Bus conductor days: Remembering when clippies took your fares
Single or return? Your choice as we look back on the days when you got your bus tickets from the conductor.
It’s not so long ago when the ‘clippie’ was a common sight on routes across Sunderland and South Tyneside.
Plenty of room for recollections
To start our look back in time, here is a line-up of bus conductresses in Sunderland in 1940.
Let’s move on a decade where we find Southwick conductor William Glendenning testing out a new style ticket machine in 1952.
Check out these clippie memories
This 1967 view shows Pat Entwhislte, of Dock Street, Monkwearmouth and Joyce Beaumont (centre) of Polmuir Road.
The two clippies were pictured trying their hands at driving a bus under a new scheme.
In South Tyneside, major changes were planned in the early 1970s where there had been a phasing-out of bus conductors, in preparation for the eventual introduction of “one-man buses”.
All change in the 1970s
A spokesman for the Northern General Transport Company said at the time: “The public is coming to recognise that one-man buses are a means to keeping our costs at a level which stops fares rising as they would otherwise do.”
But the memories live on and that is partly thanks to the South Shields Bus Preservation Society whose great work was in the spotlight in 2014.
The society bus conductor Barry Dobson gave pupils from Westoe Crown Primary School an insight into the past.
Here is a challenge for you. Can you remember the days of the conductor and the route you used to take, and perhaps how much it cost.
Why not share your memories of bus conductors and their great work by emailing [email protected]