IT seemed like an appalling tragedy when a trolley-bus hit a lamp post and toppled on to its side, completely blocking a roadway.

Charlie Pennington was among the first on the scene but was relieved to find that there had only been two passengers aboard and both appeared uninjured.

A bus driver himself, Charlie takes us back to the mid-to-late 1950s in recalling that moment of terror.

The accident occurred just before the Owls Nest pub at Haydock. “I was driving, about ten yards away, when it suddenly happened. I jumped out of my cab and opened the emergency door of the top deck of the overturned bus. Luckily, there were only two people inside and both were unhurt as far as I can remember.”

The driver of the crashed bus, who also escaped, was a friend and Charlie, from Derbyshire Hill Road, Parr, doesn’t wish to name him.

Here’s how the accident happened. As he was nearing the Owls Nest, the driver’s cashbag fell off the shelf at the side of him. While still moving, he bent down to pick it up and didn’t spot the lamp post.

“It was a sight I’d never seen before and I have never heard of anything like it since.”

Charlie dwells on his time as a driver. “I now read a lot of complaints about buses being late and of unfriendly staff and graffiti. I can honestly say that this would have been impossible in the 1950s and 60s.”

An inspector would board the bus four or five times in a shift and all the crews were smartly dressed and polite. That was then “part and parcel of the job.”

And Charlie signs off enthusiastically: “It was a great job and great times!”