What does London's number 65 bus have to hide? OS caught on camera setting fire to '22,000 illegal file(s)!!' Those wondering if perhaps there were nefarious actors at work back in 2016, influencing the electorate, need look no further than some software on a London bus tidying up after itself. It has taken a while for the bork team to uncover it, but the shot taken on the number 65 bus to Richmond back in October 2016 seems …
Back in the day when Red Ken simplified bus ticket prices by introducing zones, you could probably travel further on a 65 than any other bus and stay in one zone.
I don't know why anyone would want to know this.
Happy days, travelling from Kingston to Ealing for a pint or two.
'Took about an hour and a half, IIRC'
I assume that didn't include the wait for the bus to arrive, long bus routes in London can be very unreliable. I know they try and regulate them as best as they can, but I once waited over an hour at Ealing Broadway for a 65 to take to me to a barbecue at a mates house in Petersham.
And of course the first but that arrived was filled up by those who had been waiting more than the hour I had so I had to wait another 20 minutes for the second one.
Damn I was thirsty when I got there.
Who remembers the Petersham Hole? We're going back to 1979 here when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Eh, no the dinosaurs came later.
http://adch.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=3617
No matter, you had to get off the 65 at one side of the Hole, walk around it and catch another 65 at the other side.
London Transport used to claim that long waits and a convoy of buses arriving at the same time was the result of "bunching" on the long routes through Central London.
But I used to get a bus from time to time a couple of stops after a terminus. Over the course of 40 or so minutes I'd see 4 or 5 buses ( same number I wanted) go up to the terminus, a couple of stops away. And nothing coming down for me to get on to. Then they'd appear. Together, in a row.
The usual message is about evening out the gaps in the service.
The interesting one is (or used to be) Hyde Park Corner Eastbound on the Piccadilly Line, which had a thing called Balanced Headway. You'd frequently get a red signal there for quite a while and you'd get the occasional curious passenger asking the driver "why are we waiting here?" The answer was that "We're waiting for a train behind to 'drop on'." The idea was that the number of trains a certain distance behind that train must be greater than or equal to the number ahead of it in order for the train to proceed.
The shortcoming of the scheme was the limited visible counting 'horizon' the system had, it was all done using relays and long cables. With the advent of computer control it was possible to not only increase that horizon, but look at other factors too, such as trains approaching a converging junction in order to aggregate the timings.
It's all we have left! We're interested in railways, underground railways, traction engines, steam ships, clippers and omnibuses because we were instrumental in developing most of them when the rest of the world were using horses.
Aeroplanes (US), hot air balloons (France), Zeppelins (Germany), motor cars (Germany), rockets (Russia/Germany), monocars (Russia), autogyros (Spain), helicopters (Russia) are passing fads which will never catch on. Consequently, they are of no interest to us.
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All the video files are stored encrypted as per TfL spec, and it's normal for such systems to store lots of small files in case of power failure (drivers regularly power cycle the buses to remove fault warnings).
Although much of the CCTV retrieval is now done over WiFi when the bus gets to the garage, in 2016 most retrieval would involve physically removing the hard drive and replacing with another. When the files are pulled from the drive by the CCTV/accident person, the hard drive just gets put aside until it gets swapped with another when CCTV from another bus is requested. I would expect these are just video files and log files with the wrong key and are therefore unreadable or "illegal" in the context of that individual bus.
The very bus I used to go to Kingston uni on in 1999. The whole route. From Ealing Broadway to Kingston. Would then wait outside Waterstones in Kingston waiting to go home, struggling not to fall asleep on the route. Was also the reason I was late for programming lectures each week, because they'd start at 9 and bus would take an hour to get there. I'd also come to realise, I no longer wanted to do programming.
Went recently after not having been there for 17 years. Just went shopping, had to look on the map to find out where I used to wait for the bus. Apparently the Waterstones is moving.
Of no interest to anyone but me but thought I'd air this info anyway :)
I never seemed to have much of a wait for the 65 from what I remember. So much so, and before smartphones to keep me busy. If the first 65 was too busy, I'd wait for the next one. One day I was glad I did. Because I'd sit upstairs at the front. That way I could see all the traffic and see how many were at the next stop so would then know how long you'd be waiting at each stop. Anyway. This one day I waited for the 2nd 65 as first was too packed. It arrived, I got my favourite seat. We got around the one way system heading out of Kingston only to pass the bus I skipped. It had stopped because, sadly, it had hit a school kid that ran out in front of it. I think the kid was alright. Was weird knowing I'd have seen the whole thing if I'd taken that first bus.
I'm hoping someone else remembers this. I've looked all over the Internet and asked on a bus enthusiasts forum but can't find any photos.
Back in the 80s. Probably early 80s, in London the double deckers for some reason would only allow you to get on and off the bus at same door. So from what I remember, and I was only about 6 or 7 when used to catch it as was before my mum could drive, when you got on the base there was a partition down the centre so separate those getting on and off the bus. Anyone else remember this setup?
Also from the 80s you'd pay the driver and he had a machine that had a shoot. When he'd click the till for your change, it would slide down the shoot into the tray. I can't find any references to any of this online and wondering if its one of my recently created false memories I've been having?
"Also from the 80s you'd pay the driver and he had a machine that had a shoot. When he'd click the till for your change, it would slide down the shoot into the tray. I can't find any references to any of this online and wondering if its one of my recently created false memories I've been having?"
We got those on buses run by Tyne & Wear PTE when they went single manned. Not all buses had them and they didn't last long as I recall. They were behind the driver, the idea being that he just took your money then you moved past him to collect your ticket and change while he dealt with the next passenger. I suspect jammed ticket dispensers/printers and/or coin slots caused more delays than the slight boarding speed-up removed. Also chute not shoot.
Edit: Argh, ninja'd re. shoot
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