Wigan Album

I thought the conductors had gone by then. Just look how packed the bus is. Did the oldies have bus passes around that time?

My late sister-in-law was was a conductress on the old LUT buses. That's a lovely photo.

It would be great if anyone on the photograph was still around? Can anyone recognise anyone?

Can't speak to 1974, as I had left the area about a decade prior to then.

I do know that, early 1960's, it was common for Corporation buses to be full.

I used to have to walk half a mile, and catch a train from Bryn Station to Wigan around 6 am. to catch my train in Wigan to get to Manchester or Preston.

Buses ran right past my front door, but at that time in the morning, they did not stop: they were already full!

I remember packed buses in the sixties and a conductor on the bus going to Turners at Hindley Green.

The passengers look well dressed, so the bus could be a 333 to High Moor via Shevington, and the man looks familiar to me, but I can't put a name to him.
And Frank Orrell is a Shevington lad, so he could have taken the photo on his way home from work.

It can't be a 333 because the bus is a double decker ( a PD3 to be exact - you can tell by the rear emergency door). The picture would have been taken around the time that Wigan Corporation was absorbed into Greater Manchester PTE (April 1974) but conductors and conductresses were still around until the early 1980s when the last of the front-engined double deckers were finally withdrawn. I do recognise a few faces but cannot put names to them. My guess is this is a No.2 or 2A from Beech Hill to Ashton via the town centre. If I recognise some faces, it is on it's way into Wigan from Beech Hill.

Most older ladies wore their best hats to go shopping sometimes they left them on all day at home. That’s how I remember old ladies in Scholes. It wasn’t all clogs and shawls when I was a little ‘un in-the fifties. Wigan Lane was the posh place in those days and buses did run up there. Mind you I wouldn’t know which numbers on the buses as it was usually going up to the Infirmary that we went up tree lined Wigan Lane.

I'm amazed the Shevy lot were on the bus at all....I'd have thought they's have been in their Rolls Royces or Bentleys.

I took this photo when Pat was a reporter on the Post and Chronicle for a few years. She lived in Standish and after getting married emigrated to New Zealand where she became secretary or had a job with some close connection to the Prime Minister of the country. I don't know her current situation.

Double-deckers used to run up to Shevington and High Moor and down to the Railway pub in Appley Bridge, where they turned around.
Living at the end of Church Lane, I could run and jump onto the back platform of a double-decker bus, then jump off again as it approached the road junction.

If only some of us left here had the same idea as Pat. Good on her emigrating to New Zealand I bet they have never looked back. The sixties was a good time to emigrate. Very brave though I must say I have friends who went to Australia they have a wonderful life.

Shevington was voted the poorest place to live in 1970. Fact. :(

Just out of curiosity - when were conductors discontinued on buses? I remember as a youngster travelling on the original orange coloured GMPTE buses in the 1980s into town when the station was on Hope Street and by then there was just the driver in his/her cab. Occasionally the Inspector would grace the bus to check valid tickets but they were usually random and would hop on and off different buses rather like the revenue protection people we see on trains. I’m assuming if this picture was 1974, then the role of the bus conductor didn’t last much longer.

CJ

Does that mean Paupers lived in the village?
Well who’d have thought it! I thought Scholes was supposed to be Pauper's Paradise.

Just out of curiosity - when were conductors discontinued on buses? I remember as a youngster travelling on the original orange coloured GMPTE buses in the 1980s into town when the station was on Hope Street and by then there was just the driver in his/her cab. Occasionally the Inspector would grace the bus to check valid tickets but they were usually random and would hop on and off different buses rather like the revenue protection people we see on trains. I’m assuming if this picture was 1974, then the role of the bus conductor didn’t last much longer.

CJ

FRANK a case of "LOCAL GIRL MAKES GOOD"
So she wasn't a "PROPER CLIPPIE" then. Just a 'Stand in' for the photo. ?

Just out of curiosity - when were conductors discontinued on buses? I remember as a youngster travelling on the original orange coloured GMPTE buses in the 1980s into town when the station was on Hope Street and by then there was just the driver in his/her cab. Occasionally the Inspector would grace the bus to check valid tickets but they were usually random and would hop on and off different buses rather like the revenue protection people we see on trains. I’m assuming if this picture was 1974, then the role of the bus conductor didn’t last much longer.

CJ

CJAlan STOP uploading the same comment.... I've deleted the same comment now 6 times.

Regarding conductors.
There were conductors on the 629 Abbey Lakes route until the mid 1980s.
I used to use the service 5 days a week going to work, until I moved house in October1984. At that time, I think there were only two conductors left at the Melverley St depot; both working the 629 route.
One was a little chap with dark hair and glasses. He always wore clogs, when working. I think his name may have been Bob.
The other was an Indian/Pakistani man.

The word chippie originally used for female bus conductors just after the second world war from London transport, because of the clipping sound of the ticket machines.

CJAlan...the Wigan bus conductors disappeared when the new Leyland Atlantean buses arrived in the mid 1960s operated by Wigan Corporation Transport, this ment the driver collected the fare and give tickets. In other words he did both jobs, but not sure if he got double pay ÷)

Sorry should have been meant and not ment...at 20.58.