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Post by Jerry on Jul 26, 2014 17:46:00 GMT
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Post by Jerry on Jul 29, 2014 8:21:36 GMT
Corporation St 1950 Picture: Public Transport! When almost everyone too the bus - and a car was something someone's better-off uncle had. Anyway, looking at the rooves of the buses - there are rows of what appears to be ventilation vents. Is this correct ? Were they just fans sucking air out ? I imagine on very cold mornings, a loaded bus could get pretty steamy! Hi BB Never noticed them before but they must have been just air vents, those buses didn't have anything high tech like extractor fans or air con. Smoking was allowed upstairs in those days and during the morning and evening rush hours the upper decks would be packed with people smoking, you could hardly breathe at times. In the winter, with the open platform at the back and no heating it was a toss-up whether you died of smoke inhalation or frost bite Jerry
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Post by vince on Jul 29, 2014 18:22:52 GMT
Corporation St 1950 Picture: Public Transport! When almost everyone too the bus - and a car was something someone's better-off uncle had. Anyway, looking at the rooves of the buses - there are rows of what appears to be ventilation vents. Is this correct ? Were they just fans sucking air out ? I imagine on very cold mornings, a loaded bus could get pretty steamy! Hi BB Never noticed them before but they must have been just air vents, those buses didn't have anything high tech like extractor fans or air con. Smoking was allowed upstairs in those days and during the morning and evening rush hours the upper decks would be packed with people smoking, you could hardly breathe at times. In the winter, with the open platform at the back and no heating it was a toss-up whether you died of smoke inhalation or frost bite Jerry I think the idea was that they would act like chimneys, the wind blowing across them as the bus rocketed along at 20 mph would create a vacuum and draw air out. Upstairs at the front, over the windows there were 2 vents which you could close by sliding the knob in the middle, I wonder where the air intake for them was. Also over the windows, there were always 2 signs, one said spitting prohibited offenders will be prosecuted. Cant remember what the other one said though.
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Post by vince on Jul 30, 2014 11:22:18 GMT
Jerry/Vince - yes, I might have guessed (and should have remembered!) that upstairs was for smokers. So that would explain the vents - and Vince's explanation of them acting as chimneys makes sense. Actually, its ingenious - no fans, no coolant, no electrics - just let the breeze work its way through the cabin. By the mid 1970's Fleetline buses had those pull-down split windows at the front on the top deck. Regarding signs - I only remember the "press once" signs + arrows next to the buttons for stopping....and as we mentioned in a thread somewhere before, "exact fare only" and "all passes must be shown." On National Express coaches there were a couple of signs too: "Do not distract the driver" (who´s name always seemed to be Ron)...and I can't remember the other one. There were some clever ideas back then, before we got obsessed with powering everything. Martin & Chamberlain schools like we went to had a whole built in ventilation system which used no power at all called a Plenum System I think. Very old idea, I was told that its why they had steeples, dunno if thats true though. Free to run and effective. I bet they have air con sytems in them now though.
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Post by planetmalc on Jul 31, 2014 16:06:40 GMT
Jerry/Vince - yes, I might have guessed (and should have remembered!) that upstairs was for smokers. So that would explain the vents - and Vince's explanation of them acting as chimneys makes sense. Actually, its ingenious - no fans, no coolant, no electrics - just let the breeze work its way through the cabin. By the mid 1970's Fleetline buses had those pull-down split windows at the front on the top deck. On some transport systems - Bournemouth's, for instance - they used a more sophisticated system of small unpowered horizontal fan-wheels on the roof (instead of simple vents) and I guess their rotation would turn them into extractor fans. They should never have got rid of those front-window vents; modern buses are like mobile saunas during hot weather.
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