11: Trathens Coaches Ltd
From their origins in 1946 as a traditional country independent coach operator, Trathens built up the business significantly during the 1970s with an increasing amount of contract holiday tour work which saw their coaches operating all over the UK and Europe, often in liveries other than their own (which was generally white and red, the red morphing into trendy 1970s stripes as the decade progressed). They’d spotted a gap in the market for using higher-spec coaches and capitalising on the rising demand for people wishing to take a break sur le continent. These were the days of holiday coach shuttles to and from Spain and the south of France – the modern era of cheap, no-frills airlines was still some way off. Trathens had a knack of being quick to spot trends and to take advantage of new opportunities.
The 1970s had already seen the company switch to Volvo chassis - newly available in the UK - usually with standard Plaxton or Duple bodywork but occasionally with the more boldly-styled Continental bodies now being offered by Caetano or Van Hool. No doubt these were intended to be eye-catching and to stand out. Trathens was always looking to keep one step ahead and thus were early pioneers of high-quality, heavyweight coaches with toilets and all mod-cons. Imported coaches were rare at the time; it wasn’t until the end of the 1970s that a wider selection of overseas builders’ bodywork became more readily available in this country, plus full integrals from the likes of MAN, and then from Neoplan and Van Hool. Trathens tried them all!
By the early 1980s they were enthusiastic users of foreign-built coaches, which were generally seen as better built, better equipped and better looking than those offered by the UK builders. Certainly their coaches’ exotic looks made them very distinctive and this, combined with Trathens’ by now white livery with bright red, orange and yellow stripes and bold lettering meant that their visibility was high and their branding strong. As well as full double-deckers, the company was also a keen buyer of what were known as semi-deckers - striking, high-floor coaches with a rear lounge on the lower level, very much a brief early-Eighties fashion but very cool and glamorous at the time and most definitely the height of modernity!
Deregulation of express coach services in 1980 provided another opportunity and saw the company launch daily services from Plymouth and Exeter to London. They weren’t the only ones, of course – Glennline and Wallace Arnold (the latter under the ‘British Coachways’ umbrella) also competed – but Trathens’ huge, brightly coloured, double-deck Neoplan Skyliners with on-board toilets, refreshments, video systems and hostess service were highly visible and attracted most of the attention together with a lot of the bookings. A year or so of strong competition was more than enough for National Express, who were slow off the mark with a high quality offering and a better class of coaches. It would come – known as ‘Rapide’ with high-floor Tigers, the ill-fated Dennis Falcon Vs and double-deck Metroliners – but Trathens had stolen a march and eventually the two operators’ Westcountry to London services were brought together and run jointly. It saw National Express ‘Rapide’ logos added to the sides of Trathens’ Skyliners and Trathens names affixed to the sides of the Falcon Vs and came with the additional advantage of access to Victoria Coach Station, rather than the rather more basic terminus of the now defunct Gloucester Road Coach Station in west London. National Express then leased several Trathens coaches, so it could launch Rapide services elsewhere, such as South Wales and the North East, until its contractors could obtain their own high-spec vehicles.
At the same time, Trathens had a rapidly expanding holiday operation in their own right. They still undertook contract work but a growing proportion of the business was now the ’Trathens Holidays’ coach tour operation and shuttle services to the Med, for which more and more luxuriously appointed coaches were arriving. And arrive they did - in considerable numbers - often staying in the fleet for just a couple of years before being moved on. Come the early 1980s there was next to nothing British-built in the frontline fleet, it was all Neoplan, MAN or Van Hool integrals or Berkhof, Padane and Irizar bodies on Volvo and Mercedes chassis. I say the ‘frontline’ fleet as there was still a small contingent of the old and mundane kept back for the far less exotic local school contracts.
There were other strands of the business too. Trathens were early pioneers in the burgeoning band-bus business which was barely existent in the 1970s but by the early 1980s had started to resemble what we know today, and in 1983 the company cemented its position by buying the Edwin Shirley Bussing business. It was Edwin Shirley, known for the Edwin Shirley Trucking operation which specialised in transporting pop and rock bands’ equipment between venues, who is generally credited with inventing the idea of band-buses.
There were also operations in London. The Culturebus ‘hop-on, hop-off’ sightseeing tour business was acquired in 1984 and even prior to that, a growing demand for holiday tour pick-ups for groups flying into Heathrow and Gatwick had seen a depot opened in Brentford, complete with an additional engineering base. It meant that Trathens usefully had facilities at each end of the Westcountry to London coach service route.
Not content with that, a further base was opened at Orange, in the south of France. This provided hotel, restaurant and maintenance facilities, not just for Trathens’ own coaches and drivers but for those of other operators too.
Back in Devon, the expanding fleet had needed a larger base and in 1982 the operation moved from Yelverton to a spacious complex based on Roborough House just outside Plymouth. Purpose-built workshops, a large car park and ‘departure lounge’ facilities for coach tour passengers suggested that the company was set-up for the long-term. However, it was not to be. Rapid expansion during the recession of the early 1980s, rising costs and a sudden down-turn in demand for coach holiday shuttles and tours conspired to bring down a number of coach operators who were big players in these markets, not just Trathens but the likes of Derek Randell, Roman City and Cotters too. Trathens had tried to downsize and they’d tried to sell off Roborough House but simply ran out of time and money. In September 1985, the bubble burst and the receivers were called in.
Bit by bit, the assets were sold. The London operations and the Starider band bus business went to Len Wright, Culturebus went to Ensign and the Rapide services went to Yelloway. As it happened, the latter (and its successors) would keep the Trathen name alive for another twenty-four years - even private hire work and the Starider business would be restarted but things could never be the same again.
The depot and workshop facilities at Roborough were sold to Royal Mail and survive today as a Parcelforce site. Roborough House itself is now a care home and neurological centre.
Surprisingly, perhaps, for most of its existence, Trathens had been a partnership, a limited company only being formed in 1984. Looking back, it’s easy to see signs of trouble. New coach deliveries had dried up and those that did arrive were all for the London fleet and being either DAFs with Caetano Algarve or Duple Caribbean bodies, or Bova-Duple Calypsos, were far from the expensive exotica that the company was so well known for. The final new coach was however more in-keeping, being a Neoplan Skyliner but that was almost certainly an insurance replacement for Jonckheere decker A57 OTA which had been destroyed by fire when only two months old.
The days of intensive coach shuttles to the Mediterranean sun-spots were also numbered and arguably this was one key trend which Trathens didn’t spot early enough. Passengers were turning towards air travel, flights were quicker than coach shuttles and airline prices were falling. The early 1980s had also seen much more interest from the authorities regarding policing of drivers’ hours and the introduction of tachographs, which, whilst important from a professional and safety point of view, inevitably restricted operators’ flexibility and added to their costs. Indeed, being fined for tachograph infringements in 1982, was one reason that Trathens had bought the service area facility at Orange in France. Sadly, a fatal accident involving a Trathens coach on the M5, in September 1984, heralded another investigation into the operator’s working practices leading to further fines for drivers’ hours and tachograph offences being levied on the people involved, although by the time this all came to court, the company itself had already gone under.
I don’t have many Trathens photos and the ones I did take were all on a cheap instamatic camera... but anyway here’s Volvo B10M / Jonckheere Jubilee P90, A147 JTA (47), seen in Bampfylde Street in Exeter on 5 June 1984 when around ten months old. This coach passed to Kettlewells of Retford when Trathens ceased and it’s still there in 2017. Two owners from new and it’s now over 33 years old. Amazing!
11: Trathens Coaches Ltd
From their origins in 1946 as a traditional country independent coach operator, Trathens built up the business significantly during the 1970s with an increasing amount of contract holiday tour work which saw their coaches operating all over the UK and Europe, often in liveries other than their own (which was generally white and red, the red morphing into trendy 1970s stripes as the decade progressed). They’d spotted a gap in the market for using higher-spec coaches and capitalising on the rising demand for people wishing to take a break sur le continent. These were the days of holiday coach shuttles to and from Spain and the south of France – the modern era of cheap, no-frills airlines was still some way off. Trathens had a knack of being quick to spot trends and to take advantage of new opportunities.
The 1970s had already seen the company switch to Volvo chassis - newly available in the UK - usually with standard Plaxton or Duple bodywork but occasionally with the more boldly-styled Continental bodies now being offered by Caetano or Van Hool. No doubt these were intended to be eye-catching and to stand out. Trathens was always looking to keep one step ahead and thus were early pioneers of high-quality, heavyweight coaches with toilets and all mod-cons. Imported coaches were rare at the time; it wasn’t until the end of the 1970s that a wider selection of overseas builders’ bodywork became more readily available in this country, plus full integrals from the likes of MAN, and then from Neoplan and Van Hool. Trathens tried them all!
By the early 1980s they were enthusiastic users of foreign-built coaches, which were generally seen as better built, better equipped and better looking than those offered by the UK builders. Certainly their coaches’ exotic looks made them very distinctive and this, combined with Trathens’ by now white livery with bright red, orange and yellow stripes and bold lettering meant that their visibility was high and their branding strong. As well as full double-deckers, the company was also a keen buyer of what were known as semi-deckers - striking, high-floor coaches with a rear lounge on the lower level, very much a brief early-Eighties fashion but very cool and glamorous at the time and most definitely the height of modernity!
Deregulation of express coach services in 1980 provided another opportunity and saw the company launch daily services from Plymouth and Exeter to London. They weren’t the only ones, of course – Glennline and Wallace Arnold (the latter under the ‘British Coachways’ umbrella) also competed – but Trathens’ huge, brightly coloured, double-deck Neoplan Skyliners with on-board toilets, refreshments, video systems and hostess service were highly visible and attracted most of the attention together with a lot of the bookings. A year or so of strong competition was more than enough for National Express, who were slow off the mark with a high quality offering and a better class of coaches. It would come – known as ‘Rapide’ with high-floor Tigers, the ill-fated Dennis Falcon Vs and double-deck Metroliners – but Trathens had stolen a march and eventually the two operators’ Westcountry to London services were brought together and run jointly. It saw National Express ‘Rapide’ logos added to the sides of Trathens’ Skyliners and Trathens names affixed to the sides of the Falcon Vs and came with the additional advantage of access to Victoria Coach Station, rather than the rather more basic terminus of the now defunct Gloucester Road Coach Station in west London. National Express then leased several Trathens coaches, so it could launch Rapide services elsewhere, such as South Wales and the North East, until its contractors could obtain their own high-spec vehicles.
At the same time, Trathens had a rapidly expanding holiday operation in their own right. They still undertook contract work but a growing proportion of the business was now the ’Trathens Holidays’ coach tour operation and shuttle services to the Med, for which more and more luxuriously appointed coaches were arriving. And arrive they did - in considerable numbers - often staying in the fleet for just a couple of years before being moved on. Come the early 1980s there was next to nothing British-built in the frontline fleet, it was all Neoplan, MAN or Van Hool integrals or Berkhof, Padane and Irizar bodies on Volvo and Mercedes chassis. I say the ‘frontline’ fleet as there was still a small contingent of the old and mundane kept back for the far less exotic local school contracts.
There were other strands of the business too. Trathens were early pioneers in the burgeoning band-bus business which was barely existent in the 1970s but by the early 1980s had started to resemble what we know today, and in 1983 the company cemented its position by buying the Edwin Shirley Bussing business. It was Edwin Shirley, known for the Edwin Shirley Trucking operation which specialised in transporting pop and rock bands’ equipment between venues, who is generally credited with inventing the idea of band-buses.
There were also operations in London. The Culturebus ‘hop-on, hop-off’ sightseeing tour business was acquired in 1984 and even prior to that, a growing demand for holiday tour pick-ups for groups flying into Heathrow and Gatwick had seen a depot opened in Brentford, complete with an additional engineering base. It meant that Trathens usefully had facilities at each end of the Westcountry to London coach service route.
Not content with that, a further base was opened at Orange, in the south of France. This provided hotel, restaurant and maintenance facilities, not just for Trathens’ own coaches and drivers but for those of other operators too.
Back in Devon, the expanding fleet had needed a larger base and in 1982 the operation moved from Yelverton to a spacious complex based on Roborough House just outside Plymouth. Purpose-built workshops, a large car park and ‘departure lounge’ facilities for coach tour passengers suggested that the company was set-up for the long-term. However, it was not to be. Rapid expansion during the recession of the early 1980s, rising costs and a sudden down-turn in demand for coach holiday shuttles and tours conspired to bring down a number of coach operators who were big players in these markets, not just Trathens but the likes of Derek Randell, Roman City and Cotters too. Trathens had tried to downsize and they’d tried to sell off Roborough House but simply ran out of time and money. In September 1985, the bubble burst and the receivers were called in.
Bit by bit, the assets were sold. The London operations and the Starider band bus business went to Len Wright, Culturebus went to Ensign and the Rapide services went to Yelloway. As it happened, the latter (and its successors) would keep the Trathen name alive for another twenty-four years - even private hire work and the Starider business would be restarted but things could never be the same again.
The depot and workshop facilities at Roborough were sold to Royal Mail and survive today as a Parcelforce site. Roborough House itself is now a care home and neurological centre.
Surprisingly, perhaps, for most of its existence, Trathens had been a partnership, a limited company only being formed in 1984. Looking back, it’s easy to see signs of trouble. New coach deliveries had dried up and those that did arrive were all for the London fleet and being either DAFs with Caetano Algarve or Duple Caribbean bodies, or Bova-Duple Calypsos, were far from the expensive exotica that the company was so well known for. The final new coach was however more in-keeping, being a Neoplan Skyliner but that was almost certainly an insurance replacement for Jonckheere decker A57 OTA which had been destroyed by fire when only two months old.
The days of intensive coach shuttles to the Mediterranean sun-spots were also numbered and arguably this was one key trend which Trathens didn’t spot early enough. Passengers were turning towards air travel, flights were quicker than coach shuttles and airline prices were falling. The early 1980s had also seen much more interest from the authorities regarding policing of drivers’ hours and the introduction of tachographs, which, whilst important from a professional and safety point of view, inevitably restricted operators’ flexibility and added to their costs. Indeed, being fined for tachograph infringements in 1982, was one reason that Trathens had bought the service area facility at Orange in France. Sadly, a fatal accident involving a Trathens coach on the M5, in September 1984, heralded another investigation into the operator’s working practices leading to further fines for drivers’ hours and tachograph offences being levied on the people involved, although by the time this all came to court, the company itself had already gone under.
I don’t have many Trathens photos and the ones I did take were all on a cheap instamatic camera... but anyway here’s Volvo B10M / Jonckheere Jubilee P90, A147 JTA (47), seen in Bampfylde Street in Exeter on 5 June 1984 when around ten months old. This coach passed to Kettlewells of Retford when Trathens ceased and it’s still there in 2017. Two owners from new and it’s now over 33 years old. Amazing!