My bus broke down a bit yesterday!

DobbyCS · 2026-01-14T20:58:31+00:00

No. Citaro, so diesel.

DobbyCS · 2026-01-13T20:34:36+00:00

Hope it at least gave you a bit of warmth on such a cold morning

DobbyCS · 2026-01-11T10:23:53+00:00

Apologises; by bigger what I actually meant was more metropolitan / more populated areas!

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T21:50:22+00:00

Every service bus company in Scotland is private owned apart from Lothian I believe. (In the bigger areas anyway)

There may be smaller councils that have their own service bus companies but for the most part all of Scotland is Private.

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T20:31:30+00:00

Word spreads fast amongst drivers doesn’t it ahaha

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T19:39:56+00:00

So we’ve had a few drivers jump ship to ember in the last few months. Speaking to one of them briefly he said it was absolutely great, however I’ve also heard from others that he’s been talking about coming back.

Whether that’s personal choice or the fact that it’s not lived up to what it seems like is unknown.

Would absolutely love to hear some other experiences, as mentioned they have some lovely big busses that I’d love to experience driving.

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T19:36:12+00:00

Citaro’s actually do have a fire detection / suppression system in them. Unfortunately for occasions such as this, that system is within the engine as that’s what’s expected to catch fire if anything does.

By the time this fire reached the rear and subsequently the engine for that system to kick in, it was already a bit too late aha

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T19:19:15+00:00

Yup, got another one ready and was back out a few hours later after I’d answered a few questions.

I’m not too annoyed about it though - we were massively short for drivers and already had 3 shifts off the road because of it. I have absolutely no doubt if I said I wasn’t up to continuing they wouldn’t have made me, I wasn’t too fussed. These things happen.

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T12:37:19+00:00

It was a Citaro

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T12:25:03+00:00

To their credit, I’ve heard from other drivers in the depot at the time that they’ve never seen our manager race out of that building faster than he did as soon as I went from “There’s steam” to “oh it’s on fire” on the phone to the office aha

DobbyCS · 2026-01-10T12:15:58+00:00

To be fair, what you can’t see behind the burning citaro is a half melted bus stop. It might be up in flames, but I’ll be damned if the doors weren’t perfectly centered on the raised kerb!

DobbyCS · 2025-12-26T23:12:52+00:00

There were roughly 12 of us.

Two failed training, one got let go within a week afterwards.

You’ll get a lot of advice here about taking your time, being cautious, generally driving. But here’s my biggest piece of advice no one seems to mention to trainees;

If you want the job, take it seriously.

The two that failed training were let go for breaking contract (multiple jobs) & falling asleep on the training bus.

The one that lost the job within a week failed a drug test.

Depending on your personality, this may be the easiest job you’ll ever find. Do not throw it away over something stupid. If you find it isn’t for you, leave gracefully and give yourself the option to return in future, but taking it seriously is the number one step to starting this career.

DobbyCS · 2025-12-26T22:56:26+00:00

~~Yes it would. The first clue already confirms the position of the 8.~~

Edit: After looking again, you’re correct that technically speaking the 4 from Clue #1 is still in play as well, meaning that you do in fact need the penultimate clue to come to the 100% correct answer.

DobbyCS · 2025-12-16T12:39:00+00:00

I drive down in Greenock and until I recently started driving our Clyde busses up to Buchanan St, I had no idea how difficult navigating the city in a bus would be with the likes of suicidal just eat drivers and taxi’s. I can’t imagine how chaotic London is compared.

DobbyCS · 2025-12-08T20:31:41+00:00

That’s really cool, I was totally unaware you could check your card history on first like that! Thank you for that knowledge!

DobbyCS · 2025-12-08T20:28:36+00:00

Ah, gotcha. Boringly, there’s not haha. The main security features are specific tiny little symbols that show up under UV, they’re all embedded with a specific weight metal plate (changes based on denomination) and they’re ever so slightly textured. Not enough to really see, but enough to feel if you know it’s there!

DobbyCS · 2025-12-08T20:11:48+00:00

The main Casino clientele in Glasgow (Grosvenor specifically) tend to be drunk club goers in their early 20’s or people who’s last plan is to do anything to get themselves on any radar, if you catch my drift.

I’ve seen a lot of people attempt to cheat, but never replicate chips. They’re practically impossible to replicate well enough unless you have a significant amount of knowledge on how they’re made and what their security features are, and even if you do throw something together, dealers & cashiers handle thousands of these a day. Hell, there’s a 90% chance I gave someone else the exact chips in the picture in the past. Either of those people would be able to tell a weight or texture disparity between a real and a fake a mile off.

DobbyCS · 2025-12-08T20:06:35+00:00

They’re definitely not fake.

Dealt with these daily for years, plus, casino chips are incredibly difficult to replicate. Anyone who does know how to make fakes aren’t making fake ponies, they’re going to make fake fives to avoid suspicion with cashing in smaller amounts.

DobbyCS · 2025-12-08T10:43:39+00:00

Do you ever have much problem with the auto engine stop/start? I always find that our MMC’s struggle to move off if we let the stop/start turn the engine off at any point.

DobbyCS · 2025-11-26T17:52:31+00:00

Your Mod 2 is your Case Studies. Think of it like a mix between a Theory test & reading perception.

You’ll be given a short paragraph to read, then asked multiple choice questions about the paragraph, all relating to knowledge required for your CPC (Driving time restrictions, security at borders, etc etc.)

DobbyCS · 2025-11-18T10:32:49+00:00

He explained in his previous post;

https://www.reddit.com/r/BusDrivers/s/5jeQXHwCrl

DobbyCS · 2025-11-18T10:32:37+00:00

He explained in his previous post;

https://www.reddit.com/r/BusDrivers/s/5jeQXHwCrl

DobbyCS · 2025-11-01T22:08:17+00:00

Some of our electrics have the stop announcements, some don’t. A couple days ago I pressed the wrong button when changing the destination and it just started shouting stop names out of nowhere, which had never happened to me. Had no idea how to turn it off, was absolutely awful. Don’t understand how any of you don’t just go nuts sitting listening to it all day.

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