CHRIS NEWTON relates his experience of driving one of the classic single-deck designs of the past quarter century and urges aspiring preservationists to put it on their shopping list for restoration
I
gained lots of reading up and absorbing of the my PCV (passenger carrying vehicle) licence back in November 2007 after spending approximately a month in the training school where Highway Code was mandatory, as was getting through as many hazard perception clips as possible to prepare me for the real life situations I would face out on the road as a professional bus driver.
The driving was my favourite part, though, as I was lucky enough to do my training in one of Guildford’s finest. I am of course referring to the Dennis Dart, in this case a ‘super low floor’ Dart SLF.
One of the most successful British buses of all time
This was not just a training vehicle to me. It also happened to be the first bus that I ever drove when I turned up on a Saturday lunchtime at Burnley & Pendle’s Queensgate depot in Burnley a couple of weeks before my training was to commence to see if I would make the grade in being able to handle something much bigger than a car.
The bus in which I trained and went on to pa…
