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Old November 23rd 19, 11:13 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
NY[_2_] NY[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Nov 2019
Posts: 23
Default Jobsworth driver

"Charles Ellson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 23 Nov 2019 12:34:10 +0000 (UTC), wrote:
It took me 4 days to learn to drive a bus - test on the 5th. And that
involves
having to actually steer the vehicle through narrow streets and around
parked
vehicles, not something train drivers have to worry about. So I reckon 2
or 3
days to learn to push a lever backwards and forwards and get a feel for
braking under different loads (no different to an HGV) and a few more
weeks for
for learning signals, basic trouble shooting and some routes. A month
tops.


What sort of vehicles had you driven before then? Were you already used to
driving anything larger than a standard Ford Cortina size of car?

The largest vehicle I've driven was a long wheelbase Mercedes Sprinter van
(from a van hire place when we were moving house), having only driven a car
until then. Reversing it onto our drive was nerve-wracking, even with the
aid of a reversing camera: I'm so used to having the view through the rear
window via a rear-view mirror, in addition to the door mirrors. Remembering
to drive slightly beyond a right-angle turn before starting to steer, so as
to avoid clipping the kerb with the back wheels, was something I *usually*
did right but occasionally misjudged.

By the third day it held no terrors for me, and I even managed to parallel
park it (obviously in a longer slot than for my car!) on the first go -
thank goodness for the passenger door mirror, angled downwards, to see when
the rear wheel is about to touch the kerb, so as to determine when to start
steering hard right to tuck the front end in.

Driving an ordinary car felt very weird afterwards - the steering wheel felt
so high up, when I'd got used to the elbows-resting-on-my-knees position for
steering the van.



But that is nowhere near as extreme as driving a bus which is wider still
and a lot longer. If you only had prior experience of driving a car, then
I'm impressed that you passed a bus test on day 5.