'Please excuse dents' says LT
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• London Transport buses with superficial body damage that would normally be taken out of service for repair are being kept in use, as Londoners or visitors to the capital may have noticed. This is the full measure of the effects on London buses of the serious national shortage of spare parts, which is revealed in the April issue of the London Transport Magazine Slightly damaged buses which are otherwise mechanically and structurally in sound condition have to remain in service to cover for buses which are awaiting the arrival of serious delayed spare parts. A 12-month delivery period for ball races and bearings, and nine months' wait for gearbox parts are just two of the difficulties faced by the undertaking's road service engineers.
Mr A. Tame, director of mechanical engineering (workshops and plant), has said that one of the problems is short-batch production. To keep buses on the road they were having to recondition components by metal spraying, plating or welding in uneconomical batches.
Normally, staff would work on a batch of 12 half-shafts, for example, but in the present situation in order to relive an acute shortage they might deal with only three or four at a time. Many parts which would normally be scrapped are being reconditioned.
In extreme cases, garage staff have cannibalized spare parts from buses out of service for other reasons. Mr Henry Cromack, rolling stock engineer, who is in the front line of the battle to find buses for the services, comments that it is rather like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
No class of vehicle operated by LT has escaped the spares shortage crisis. Double-deck RTs and RMs and single-deck RFs, MBs and SMs have been affected to varying degrees. Mr Tame blames several contributory factors. Delivery headways for materials have been extended—in the case of bearings from four months to a year—and there is no hope of closing the gap created for some considerable time, he warns.
However, the combined efforts of the rolling stock, workshop and supplies staff have been considerable, and on average less than one bus per garage is out of service due to the spares shortage.