'SERVICE' as a Destination

As a child in the 1960s, I remember going on family holidays to exotic parts of the country where THC companies ruled and Bristols roamed the Earth. My parents were keen hikers, so we used local bus services to get out and about. One thing that infuriated my dad no end was that many times buses would arrive showing only "SERVICE" and a number on the blind, with no hint at the destination.
My questions are, what was the reasoning behind this practice? Was it just laziness on the part of crews; if so why was it tolerated, or indeed encouraged by having the blind so printed? Or if company policy, why inflict something so monumentally unhelpful on passengers, especially in tourist areas, and why was it applied patchily not across the board?
The territories we visited were Crosville, Southern National and Western National (also West Yorkshire, but I believe that they remained innocent). I have also seen pictures of (at least) Lincolnshire vehicles headed for this opaque destination. Was it universal across the THC, did any BET, private or municipal operators follow suit, and how long did it last into NBC days? (By the 70s I was too cool to take an interest in buses).

Keith

23/03/14 - 09:16

I was told many years ago that this practice originated in WW2 as a means of hindering enemy agents in the same way as the removal of railway station and road signs and signposts was mean to. Locals would, of course, know the destination.
How true this is I'm unsure but the other possibility is that it was used in the same way as Duplicate with just the service number. In that case the duplicate was meant to arrive immediately following the service bus which would show the destination.
In either case, after the war, unless the vehicle concerned lacked the appropriate destination on its blind, the practice was particularly senseless.

Phil Blinkhorn

23/03/14 - 10:27

Not only was "Service" a common destination, but United Autos used "United" in a similar fashion and West Yorkshire used "Service" and "West Yorkshire" as intermediate displays. There can be no justifiable reason for this other than convenience for staff. No wonder most Tilling companies converted many screens to "T" shape which minimised the options. It would be interesting to know which other Tilling companies had these practices.

Paul Haywood

23/03/14 - 10:30

The Eastern Counties Omnibus Company, which covered a very large area visited by tourists and holidaymakers right round the East Anglian coast from Hunstanton to Felixstowe, was notorious for the use of 'SERVICE' on their destination displays.
The company had quite an vast rural network and it probably wasn't practical/possible to include lots of village names on destination blinds so 'SERVICE' was prolific. Having said that there may have been an element of laziness by the crews in its overuse!

David Slater

23/03/14 - 12:22

Come to think of it, wasn't it a legal obligation under the Road Traffic Act to show the correct displays? I seem to remember that the Yorkshire Traffic Commissioners were very sensitive about this requirement. How did West Yorkshire et al get away with it?

Paul Haywood

23/03/14 - 17:47

Mention is made by Paul Haywood about United Automobiles using 'United' in the Intermediate display. Here is a picture of 2061 HN a Bristol FSF new in 1960 (Fleet No.BL61) with ECW 60 seat body, showing 'UNITED' in both destination boxes - the height of laziness.
Mind, if you look at the Driver he is wearing a red tee shirt which just about says it all, of the standard of some staff.
There is a picture of sister bus 2063 HN with correctly set displays in the United Automobile Services book Part 2 (Venture Publications) on page 130 and the caption reads "....with the three-piece destination display correctly used as the designer intended."
Phil Blinkhorn mentions 'Duplicate' being used and states that it would arrive after the Service car. My experience was that the duplicate would load first and be sent off before the service departure leaving the service car to pick up passengers on line of route. Still it does not absolve the use of the correct Destination, and as Paul Haywood says - was a requirement of the Road Traffic Act, and various amendments over the years.
Of course today the more usual destination is 'SORRY- Not on Service'. A lady complainant once asked me where the village of 'SORRY - Not on Service' was? Because she was going to move there as all the Buses seemed to be going there.

Stephen Howarth

24/03/14 - 10:36

Stephen, to be fair to United, the photo dates from the NBC 'NoBody Cares' era, this type of attire was a strict No No when they were still run properly. Re duplicates, NGT half cabs had a flip down plate, and they would display DUPLICATE in addition to the correct destination.

Ronnie Hoye

24/03/14 - 13:41

Thanks for all those answers guys. I decided to research this myself a bit, by trawling through THC/NBC era pics on the web. Seems that this practice only started in the mid 60s, but continued through the 70s, with "Service" still present on blinds into the era of lower case destinations and even yellow lettering (sorry to cause any offence by mentioning such abominations). My theory is that "SERVICE" originated as the opposite of "DUPLICATE"/"RELIEF", intended to be put up on either the main or via blind, with the other showing a real place. But by the 1960s, we were already on the slippery slope. Crews' pride in the job was eroding and management had lost the will to manage, especially in the nationalized sector (if BR is anything to go by). "SERVICE" happened to offer an easy option for crews, and management were not going to pick destination blinds as a battlefield after all it only affected mere passengers. Away from planet THC, I'm guessing that things were run a bit more tightly for a bit longer, and non-geographic concepts were less common on the blinds anyway.
Incidentally, Eastern Counties seem to have been the most prolific offenders, with Crosville, Eastern National, Lincolnshire and Wilts & Dorset also among the guilty.
Paul mentions the T-shape indicator, which is interesting, since it seems to combine a prominent route number with an illegibly thin destination. In contrast, some BET operators had a high proportion of vehicles lacking number blinds (or numbers on single track blinds) altogether: North Western, Trent, PMT and Hebble spring to mind. Not sure what this proves though!
I loved Phil's story about WW2 origins (though unfortunately I don't buy it!) The continuation of the practice into the 60s and 70s conjures images of long service conductors who, like Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands, were unaware that the war was over. Or Fawlty Towers-like scenes if West German tourists were rash enough to enquire the destination!

Keith

24/03/14 - 16:40

I often think that the wartime tearing up of signposts After all, the Germans were likely to have maps anyway and, if they were unsure of where they were, they only had to ask a native at gunpoint! Two things I always smiled at - Tewkesbury Council chipped 'Tewkesbury' from the foundation stones of their municipal buildings. The other was a clip of workers painting out the names of GWR stations, not in the least effective, because the names were in raised lettering!

Chris Hebbron

25/03/14 - 08:19

Interesting to contrast all this destination perfection with, say, Doncaster. There was one destination window at the front and one at the rear. The name there served for both route name and "number" and was never changed during service- so the bus was either heading from or to the destination shown. Occasionally, there would be a via as with the (oldest) Skellow bus routes, but these excelled for many years with one route called "Skellow via Owston Park" which went to Owston Park, but never Skellow. Finally "via" was blacked out. Elsewhere, the Wheatley Hills Trolley ran in the slipstream of the Beckett Road, presumably to aid switching (or is that frogging?) and so for the benefit of the short of sight and not colour blind, its blind was in red on black (not the clearest pairing). Did all this cause a problem? I don't think so- people just knew- or of course the conductor would tell you.

Joe

25/03/14 - 08:19

Puts me in mind of the quote from the immortal Bernard Miles, regarding the lately departed Billy Collets : "Haa, an' 'e always 'ad a hanswer, you know, no matter who 'e was atalkin' to. You couldn't catch 'im out. I remember when 'e got a job as a railway porter acrorse at Cheddington; durin' the war, you know, when they took down all the signs an' labels an' that off everything, so as we shouldn't know where we was. Well, the first mornin' 'e was on duty he forgot where 'e was. But 'e wasn't catched out, you know. Wasn't catched out. When 'is first train steamed in 'e just 'ollered out, "'Ere you are, for where you're goin', all you in there for here get out."

Stephen Ford

25/03/14 - 08:20

The practice of showing 'Service' started well before the mid 1960s, Keith. One of the worst offenders was the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company, and I have pictures of its vehicles showing this uninformative destination taken in 1959. Crew operated vehicles seemed to be less prone to this disease than OMO (pre PC, of course) buses. I suspect that the reason lay partly with laziness and partly with stiff blind changing gear.

Roger Cox

25/03/14 - 10:09

I'm afraid you may have to "buy" the possibility that the WW2 explanation may have some truth in it.
The practice certainly did not start back in the 1960s or 1970s. In 1952 we holidayed in Gronant in North Wales. We used the Crosville services to go to Rhyl, Prestatyn and Conway. I well remember my father having to ask the conductor to where the bus was bound many times during the two weeks as no destination, just Service or Duplicate, was shown plus the route number.
A similar thing happened when we visited Skegness in 1959 and I seem to remember it was an inspector that came up with the story of wartime secrecy there. The scintilla of truth would be magnified somewhat given the preponderance of bomber airfields in Lincolnshire.

Phil Blinkhorn

25/03/14 - 15:44

I can remember 'RELIEF' displayed but can't remember which the company was.

Roger Broughton

25/03/14 - 17:40

Again, thanks guys for so many replies. It seems like the 1950s examples of buses showing "SERVICE" haven't made it to the web in great numbers, or more likely I've not been looking in the right places! Roger Cox's idea of it being related to OMO makes a lot of sense. My understanding is that there was union resistance to OMO in some places, so sweeteners like drivers not having to fiddle with destination blinds may have been part of the deal?
The reason why I wasn't entirely convinced by the wartime origin account was that surely, resources wouldn't have been diverted to replacing or even just revising destination blinds at that time--setting them to blank or (even better) removing them altogether would have served exactly the same purpose. And why continue to print blinds that way 30 or so years into peacetime? And why only companies belonging to Tilling/THC, which (at least in it's later monolithic form) wasn't around during WW2?
As for the question about "RELIEF", my weekend photo trawl unearthed late 60s/early 70s examples from Hants & Dorset and Wilts & Dorset.

Keith

26/03/14 - 06:31

Crosville certainly did not have OMO double deckers, or to my knowledge single deckers in 1952. As far as resources go, what was deemed essential in wartime was done, at whatever cost, and the psyche behind the decisions was far removed from that of later years, Why would such a practice continue and such destinations as Service and Relief etc. still appear? Two reasons spring to mind. Orders to blind manufacturers, either external or in house just being repeats of previous orders from previous years and not necessarily being modified after nationalisation as regard to content, and the oft repeated money saving device of transferring blinds from vehicles removed from the fleet to new vehicles. It has to be remembered that in many respects bus undertakings were very conservative operations. Change costs money and throughout the 1950s and 1960s every fleet was fighting a rising tide of costs and a falling revenue.

Phil Blinkhorn

26/03/14 - 11:37

Hull for many years did not show a final destination but a number blind on all its routes Leeds crews were supposed to show "Private" when not in service although few actually did. Prior to the adoption of a final destination + number service extras showed the destination and duplicate but no route number which was potentially confusing if more than one route ran to the same place via different routes.

Chris Hough

26/03/14 - 17:57

The Hull system for buses and trolleybuses 85 to 116 comprised a route number screen 30" x 12" and a separate rectangular aperture below the route number box 30" x 6" showing the main road along which the vehicle would travel. Trolleybuses 1 to 84 had a single 3' x 2' box showing the route number and the main road. It was not necessary to change the blind during the day except where duties involved a short working such as trolleybus routes 64 and 68. This was introduced from December 1945 and lasted until the late 1960s when destinations were carried. During the war trolleybus blinds were altered to show a large route number only.

Malcolm Wells

27/03/14 - 06:56

At the opposite end of the debate take a look at this photograph which shows the rear ends of an Eastern National FLF Lodekka (with the 'T' shaped destination layout) together with a Southend lowbridge Massey bodied Leyland PD2 (with destination, via and number blinds). www.sct61.org.uk/

David Slater

29/03/14 - 08:20

Portsmouth Corporation had a strange blind policy pre-war. Despite having a two-piece display, all vehicles in normal service showed the full display in the large box and 'PORTSMOUTH CORPORATION' in the destination box. 'SPECIAL', 'PRIVATE' and 'EXTRA' vehicles displayed the destination in the destination box, with the other, larger, box a white blank! The former policy disappeared post-war, but the latter one continued. With such a potentially good display available, apart from PRIVATE', it was hardly helpful to holidaymakers, as was the confusing policy of have a different letter/number on the way back, from the way going! Here is a link to show the latter kind of blind display

Chris Hebbron

03/04/14 - 07:38

The OPC book on the KSW features numerous examples - among them are:
Wilts & Dorset showing "RELIEF"
Thames Valley showing "LOCAL SERVICE" and a route number

Malcolm Wells

03/10/14 - 07:07

I think the original intention of 'Service' was to be able to show something when the required destination was not on the blind. For example, my own local operator, Bristol, went over to 'T' indicators in the late 1950's. I can never recall seeing 'Service' being shown but having seen Bristol blinds since, it was available on the blinds. I think it was simply a fact that it was company policy that the correct destination should be shown if it was there and this was presumably enforced by traffic inspectors. Service would have been used where, for example, a Bristol Joint Services bus was put out on a country service (as many were on bank holidays) and its intended destination was not on the destination roll. By contrast, nearby operator Western National often showed final destination 'WESTERN NATIONAL', via 'SERVICE NO.' and then just the route number on the 3-track number blind. Eventually this was formalised on the rear displays by painting over the glass of the final and via displays.

Peter Cook

03/10/14 - 11:03

Personal preference I do appreciate - but the "T" displays have always upset me greatly as, particularly with brand new vehicles, they give the impression of "not being designed in" but rather of being a rebuild of some kind. In my own view they disfigure any otherwise handsome bus and I much prefer the "side by side" layout, especially with the usual equal depth glasses to both destination and route number sections. The very worst examples could be found where the original tidy front and rear frameworks were retained as in the standard ECW postwar single deckers, surely one of the most professional looking designs ever and quite ruined by the "T" conversion.

Chris Youhill

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