Re: BUS, BOBBY, TRAM.
Posted: Sun 19 Mar, 2017 11:54 am
This has reminded me of something that happened in and around Rounday Park on Children's Day 1975. That was when a growing number of people went by car, but LCT still laid on special buses.
There were bad traffic problems caused by drivers having to queue to pay for entry to car parks, with the tailbacks out onto the main roads, but that was nothing compared with what was to come when there was a really heavy hail storm. When it started I was watching the arena from Hill Sixty as the different groups of schoolchildren danced into the arena. I remember the music over the loudspeakers was "The Entertainer." With water pouring into the arena the children kept on dancing in until somebody took charge of the situation and announced something like "Get those children under shelter." From being warm sunshine one minute, the weather was really bad. Somebody died when they were struck by lightning. All the people who had queued to get in - some still queuing - wanted to get out. The roads were gridlocked but in those days plenty of people had come by bus and the special services intended to get them home had naturally been organised for much later in the day. LCT had a lot of flexibility and soon the bus inspectors had organised a change in plan. Unfortunately, the gridlock preventing drivers leaving hampered buses arriving. Police on foot tried to carve out a bus lane up the middle of Prince's Avenue. In the crowds queueing for a bus outside the park gates near where the OP's pictures were taken, somebody collapsed in the crush. The same crush stopped the ambulance getting to him and a stretcher was improvised from the long backseat of a bus to get him to the ambulance although the officers carrying him had to force a way way through because people were desperate to get to the buses.
(I didn't witness all of this: some comes from the accounts of others who were there with me.)
There were bad traffic problems caused by drivers having to queue to pay for entry to car parks, with the tailbacks out onto the main roads, but that was nothing compared with what was to come when there was a really heavy hail storm. When it started I was watching the arena from Hill Sixty as the different groups of schoolchildren danced into the arena. I remember the music over the loudspeakers was "The Entertainer." With water pouring into the arena the children kept on dancing in until somebody took charge of the situation and announced something like "Get those children under shelter." From being warm sunshine one minute, the weather was really bad. Somebody died when they were struck by lightning. All the people who had queued to get in - some still queuing - wanted to get out. The roads were gridlocked but in those days plenty of people had come by bus and the special services intended to get them home had naturally been organised for much later in the day. LCT had a lot of flexibility and soon the bus inspectors had organised a change in plan. Unfortunately, the gridlock preventing drivers leaving hampered buses arriving. Police on foot tried to carve out a bus lane up the middle of Prince's Avenue. In the crowds queueing for a bus outside the park gates near where the OP's pictures were taken, somebody collapsed in the crush. The same crush stopped the ambulance getting to him and a stretcher was improvised from the long backseat of a bus to get him to the ambulance although the officers carrying him had to force a way way through because people were desperate to get to the buses.
(I didn't witness all of this: some comes from the accounts of others who were there with me.)