On 29 Mar, 20:49, " wrote:
Gordon, you talk about co-operation and commonsense, but you have not
answered the question I posed as to what would happen if I had boarded
another bus from all the other passengers and left them stranded
without the magic ticket. *

They would have been conveyed on the next bus on the same route as the
short-turned bus. In the unlikely event that the second driver had not
heard a radio message instructing him/her to pick up the transferring
passengers he/she could radio in for verification if he/she was minded
to do so. The mere lack of a transfer slip would not frustrate the
exercise and it would hardly be an earth-shaking experience for any
inspector chancing to board to find that on this occasion there was no
slip - it would not be difficult to establish that such a transfer had
taken place and if a member of staff was felt to be lax he/she might
well be pulled up about it.
Incidentally I wasn't suggesting that the occasional need for buses to
be short-turned in order to slot into gaps in the opposite direction
was relevant to your case which it clearly wasn't. I merely mentioned
this as one of several examples of where it might be logical for a
short-turning driver not to await the arrival of the bus behind.
The tradition of short-notice short-turning has been rife in London
for many years and if it depended on each and every occasion upon a
transfer slip being handed over from first to second driver (or
conductor to conductor in the old days) there would be continual
evidence of the "cure" being considerably worse than the "disease".

--
gordon