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Charles Greystock
Page 57
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• Charles Greystock, who has just been
appointed mechanical engineer after 32 years with London Transport, began his career at Charlton Tram Works back in 1941, following in his father's footsteps. In those days no sophisticated tools were needed, he told me -"the only thing we really required was a 10Ib hammer". The situation is much changed today for the man who is now responsible to LT's.road services engineering manager for the day-to-day maintenance of 6000 buses based at 68 garages around London.
Charles Greystock's objective is simple to state: to maintain high servicing standards at low servicing costs. Not so easy to achieve, however, when it means co-ordinating the work of 16 divisions and 4000 men, while ensuring fleet availability to meet passenger demand.
Like most of his contemporbries he has had to combine work with study — he is a chartered engineer and a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The practical side of his career has taken him into most facets of passenger transport and he now describes himself as a jack-of-all-trades rather than a specialist in a particular field.
If he has any bias then it is towards
training. Charles feels that the effort which industry has made for young people in recent years has been fully justified by result. Perhaps not uncharacteristically he has taken on the chairmanship of LT's training group.
His approach to servicing is from a managerial rather than a pure engineering point of view and he has long since adopted serving intervals by time rather than mileage. He has an open-minded approach to new technology. On the one hand he dismisses air suspension as unnecessarily complicated and on the other he has been involved in the development of an underbody washing machine which is computer programmed.
Sitting so near to the top of such a huge empire, Charles might be excused if he were to lose sight of his main function of helping to maintain a service which is acceptable to the passengers. He keeps himself in touch with the passengers by riding in buses as often as possible and believes that commuters will plump for regularity of service before comfort. "They can accept a crowded bus on a cold wet morning," he says, "but not a laze one."
Charles' leisure time is spent with his wife and two children or in applying his engineering expertise on how to move scenery at his local theatre in which he takes an active interest.
G.G.