Denis O'Neill - All in a day's work - Jobs - Translink

(extract taken from Spring 2008 Expresslines)

1. When did you join the company?

I joined Citybus in 1983 and joined the Tour Pool in 1989 as one of the team of Citybus Tours drivers based at Short Strand Depot. I was asked if I would like to drive the Mobility Bus as I had worked with elderly and disabled people and I was happy to do so.

2. What is the mobility bus that you currently drive?

The Mobility Bus, better known as 361 Bus, due to its registration number DXI 3361, has been specially modified to carry up to 14 wheelchair users as well as seating over 20 able-bodied passengers. The private hire 361 Bus gives nursing homes and other organisations a chance to take groups of both wheelchair using and able-bodied people out together on trips. It is very busy all year around, but particularly busy in the summer months and in the run up to Christmas with shopping trips and Christmas dinners, lunches and parties.

3. What do you enjoy most about your current role as mobility bus driver?

Arriving in the bus it’s great to see smiles on peoples’ faces who thought that as they got older or because of their disability they would be confined to nursing homes or day centres, but they’re able to get out on the bus to see places they had visited in their younger days.

4. Can you describe how your passengers feel about their trips on this specially modified bus?

At all the care centres, nursing homes, church groups and other regular user groups of the 361 Bus, people always ask me to thank Translink for having such a bus to enable them to get out and about, and for bringing a bit of joy back into their lives.

5. Is it true that you recently met your two oldest passengers to date?

I was amazed recently when it struck me that having driven 361 Bus for 18 years that I had for the first time met two people who were over 100 years old – and also on a trip in June another lady who was two weeks away from her 100th birthday!

6. Can you tell us about your first encounter with a centegenarian?

In August I met a truly remarkable man, Donald Sloan when I went to Pond Park Care Centre to pick up a party of Senior Citizens to take them to Newcastle for the day. When I arrived the party for the trip were waiting, surprised to see a big bus that was able to take on 12 wheelchairs. When I thought I had everyone on board, wheelchairs clamped in, music switched on and getting ready to go, Mr Sloan was brought out in a wheelchair. I told the staff that I didn’t have any room for another wheelchair. But Mr Sloan got up out of the chair and walked on to the bus saying he wasn’t sitting in that all day! A member of staff asked me what age I thought he was and I replied, ‘a very sprightly mid-to-late eighties’. Their reply was that he was in his 101st year! My heart near missed a beat but I was glad that Mr Sloan and others were still able to use the bus to get out and about. During the day Mr Sloan told me a lot of stories about himself and his life and it gave me great pleasure to talk to him. Born in 1907 he put his long life down to being brought up properly by his mother, as his father had been killed in 1917 during the First World War. He never smoked or took alcohol and kept himself fit by training with Craigavad and Distillery Football Club, which his father had won medals for before the War.

7. And how did you meet your second centegenarian?

Thinking I had met the oldest person to use the Mobility bus, I got another shock in September when I went to the Carnalea Care Centre near Bangor to collect a group for a trip to Exploris and Portaferry. A lady by the name of Mrs Agnes Scott boarded the bus and I was amazed when staff told me Mrs Scott was in her 102nd year!