Pictures of bendies from me. And stories to tell from my
visit to where I used to live at.
Bendy blocking bendy, which in turn was blocking the road. Why?
Because of WRI SLs' habit of leaving the bus at the bay while
reporting to the control station. It's a common scene across most
interchanges, but particularly bad at WRI as practically EVERY SL
does that. The result? This picture shows a bus held up by such an
act, the SL who was blocked was furiously honking away as honks
came from the buses behind that were blocked.
Think this is an isolated case of how troublesome bendies are?
Think again. The flash of bus at the extreme right is from a bus
that is inching its way past the bendies. Low lighting at night
meant that any small movement = blur = appears fast. If anything,
look at how the bendy that was blocking the way cooperated by
parking as close as possible to the 1st bus, and how tight the
space was left for the 3rd bus to pass.
Bendies bendies everywhere. Parked here there everywhere. I
lived at Woodlands till 1999 and I was appalled at what had
happened to WRI. Chaos everywhere.
The SL hogging bus-bay problem had always been there since day
1. But the problem has gone out of control with the influx of
bendies (1999 saw only box bendies) and the increased fleet size
and crowds. Mind you, the last picture was taken at 9pm. There were
plenty of bus-lots outside, but nobody wants to walk the 200m to
and 200m fro to the main part of the interchange, hence all the
haphazard parking.
******
And then my 169 came, I was glad. I looked forward to a ride on
0405, but I regretted it almost immediately.
SMRT woes
I left the bus, 812G, at Yishun because I was very sure that the
bus wasn't going to make it to AMK. It's very normal for many buses
to make grinding sounds with the driving axle, but this one was
grinding and making intense vibrations that suggest that something
was EXTREMELY wrong with the axle.
The gears were failing to engage all the time, and you guys like
the ZF yowling right? Maybe you would love this bus. The cat-calls
indicate gear-switch, and this one was whining, screaming, howling
all the time as the gearbox hunted all the gears and then failed to
engage ANY of them.
I honestly feared for my life as the bus went up a hill and
friggin lost its gear and started slowing all the way to a crawl
before the SL who was desperately feathering his throttle to coax
the bus to move on managed to engage 2nd.
I have sat in lorries with problematic gearboxes that went from
60 to -10 and this was a repeat of a nightmare. I had enough and
alighted at Yishun to take the video posted above. I am sorry that
my video cut off half-way due to lack of memory, but listen at the
end. First the bus failed to engage 1st. Then the bus failed to
engage 2nd and the RPM sky-rocketed.
And what was more amazing, the SL did not declare break-down! By
comparison, SBST BCs usually declare break-down because this is
potentially dangerous.
P.S: To add insult to injury, I pressed the bell, and it did not
work. I pressed another bell and it didnt work either.
smlj.....luckily it was Yishun Int and many people needed to get
down anyway.
Kinda reminded me of my experience with bells on the OC500,
except I was at the front, and there was NONE. I got fed up and
told the nice SL that I wanted to get down at the next stop
instead.
Another prove of SBST's bus maintenance is way better than the
SMRT's.
