BEING PREPARED
"Prepare well and the battle is half won"
'Omnibus' records the passing of events at the Museum but rarely goes into the detail of their organisation and the preparation required by all departments to ensure they run as smoothly as possible. This edition therefore looks more closely at the last three major events of the year. Two were events days at the Museum while the third, the D9 tour, is covered elsewhere in this edition.
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Views from the Midland Red Day |
The Rear Engined Rally was again held on August Bank Holiday Monday and Midland Red Day on October 29th. You may think that all we need do is place a few ads, run a couple of buses and you've got a rally while, for Midland Red Day, surely we've got it sewn up without doing anything? This may be true but it is not a recipe to encourage owners and visitors to return. Somehow you have to meet everybody's expectations and, if possible, exceed them.
Preparation for both events started a year ago when the 2000 programme of events was finalised. Enquiries from free publicity sources, such as Buses magazine's annual rally calendar, are required early and the amount of interest generated by our website cannot be underestimated. These enquiries not only want a list of events but also need to know details such as admission prices. As soon as the info is in the public domain, we have to be ready for any enquiry.
The Rear Engined Rally especially encouraged vehicle entries - indeed the event depended on them. Evolution of an entry form was an early priority and this included sales stand charges (other rally organisers, please note!). Many visitors find a good selection of sales stands an important feature of an event like Rear Engined Rally. We dropped the price for stands accompanying vehicles but, ironically, if you charge too little for stands you get too many for the number of visitors on offer which then upsets the stallholders, not to mention our own shop. Getting the stand/visitor ratio right is a difficult balancing act but we got it about right this year. An event relying so heavily on visiting vehicles and the people aboard them cannot depend simply on free methods of advertising. Decisions had to be made on how much should be spent on promoting the event, when and where the adverts should be placed and then producing an eye catching advert. Attracting so many outside vehicles meant the Museum site was too small so negotiations took place to secure additional all weather parking land. Fortunately Britannic Assurance plc were kind enough to make one of their car parks available again. A significant decision this year was to get all entries on the Museum site as some owners had commented in the previous two years that they felt too far away from the centre of things when they were parked elsewhere. Britannic was thus used for car parking only which allowed our normal car park to be turned again into a bus station.
Entries were now flowing in and it was time to circulate the detail. All the vehicle entrants and stall holders needed information such as times, how to get to us without losing their roofs and admission arrangements for passengers. This was an endeavour to get them to collect the cash before arrival and thus reduce delay at the entry barrier. Free entry for driver and conductor plus a discount for the passengers hopefully gave them a feel-good glow even before they alighted.
Both Rear Engined Rally and Midland Red Day involved massive shunting efforts by volunteers to get appropriate Museum exhibits outside where they could be viewed and photographed. The idea is not new - our line-ups for Birmingham Day have become a BAMMOT tradition and widely admired, attracting considerable publicity over the years. Rear Engined Rally, however, had to accommodate so many visiting vehicles that a plan, showing where every individual bus was to be located, was drawn up a fortnight before the event to convince ourselves that it could be done! This was so successful that the idea was repeated for Midland Red Day. The latter theoretically was easier in that the number of visiting vehicles was rather less but we had specific ideas on how the buses would be arranged and some of them were not fully mobile, involving a lot of difficult work.
Many visitors have high expectations of vehicle rides which are difficult to meet. Basically they want a wide variety, the more the merrier. This was a particular problem for Midland Red Day; indeed this was the first such event since we moved to class VI operation. Decisions on registered bus services have to be made before the season opens when the registration is submitted to the Traffic Commissioner. This has to work with our own vehicle licensing plan which requires relevant vehicles to be prepared for annual test at particular times of the year and then subsequently examined and maintained by our own engineering team to meet the onerous requirements of class VI operation. Engineering volunteers have to work closely with the events organisers and each has to understand and accommodate the others' needs and problems. In the case of these two events, we needed to have rear-engined and Midland Red buses available at the right times and, happily, this was achieved in full.
To the registered journeys can be added free rides kindly offered by other vehicle owners. These need to be spread evenly over the day and times negotiated with the owners. Running cards were therefore drawn up close to the events. For much of Rear Engined Rally, we maintained eight arrivals and eight departures per hour of which half were on the car park shuttle and the remainder to and from other destinations. Our bus station had suffered considerable congestion during the 1999 event but we learned from the causes and ensured we did not repeat them. We resisted the temptation to duplicate departures and each arrival was told on the running card where to park before the next journey. Even with this preparation you can't please everybody. Rear Engined Rally was on a Bank Holiday which is a popular day for non-enthusiasts who expect the opportunity to ride on an older vehicle. Guy 2976 thus made four journeys which attracted a furious complaint from an enthusiast society about the use of a front engined bus!
Liz Potts, as usual, for both days had to gauge the right amount of perishables to keep the cafeteria going all day as well as organise her own staff. The last bit of preparation was to pencil in volunteers for the many jobs on the days.
The Midland Red Day was special because not only was it our first for some time but it was held the day after Phil Hoole's 75th birthday (I hope you didn't want to keep your age a secret, Phil!). Phil has been a loyal and hard working volunteer over many years and is a great Midland Red fan so we were encouraged to do our best - never was the desire to exceed expectations more keenly felt. Phil had no doubt seen a number of things going on but the whole package wasn't put together until the two days before the event. Phil was transported from home in BMMO C1 3301, thanks to the kindness of the owners. When Phil arrived he would have been struck (visually, not physically) by the replica Midland Red wheel-and-tyre motifs placed over the entrances to the lower hall where the door pillars had recently been repainted green. These two actions gave the hall a passable resemblance to the former Ludlow garage although, ironically, our building is four times larger. Vehicles that had not seen the light of day for years had been brought out with the D7 arguably attracting most comment. The 1685 Group had put the finishing touches to the front end of the LD8, indeed the top half of the windscreen was refitted as the event progressed! The LD8 stood at the entrance to the hall, new chromework gleaming, a position which largely disguised the fact that the rest of the bus was still under restoration.
The Midland Red Day opened to sunshine but bad weather had been predicted which closed in around lunchtime. Putting away the vehicles was a dreadful job but a plan to park the vehicles up for their winter hibernation, including parking them nose inwards or outwards depending on battery access, was followed despite the appalling conditions. As the volunteers cursed the heavy rain and high winds, little did they know they were working through the beginning of the biggest storm in the Midlands for half a century. Thankfully the visitors came early, giving us the most successful pre-hibernation day recorded so our efforts were not wasted, but many of them understandably left earlier than normal.
You will have gathered that both these events required not only a lot of effort, in some areas over many months. Above all it required team effort with everybody working to the agreed plans. An individual throwing 'wobblies' is quite capable of reducing an event to a shambles. A tribute, therefore, is deserved to all the volunteers for all their various efforts and undoubted hard work, not only for these two events but for the whole season.
Malcolm Keeley
Chapel Lane, Wythall, Worcs B47 6JX
Tel : 01564 826471 e-mail us
A registered educational charity no 507191
