Oh, really?

And in fact, by 2018, they were the first world capital to have a completely 100% renewable energy bus service. Gosh. 2018? Yeah. That's quite a while back now. Their plan is to ensure all of their buses run on biodiesel, biogas and ethanol by this year. Really? Yeah.

Wow. Well done, Sweden. I know, good on you, Stockholm. So why do we call them buses? Actually, do you know what? It's not just us that calls them buses. Everybody calls them buses. If you go all over the world and you say, can you show me to the bus?

I mean, sometimes they're called autobus or sometimes they're called... Oh, I see, yes. ...motobus or something. But they've all got the word bus in them. They've all got the word bus. I didn't know that. That's interesting.

Yeah. So why are they called buses? So bus is short for omnibus, which means for everyone. OK. The bus is actually a French invention. So you're giving the French credit. Let's give it to the French. Yeah, go on.

Why not? Well done, the French. Well done, French. Because of the nature of who we are, Bruce and I are both Londoners, and we love all things London-related. So this episode may be a little London bus-centric. So I feel a little bit disappointed that we didn't invent the thing. Yes. The first bus line in the world was started in Paris.

Right. In 1662. What? I know. this is before anything else it was just a horse and carriage it carried up to eight passengers and it was invented by a very interesting guy a guy called blaise pascal i've heard of him you've heard of him because he's a physicist yes he's a maths guy yeah Yeah. He invented the hydraulic press. Yes. So these were called carrosses à cinq sous, five penny coaches. Okay.

And these were really popular. It's like everyone, oh, yeah, let's get a five penny coach. But then they were sort of a bit of novelty and the novelty wore off. I mean, it was, I mean, Pascal was obviously a forward thinking guy. And it was an idea well ahead of its time, but it was only used by posh people, and the trend for them kind of wore off after about 10 years. Okay. But then 150 years later, something happened. Yeah, it did. So this is where we actually first get the word bus attached to this this kind of service um so around this this time we're talking in the 1820s uh again in france um everyone up to this point if you were poor you walked if you were

rich you had your own personal horse and carriage i thought you were going to say you do a piggyback on your servants yes much better um but there was a french uh flour mill owner called Stanislas Baudry, which is a very unfrench name for a Frenchman, to my ears, but there you go. This fellow owned a flour mill. He had a steam engine at the mill to drive the mill wheel. And as part of the process of generating steam, he ended up with a lot of spare hot water. And being an enterprising fellow, he thought to himself, well, I know, I'll make a public bath. Like a spa?

Yeah, like a spa, yeah. A spa day at the mill. Exactly, yeah. So he set up this little spa, this little bath house next to the mill and charged people to come in and take the water. It became quite popular popular and he eventually decided to lay on a coach and horses to bring people to his mill, which was sort of outside of town in Nantes. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. And so he set up this coach service and people

sort of realised that actually they could get on this coach service to his his mill and get on and off other places along the way so people sort of started using it for their own personal public transportation hop off yes exactly that yeah yeah and um there was this fellow bordry who came up with the the name for it and he called it the voiture omnibus meaning vehicle for all okay that got shortened to omnibus that got shortened to bus that's where we get buses and this was all in 1826 he then took the idea of this this public service to paris and uh you know tried to sort of set up the first regular running bus route in paris in 1828 i wonder whether he realized it had already happened 150 years earlier. Probably.

Apparently, one of the reasons it was called the Omnibus was because there was a hat shop in Nantes called Omnes Omnibus. Really? And on the front of the bus, that was where it was going. Oh, I see. So that was the terminus was Omnes Omnibus. So the Omnibus had the word Om omnibus at the front of the bus. That's brilliant. This idea then sort of really took off in Paris and they started having regular public bus services in Paris. And then only a year later, it came to London. So London

started their horse-drawn bus services in 1829. So one year out. Yeah. While we're in London, shall we talk about London buses? I think we should, since we're here. So what colour is a London bus? These days I would say it's red. Well these days they're kind of covered in advertising but underneath the advertising. Yes. They still have some red bits. They do. Why are they red? So they're kind of covered in advertising but but underneath the advertising yes they still have some red bits they do why are they red so they're red because so shortly after this this service sort of took off in london in 1829 there they became there were lots of different companies that offered bus routes to and from different places and their coaches were generally colored in their

own personal livery company colors okay so you sort of had some green, brown, maroon, yellow. Okay. And then in 1856, the London General Omnibus Company, which I don't like saying too often because it's quite a mouthful. Call it the LGAC. We'll call it the LGAC. They turned up. They started taking over quite well.

They were very successful. Within a year of their foundation, they owned 75% of London's buses. And they sort of wanted to have a unified colour that, you know, showed people that that was their bus. And there are already certain things in London that are that classic colour red. Please refer back to our previous episode on colors uh pantone 485c if we're being specific thank you very much so by the time the buses became red uh in london in particular you already had uh post boxes they'd started cropping up all over the place yeah they were that particular shade of red uh you already had um royal guards their uniforms that color and of course the red in the union flag and so on and so on so that that color was already around

so the lgoc looking for a particular color for their for their buses thought well that's quite a nice patriotic color everyone will associate that with london so we'll do that um and then it was sort of after it really took off with the buses that it sort of became the official colour. So then you start getting telephone boxes and restaurants and branding and things like that, as you say. A lot of red around. Yeah. The first London bus route was set up by a fellow called George Shillabeer, who created a route from Paddington Station to the Bank of England, as London was sort of getting bigger and bigger, more and more people.

So you'd come in from the West Country or from the West to Paddington Station. Yes, to Paddington, that's right. And then you'd get from there to the city by Shillabeer. And also from the suburbs. You sort of had this shift in the mid-1800s where more and more people started living in the suburbs and commuting into the center of town for work um and he sort of jumped on this idea and uh and set up the first london bus route then i mean apparently um it was a shilling to do this which is equivalent to today to four quid okay which is about double uh the cost of a bus ride in London today.

Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't for the everyman. It was for the sort of middle class bank workers and city workers and so on. Absolutely. So London buses were all different colours. Yeah. Rather than different numbers. When did they get numbers then?

Well, I looked into numbering. And I'll tell you what we're going to do. Rather than go into numbering now, why don't we send people to the blog? So if you go to factorily.com, you'll find a blog, you'll find all about today's episode, and you'll find lots of interesting facts in it, including how they numbered buses in London. There you go. Perfect. I want to know the answer now. I'll have to get onto our own blog and find out. I can tell you that route one was the first one. Give us a brief rundown. Okay. So it was all about whether it's a single-decker or a double-decker, whether it's a countryside one or an urban one. So there's all sorts of reasons why they were given numbers. And then if it was like a slight detour off a route or if they changed the route yeah they would if it was like the number 17 bus and they changed the route they would call it like a 217 bus oh i see so you still got the 17 in it but it's just changed slightly gotcha okay so

route one was the first one as you can imagine you wouldn't start at six would you that would be silly no that would be silly um so that that was in operation by november 1908 okay and that route has actually changed a bit since since it was introduced back then but the 24 bus which actually i mean the number one and the number 24 go go quite close to my house which is nice but the number 24 is the oldest still running route that's the same route oh really and that was operating between pimlico and hampshire heath in 1911 and it still is gosh that's good going you know this thing about sort of three three arriving at once oh yes yeah so that's true is it yeah there's a guy who's a PhD student in California, Lewis Lay.

And he's worked out why it happens. And it happens because of people and traffic lights and things. Right. So if you have two buses, one starting much later than the first one, but the first one picks up all the passengers. Yes. So it's delayed with passengers getting on and off and also traffic lights and what have you. Whereas the second one is sort of speeding along, not picking anybody up. Oh, it has the chance to catch up.

So it catches up and then it overtakes. Oh, I see. So then that one starts to pick up the passengers. And the one that's got all the passengers on it already is like stuck behind that one. And then the third one comes along. So there is actually a method in the madness of the three coming along at once. That's brilliant. Oh, isn't it nice when something can be scientifically proven? Yeah, there's a little game which proves the theory, which again,

I'll put a link to on the show notes. Great. Route 25 in London is the busiest one. Is it? It runs between Oxford Circus and Ilford. OK. The latest figures I have for it are 2015-2016, when it carried 19.4 million passengers.

Crikey. That's a lot of... just on that one route. Yep. Good grief. I mean, they do carry a lot of people. They do, yes. You can tell this by virtue of how difficult it is to get on some of them.

Yes. So, according to TFL, London's buses carry about six and a half million passengers a day. Wow. That's more than the whole population of Scotland. Wow. And those six and a half million passengers account for more than half of all bus journeys made in England.

So Londoners really make a big use of buses. Yeah. No wonder it's become such an icon. Yes, exactly. Speaking of icons, when you think of a London bus, like a proper good old-fashioned London bus, you know, the type of old London bus that sort of has half the front missing? Yes. It has, you know, a platform you can hop on and off at the back. It's got that winding staircase going up to the upper deck.

That's a Routemaster. And the Routemaster, I was quite surprised at how brief a period Routemasters were made, but then for how long they carried on being used. So the first Routemaster was built in 1954, and the last one was built in 1968. So that's only a period of 14 years. But Routemasters were still running until 2005. So by the time they were disbanded, the oldest route master london bus would have been in sort of 40 50 years old wow because that took over from the regent didn't it there was an older bus

called called the rt the regent yes that's right and that ran that i mean by comparison quite a short period like 1946 to 57 so yes 11 years yeah you still see those around sort of as wedding things don't you yes they're novelty things aren't they they're sort of historical bus tours and private hire and things like that but the rm is really the iconic it is yeah it's a bit special the route master was voted uh in 2006 it was voted one of britain's top 10 design icons wow uh which the the list included things like the concord mini uh the spitfire the london tube map and um the london phone box so yes it's up there it's one of those things isn't it you get shortbread in a london phone box or a london bus yes that's right you do yeah yeah it's just sort of the proof of the fact that you've been to london you've come home

with a bus shaped magnet or a key ring or something. Exactly, yeah. And then they brought in a new bunch of Routemasters in 2012, just in time for the London Olympics. They designed a new bus that was quite clearly modern and sleek, well as sleek as a double decker bus can be. But it did look vaguely route master-esque it's got that black sweeping spiral up the back of it where the stairs are and and they're hybrids as well so they're they're sort of slightly better for the environment yes the first time i got in one of them and realized they every seat had a usb charger embedded into the back of the chair in front i thought oh wow progress

yeah they're special and and when they sort of they seem to stall at bus stops they're like the engine just switches off yes then they move off again without the engine running and then yes the engine kicks in yeah wonderful to be on yeah one of the most famous route master buses of course is um three stories high and purple okay have you been what have you been drinking butterbeer um so the night bus from harry potter the night bus was a purple triple decker bus which takes witches and wizards wherever they need to go in an emergency and um for the shooting of the harry potter film they um they just got an old

route master sheared the roof off it built another deck on top okay and painted it purple and uh that was the night bus so they've got a triple decker yeah like a cadbury's no that's a double deck that's a double deck a double decker plus half double-decker. A double-decker plus half. I heard that they couldn't get it under some bridges. So what they would do is they would take the top layer off and then drive it under the bridge. And then put the top layer back on again, the other side of the bridge. Oh, brilliant. What fun.

I think it was one of Lego's best-selling kits. Yes, or at least most expensive kits. I mean, they're all expensive. One or the other. See our previous episode on Lego. Yes. Some buses go quite a long way. Yes.

We talked about the longest bus route in London is like 23 miles. Yeah. And that goes from Heathrow to croydon okay but there are much much longer bus routes are there there used to be one um called the hippie bus right that went from london to calcutta but there's water in between those two places bruce only a little bit only the channel right i suppose so yeah huh okay because it would go it would go through lots of different places it ran around about 15 times so that it was 32,000 kilometers long it's about sort of 20,000 miles gosh and you could eat on it you could sleep on it um and it ran between sort of 1968 and 1976 crikey it kind of sounds like um cliff richard's summer holiday movie doesn't it we're going where the sun shines

brightly i.e calcutta yes well actually that's where he was from wasn't he he was cliff richard was was indian he was born in india was he yeah harry webb yes didn't know that there you go come on bonus facts but there's also another long one which was which actually still runs today which is called the trans-oceania okay and it's the or the inter-oceanic highway and it runs between lima per and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Does it? So from Peru to Brazil. It's like 2,600 kilometres long, about 1,600 miles.

It takes 100 hours. So it's a long time sitting on that bus. Right, so you wouldn't want to sit on it non-stop, would you? No, I would hope that they have like comfort brakes. Yeah. Crikey. On, comfort brakes. Yeah. Crikey. On that bus route. Yeah.

I had a quick look at trolleybuses. Oh, yes. So are those the ones that have the electric thing on the top? Yes, that's right. But they don't have the tracks. Oh, OK. So you've got trams, other ones with tracks or in America, streetcars. Right.

But trolleybuses have the overhead power lines, but they have rubber tires. They're not fixed to a track. They are just a bus. And these things sort of started off in the 1880s. They actually took over from quite a lot of tram services around the world. Because they're a bit more flexible, they're a bit cheaper to run, they've got better grip going up and down hills. And they go clang, clang, clang. No, that's the... Right, so, yes. She says clang, clang, clang, went the trolley.

Goes the trolley, yes, I know. That's a good point, actually. I would need to ask further research as to whether that is talking about a trolley bus or a tram. Or we could ask the factorialites. Oh, there you go. They'll know. Yeah. So if you know the difference or you can tell us why that one goes clang, clang, clang.

Yes. Then please let us know either at hello at factorialy.com or on Facebook or send a pigeon. Or just shout really loud. we'll hear you um yeah so the the trolley bus was invented in 1882 by a german fella so the bus service invented by the french the trolley bus invented by the germans okay not sure what we've quite brought to the table on this one um red and uh yeah red there you go red and um and these things also don't get in the way quite so much as a tram which is obviously fixed to a track in the middle of the road the trolley buses the the arms that go up to gather the electricity from the overhead wires yeah are pivotable so the

bus can move left and right pivotable um so the bus can move across lanes in and out of the traffic so they're a lot more flexible and um there were 300 trolley bus systems across 43 countries in the world at one point so they were they were quite prolific i didn't really realize this when was this uh 1882 they were first electric vehicles yeah in 1882 yeah wow odd isn't it um in the uk we had some trolley bus services um we we first got them in 1911 in leeds and bradford were the first places to have them here the bradford one only closed in 1972 wow so that was going going for quite a while. And they still exist in certain places.

America has a few trolleybus services, so does Europe. These days they have electric batteries on board so that as they're running through one area where the overhead power lines are, they can then disconnect, put the connectors away onto the roof of the bus use the battery for a little while and then reconnect to the power lines at another place how clever um they're they're cheap they're quite efficient to run but yes i didn't really realize they were a thing until now because because there there was a motorized bus that was invented by Carl Benz of Mercedes-Benz fame. Oh, another German. I know.

1895. Oh, OK. Right. But then the French took that idea and opened up the first motorised bus line in 1906. So 1906, the first motorised bus route. That doesn't seem right, does it? That seems way too early. I know.

It's crazy. You mentioned streetcars in America. Obviously, the most famous one was the Tennessee Williams streetcar. Oh, the one named Desire? Desire. Yeah. And actually, Desire was a street, Desire Street, in New Orleans, which is like near Canal Street. Okay. So the Canal Street streetcar finished Desire Street.

So it actually said Desire on the front of the... Oh, I see. Is that why it's called Desire? Yes. Ah, it's actually its destination. Yes. Well, there you go. So at this point, we normally talk about records, and Simon's the record meister, as we're talking German. But I've got a record.

Oh, go on. I've got a record for a quick bus. Go on, then. A very quick bus. So Paul Stender, who is a bit of a petrolhead from America, and his team of engineers, they modified a typical yellow American school bus with a General Electric J74 jet engine from a McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom. Okay. So they have a jet-powered bus.

And that set a record for a bus at 590 kilometres an hour. Oh, my goodness. At 367 miles an hour that's going to get you from one stop to the next very quickly yeah isn't it they're not they're not necessarily the most aerodynamic of vehicles they don't fall over though if they're there are videos of london buses going on skid pads and not falling over so they're quite steady but i don't know how the american school bus is yes so yeah so simon you must have other records for buses yep i've got a few um i've got the you mentioned earlier on the longest bus route um i found the longest bus

journey okay uh which lasted um just over a year a year a? A year. So in 1988, three fellas from London, it doesn't actually say where they got the bus from, but they acquired a London bus. And they headed off in November 1988 and came back in December 1989. And they went through Hamburg, Milan, Rio de Janeiro. Again, water. Presumably they got on a boat at some point i don't know um los angeles various other places in america and then back home that lasted

a year again very very clear richard yes um i've found the longest distance for a bus to be pulled by ears it's gonna be one of those television things isn't it the world's strongest ears yeah something like that yeah um in 2008 a gentleman called majid singh from loughborough tied some ropes to his ears uh and tied the other end to a bus and pulled it for 6.1 meters this used to be a thing didn't it the world's strongest man thing would be on tv and they'd be doing like pulling buses along with their teeth yes that's right i remember that one actually yeah yeah uh i found the longest career bus driver uh-huh a gentleman called carl fisher from missouri was a school bus driver for 66 years and he he'd sort of been there for so long he ended up with you know three

generations of the same family riding to and from school on his bus route which i thought was rather charming i do know of another um bus driver called albert gunter okay and he was driving his double bus who's driving a number 78 this is was back in December 1952. Right. And what happened was, as he was driving along across Tower Bridge, it started going up. Oh, heck. So if he'd braked, he would have tipped over the edge and gone into the Thames. Oh.

So he basically just put his foot down and just went hell for leather and jumped the bridge. No way. Yeah. In a London bus. He had 20 passengers on board. Oh, crikey. And only one person was injured, which was driver Gunther himself, who broke his leg. Oh, wow.

But the bus was going about 12 miles an hour and it was fine. I mean, that doesn't really seem fast enough to jump a bridge gap does it well i think if he if he had stopped it would have got a lot worse yeah oh well done gunter yeah good old gunter I think what we should do is leave our factor lights on a cliff edge. Okay. With a cliffhanger. Go on. Because there is a famous bus in the 1969 film The Italian Job. Oh, yes, there is.

Yes, the getaway bus. It's a very annoying ending. It is. Horrible ending. So what they did was they filmed it, but after they finished filming the exteriors in Italy, the bus was transported back to the UK. And they did all the interiors back in the UK.

And then when they finished with the bus, it was put up for sale. I mean, you could have bought the Italian Job bus. The people that did was the Craw's Nest Hotel in Fife, which was run by the family of Edith Bowman, who's a radio

and TV presenter. And it was driven by her grandad, who used to use it for weddings and trips and things like that. And then he sold it to somebody in Blackpool who used it as a passenger vehicle. Then they sold it to somebody who used it as a school bus in Kirimua it to somebody who used it as a school bus

in Kirimur, near Dundee. And eventually it was bought by a racing car driver, Archie Cromer, and he transported his Formula Ford racing car to events. So actually, it ended up transporting fast cars. Ended up being used for its original purpose. Yes. Great.

But it was scrapped in 1990. And the people who scrapped it knew that it was the bus from the Italian job. And they still scrapped it. Really? I would have put that in a museum somewhere. Absolutely. Not to worry. Well, that's all I've got on buses me too uh my facts have all come along at once

yes the conductor has told you to get off yes um i remember when actually one last thing when the buses used to stop um used to like pull a little uh piece of string oh yeah to pull a little piece of string to ring a bell. And then the conductor would ring the bell twice, sell the driver that they could move off. Right, OK. If you listen to the bell noise on a London bus these days, it's all electronically done and it's recorded. But if you listen very carefully, you can just hear the string slapping on the roof of the bus.

Can you? They recorded that specific noise oh so the the modern bus going ding yes is a recording of an old-fashioned bus system with that with that string yes that's brilliant oh well there's one to leave you with there's no there's no reason for that to exist other than purely for the enjoyment of the people who who made it yes exactly there must have been a more efficient way of doing it. Oh, how lovely. Isn't that good?

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