Works Driver
A view of Southdown from the inside
by Bruce Alexander Macphee
Many books have been written about Southdown, but they have mainly covered vehicles and traffic matters. It is rare to find a book written by a member of the engineering staff of any bus company, for that person then to become a bus driver must be unique. This book brought back many happy memories of my own time with Southdown at Portsmouth and of driving many of the vehicles that Bruce describes so vividly.
Foreword
Although I started some years earlier, I too pestered my boses to allow me to go driving as soon as I was twenty-one and after a short spell of training, I was deemed ready for the test. As he rightly says, there was no specific 'learner buses' in those days, if you could drive the oldest vehicle at the depot you could drive anything. Thus I came to take my test in 243, a 1939 Leyland TD5.
I think it would be true to say that the pace of change quickened considerably after the 1960's, far more so than in the previous half-century. Bruce has faithfully recorded his experiences of Southdown, with Portslade works and so many depots now only memories, this is a book that needed to be written for future generations, not just of bus enthusiasts, but of social historians as well.
