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Former bus driver Garry Baillie’s dreams were dashed when he had a heart attack.
So the Maidstone man Mr Baillie has settled for the next best thing - making remote-control buses!
“I started a long time ago when I was living in Canada,” said the 50-year-old, who moved to the UK in 2000 and now lives with his wife, Sharon.
“I had a heart attack in 2014.
"I was a bus driver over there and I wanted to become one in the UK but, when I had my heart attack, my career was pretty much over, because I couldn’t live with myself if I had killed a bus-load of people.”
Mr Baillie hoped to work for Arriva, undergoing training, prior to his medical episode.
While doing the job is something he feels is no longer possible, he has made a range of Arriva remote-control buses - 11 in total - and even action figures which replicate its staff.
“It is like a mini museum in the house,” said the man from the Ringlestone area.
“I just started it as a hobby to do in my spare time. Now I’m not working, it has got bigger because I don’t have much to do.
“It takes about three days to do it all.”
On where his love for the vehicle comes from, he said: “I always thought it was quite neat how quite a small person could drive this big 40ft bus.
“So that is why I applied.”
Mr Baillie, who uses buses almost daily, doesn’t work at the moment and lives with a range of learning disabilities.
But he added: “I try to not let that beat me.
“Someone told me ‘you have a disability, so you can get help’, but I didn’t want that. People would label me.
“I never took that advice of getting extra support until I had a heart attack.”
