Ribble park royals

[teenagewasteland]

RE: Ribble park royals
I always liked the orange seats on the later batch!! It made the interiors look a little more airey and modern for some reason. Upstairs, though, the seats were sometimes replaced by plain orange hard plastic...things, in a vain attempt to discourage vandalism. I still remember the top deck of a PR AN68 burnt out at Waterloo Interchange one day in the mid-80s.

The gear stick was mounted on its' own pedestal, the same as a Leopard, as opposed to possibly every other rear-engined bus on Merseyside which shared the gear-selector with the steering column. Because drivers' left foot had nothing to do, they would often rest it on top of the front windscreen grill.

Bootle's Atlanteans were fitted with PTE Ultimate ticket machines, whereas Aintree still used the Setright ticket dispensers - probably because once a bus left the Merseyside boundary there were about 1,000 different fare types to whatever destination they were going. Oddly enough, this never bothered the Bootle-operated 351 to Ormskirk. I still remember getting on at Ormskirk bus station one day and paying a child 13p ticket back to Waterloo. Driver didn't seem to care.

Vandalism on the L81 Thornton-Skelhorne Street service meant Atlanteans that worked the route were fitted with a security door to prevent people going upstairs after 7pm. When an Atlantean was unavailable, or a driver refused to take one out, the route was operated by either National 2s or ancient REs borrowed from Aintree. A special adaptor plate was attached to the Setright fare machine to allow Ultimate units to be used.