Surrounded!
Trying hard to remember here, but wasn't the Welsh capital of Cardiff chosen as a test-bed along with three or four other locations as a precursor to full bus service deregulation in 1985? I seem to recall independent operator CK embracing the spirit of the new regime and registering services which mirrored some of the incumbent municipal operator's better ones. From my odd visits, this seemed to be a fairly typical scene with a CK Ex London Transport DMS surrounded by 'Corporation' buses, some of which would almost certainly be operating as duplicates and spoilers. I regret that I don't know anything else about CK, where they came from, or what happened to them... though I can probably guess the latter.
Surrounded!
Trying hard to remember here, but wasn't the Welsh capital of Cardiff chosen as a test-bed along with three or four other locations as a precursor to full bus service deregulation in 1985? I seem to recall independent operator CK embracing the spirit of the new regime and registering services which mirrored some of the incumbent municipal operator's better ones. From my odd visits, this seemed to be a fairly typical scene with a CK Ex London Transport DMS surrounded by 'Corporation' buses, some of which would almost certainly be operating as duplicates and spoilers. I regret that I don't know anything else about CK, where they came from, or what happened to them... though I can probably guess the latter.