The Bus Era in Industrial Districts.
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THE Londoner, having used buses as long as he can remember, finds some difficulty in appreciating the
• tremendous change the bus era has brought about in different parts of the provinces—the industrial districts, for instance. If he makes occasional visits there he will hear and see much of this development. Even so, many Interesting aspects of it would escape cursory observation.
One might begin by noticing the various groups of • people using the buses in the early morning. It is difficult to realize that a large proportion of these mill girls, engineers and factory workers had no choice but to walk until four or five years ago. Many of the villages round about industrial towns are off the map so far as trains and trams are concerned. Even where a village has its railway station, the walk from the one to the other may take as long as hall an hour. Some viilagos have a woollen Will or two, thereby providing employment for a number of the womenfolk, but, generally speaking, the girls in the villages have to go to town to work, and, until the buses came, many of them had no alternative but to walk. In fine weather this might be tolerable, if no more ; in winter it must have been wellnigh unendurable, both for the men and the women. The factory, when they reached it, took on the aspect of a place of refuge, and even then clothes and footwear had to dry as best they could.
Now, however, where once these things were accepted as a matter of course, a new generation knows only by hearsay of a time when people walked four or five miles to work. A mere man, who knows nothing of how women's fashions are regulated, ventures to suggest that the bus era in factory districts is partly responsible for improvements in women's dress in these places. Walking some miles to work calls for strong shoes and serviceable hose, but nowadays the mill girl goes by bus and follows fashion with more confidence. Bar shoes and artificial silk stockings are now part of her workaday attire. Moreover, the people who live in villages can now go to town for the evening to a much greater extent than formerly. This, too, has had its effect both on mind and personal appearance.
The Bus and the Midday Meal.
The office people who travel to town between 8 and 9 in the morning are no different from those in any other place. Their comings and goings are somewhat different, however, when compared with the habits of Londoners. Most of them go home for dinner at midday, as also do many of the factory workers. One might get into a bus in town about noon and find it quickly filling up with people from offices, shops and factories of all kinds. The factory workers are mostly going to the outskirts of the town ; the office workers (having more time) to village-suburbs further out. Thus, the coming of the bus has made it possible for a much larger number of people to get home at midday.
In the same bus there may• be miners going to their work far underground ; what a difference is the prospect before passengers in the same bus! The special buses which only convey miners to their work and home again have now become a commonplace feature in mining districts, but there are still a large number who travel by public-service vehicles. Women may go to town for afternoon shopping at the same time as miners are going home after the early shift, and when there is plenty of room for everybody, this works out quite well. When the bus is crowded, however, clothes may be spoiled by a little thoughtlessness.
Elastic Travelling Facilities for Miners.
To the visitor, these miners are an interesting study. Young boys, just out of school, and men of all ages up to old men who have spent all their working life at the pit, they leave the bus at the pithead and go to the „lamp stores to draw their lamps before going below. One cannot be among them for long without realizing the strangeness and danger of their work. Those one saw going to work at midday will be seen again about 9 o'clock, after one has spent the evening in town. To a class of workers like this the bus is obviously a great boon. Pits are frequently in out-of-the-way places, and this, coupled with unusual hours of work, requires that travelling facilities shall be elastic. Another aspect put to the writer by a miner was that better means of travelling have given the miner more freedom in his choice of where he shall work. 'Previously, he worked at the pit nearest his village ; now he may work some distance away should he so desire.
All this goes to prove how the bus may serve as an index to local conditions and characteristics. The Londoner, accustomed as he is to the ways of a highly developed city, finds much to learn in a place where prime industries, like mining and agriculture, are always in evidence. Earning a living is, for many of these people, a daily struggle with nature, yet here again the bus, by bringing town and village closer, gives something new to each. The villagers find pleasure in going to town ; the townsfolk can more easily, get to the country. F.W.P.
WHILST the design of he .commercial vehicle chassis has been advancing in many directions, so rapidly indeed that various components have been improved out of all knowledge since the termination of the war, springing systems remain basically very much the same as they were 20 years ago. This might not be considered as being of much importance were it not for the fact that the road speeds of all classes of vehicle have increased considerably and, concurrently, in the passenger-carrying field, the people who pay for transport evince an ever-rising standard of requirements in riding comfort. It seems, therefore, that an improvement in the methods employed to insulate vehicles from road shocks is long overdue, and has, in fact, become more urgent than any other chassis change at the present time.
It may be that the commercial vehicle makers and users were lulled into a state of false security by the assurance that, with the coming of peace, roads would improve rapidly and would soon reach such a state of perfection as to make springing improvements unnecessary. By now, however, it is fairly evident that no sweeping change in the average surface conditions is to be expected for years to come, even in the case of trunk roads.
The Relationship of Roads to Suspension.
It is also important to remember, as we have stated again and again, that the poor condition of many roads is directly attributable to the inadequate springing of the vehicles which pass over them. Every minor obstruction which a wheel encounters gives rise not only to a blow felt by the chassis, but also a punch exerted by the wheel on the road. This is the reason why a much-used road has only to reach a moderately bad condition for extremely rapid deterioration to set in thereafter.
Stronger roads with harder surfaces are undoubtedly needed to withstand modern traffic conditions, and semiplastic carpetings should be considered obsolete, owing to their propensity to become wavy and rutted, particularly in hot weather. The commercial vehicle maker, however, cannot shift all the responsibility on to the road engineer, but should endeavour, rather,-to develop suspension systems which will safeguard not only his own vehicles, but also the roads which they use.
The increasing use of the six-wheeled vehicle—a type fostered by this journal from the outset—is, of course, a step in the right direction, owing to the reduction in weight per axle made possible by the increased number of wheels. Much more remains to be done, however, in the matter of suspension systems.
It is important to realize that this matter concerns goods-carrying vehicles as well as the passenger-carrying type, because, apart from the damage which the load May suffer, a poor suspension system permits shocks and vibrations to be transmitted which have a most damaging effect upon the chassis itself. Screwed