Part 3
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Late 1940s My own recollections of the buses date from the late forties. Several of the busmen lodged in our house and in another house across the street. One of my earliest memories is of lying in my cot listening to men from the night runs coming upstairs and calling men who had to go out on early morning runs. The Clones bus arrived before breakfast time and the bus conductor cleared one end of the kitchen table to count the fares and fill out his waybill which he put in the drawer of the dresser. The conductor's bags were hung on the back of the kitchen door with a float of small change still in it.
Fred Doherty Fred Doherty was the usual conductor on the early morning Clones-Enniskillen run. He had heart trouble and my father insisted he should have cocoa instead of tea at breakfast, which he considered better for him. Fred preferred tea so he had a cup of each put before him and there was a rush to hide Fred's tea if we heard my father on the stairs. Fred died at Easter in 1956, an event which I solemnly recorded in a diary which I kept that year.
The Buses The buses in the fifties were mainly Leylands and were bought new at the London Motor Show which my parents visited every autumn. They were delivered fully built by then with a wonderful innovation - heaters, which were always mentioned in the advertising. I remember the Dodge, the Comet, the Cheetah, the Bedfords, two fifty-four seaters, two thirty-two seater, a thirty-three seater and two Tiger coaches which were 44 seaters, among the biggest single decker buses in Ireland at the time. The pride of the fleet arrived in 1954, a Leyland coach which was the first coach style bus in Ireland. The night it arrived from Belfast a few hundred people came down to Belmore Street and waited for it. I and my brothers and sisters had walked out the road to meet it and rode into town in glory. This coach was reserved for private bookings and was never put into general service. It not only had a heater - it had a wireless!
Routes Routes over the years included the Enniskillen-Bundoran route on the north side of Lough Erne through Kesh and Boa Island, as well as the direct south shore road route, Enniskillen-Pettigo, Cavan-Bundoran, Clones-Bundoran and day trip specials. There was also an Erne bus service operating under my father's cousin Ned Maguire in the Carragallen-Ballinamore area which did day-trips to Bundoran.
Sea Baths The Bundoran Sea Baths provided an extension of the tourist season after the harvest as the country people considered a seabath to be therapeutic and took a day-trip to Bundoran in August or September when the sea was "ripe" from the release of iodine from seaweed into the water. Travers' Baths (owned by Liam Travers' family) and Philips' Baths were still functioning in the fifties and buses were still doing good business bringing country people for a bath. This was especially important for the week-day bus trade as the country people preferred to bath on a weekday.
Parcel Service The buses did a parcel delivery service. Boxes of day-old chicks from the hatchery were regularly stashed in front of our Aga cooker keeping warm until their bus was due to take them out the country. In the days before electricity, when wirelesses had wet batteries, the buses carried batteries to McNulty's bicycle shop in Enniskillen to be re-charged and then delivered them back out the country to their owners. My father once experimented with charging a wet battery on the charger which he used for bus batteries and set the wet battery on fire.
Parcel Bomb The parcel service once led to a close shave for the family. In the IRA fifties campaign a parcel was left in, to be delivered to Swanlinbar British Customs hut and left there for collection by its owner. When the bus returned that way in the evening the parcel had not been collected. The proper procedure was for the parcel to be brought back and left in our kitchen until it could to go out on the bus again next day. However the customs officer said he would hold it in in case someone would come later for it. In the middle of the night the customs hut blew up. The parcel contained a time bomb, which would have been in our kitchen if proper procedures had been followed.
Maintenance The buses were well maintained. They were painted each year, cream, with a brown curl along each side, and an upholsterer came from Belfast to re-upholstered the seats. Conductors were responsible for keeping the buses swept out and garage boys washed and polished the buses on a wash stand at the side of the bus garage. There was a diesel pump and a very old petrol pump which had to be pumped by hand and had two glass bulbs on top. The Ulster Transport Museum got permission to take away this pump in the early 70s but the IRA tried to blow up the bus garage which was then property of the County Council and wrecked the antique pump in the process.
The People Some of the drivers were Johnny Goan, Hughie Quinn, Sonny Harron, Harry McAuley, Eugene Corrigan, Tommy Howe, Packey McGuinness, Packey McIntyre, Paddy Cadden, The mechanic was Jimmy McCombes. Some conductors were Desmond Cox, Spud Murphy, Tom Palmer, Sonny McGovern, Fred Doherty. Office girls were Lena McAuley and Vera Leonard.
The Great Race In the fifties Johnny Goan drove the Dodge, an old Leyland bus which he liked better than the newer bigger buses coming into service. Each Sunday in summer about half a dozen buses left the Diamond in Enniskillen for Bundoran. I always made sure I was on the Dodge because once a bus was fully loaded it joined in the race to Bundoran, an unofficial event involving buses, cars and sometimes the train too where the GNR line ran alongside the road between Belleek and Ballyshannon. If there was a queue of traffic in the Port in Ballyshannon the bus would tear up the Rock and down the other side to get by as there was no Allingham Road then. The Dodge was usually the first bus to reach Bundoran.
Politics Coming down Finner straight was a special moment because as we hurtled along at enormous speed in the shaky old bus the passengers raised a cheer for the Tricolour flying over Finner camp. Also on a political theme - in the early fifties, during a national election, DeValera was due to visit Bundoran on a Sunday night. All the Erne buses lined up opposite the O'Gorman Arms and waited for two hours past departure time to let the Northern passengers have a glimpse of our national hero. We yelled "Up Dev" all the way home that night. However it was more usual for passengers to sing all the way home - the hits of the fifties - Mocking Bird Hill, Irene Goodnight, On Top of Old Smokey, and lots more.
The Bus terminal in Bundoran was at McCloy's Corner, on the sea road. The Bargain King (Cyril Chapman) had his stall there and entertained customers with his witty sales chat while they waited for the buses to go home. Later when road traffic increased, the terminal was beside the Garda Station on Church Road.
Butter and Cigarettes Smuggling of butter and cigarettes from Bundoran was part of the fun of travel and British customs were generally good humoured and did not really try to find any contraband. However Irish customs were nitpicking terrors and searched luggage, bags, even men's hats. Although I travelled on the bus every Sunday (I used to get travel sick so my parents didn't want me in the car) I never saw anyone getting caught smuggling. John Keating was the most feared customs man and was reputed to have searched a baby's napkin.
Takeover The service remained in operation from April 1929 until it was compulsorily acquired by the Ulster Transport Authority on 30 September 1957 as part of a nationalisation policy of all transport services in Northern Ireland. Part of the service which operated in Carragallen Co Leitrim continued under the ownership and management of Edward (Ned) Maguire, (father of Mrs Jim White Danby Ballyshannon) until the mid-sixties. There is an Erne Bus in the Ulster Transport Museum. From photos I have seen I think it might be the Cheetah. However it is not on public display at present.
The Last Night On the last night of the Erne Buses a crowd of well wishers and friends stood with my father at our front door. As each bus pulled in to drop off the last passengers and the conductor with his punch and bag my father waved the driver on up the street to the UTA depot. This went on for hours as each bus returned and a lot of people were crying as the last bus went up the town. My mother stayed in the kitchen making tea for the sobbing busmen who gathered there. Even though their jobs were guaranteed as part of the take over by the UTA, that evening was like a wake for a bus service which became a well-loved part of the lives of people in Fermanagh and South Donegal.
The End
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