“Hold on, Driver!”
Every bus driver knows the scenario: you close the doors, turn on your direction indicator, release the handbrake - and then someone comes bounding up to the door, pleading to be allowed on board. That did not faze this Eastern Counties driver, who immediately stopped and let this anxious lady on board. (I had just photographed the stationary bus, so witnessed the mini-drama unfold.)
The bus and its backstory are interesting too. I had long assumed the vehicle to be a commonplace Dennis Dart with Plaxton Pointer bodywork. Not so! It in fact is the less common Volvo riposte to the ultra-successful Dennis middle weight, the B6. Carrying fleet number 485, M588ANG had not been ordered by Eastern Counties (at the time part of GRT Holdings), but by Mainline, the privatised Sheffield operator and was one of a batch that was all set to launch a competing Mainline Ipswich service. Carrying red and yellow Mainline livery, it originally carried the registration M412TET. In the event, Eastern Counties reached an agreement with Mainline, acquiring the operating licences, and absorbing the Volvo B6s into its own fleet.
In its final years in the ownership of First Eastern Counties and carrying the insipid ‘Barbie 2’ livery, M588ANG is recorded as being tax-expired after 4/07.
Of further note is The Cricketers pub in the background, a notable landmark in the Ipswich town centre. It is one of several ‘Tolly Folly’ pubs dating from the 1930s, built by local brewer Tolly Cobbold in a pastiche Jacobean style that was based on Helmingham Hall, the ancestral seat of the Tollemache family. The Cricketers is now a Wetherspoon outlet.
September 1995
Rollei 35 camera
Kodak Ektachrome 100 film.
“Hold on, Driver!”
Every bus driver knows the scenario: you close the doors, turn on your direction indicator, release the handbrake - and then someone comes bounding up to the door, pleading to be allowed on board. That did not faze this Eastern Counties driver, who immediately stopped and let this anxious lady on board. (I had just photographed the stationary bus, so witnessed the mini-drama unfold.)
The bus and its backstory are interesting too. I had long assumed the vehicle to be a commonplace Dennis Dart with Plaxton Pointer bodywork. Not so! It in fact is the less common Volvo riposte to the ultra-successful Dennis middle weight, the B6. Carrying fleet number 485, M588ANG had not been ordered by Eastern Counties (at the time part of GRT Holdings), but by Mainline, the privatised Sheffield operator and was one of a batch that was all set to launch a competing Mainline Ipswich service. Carrying red and yellow Mainline livery, it originally carried the registration M412TET. In the event, Eastern Counties reached an agreement with Mainline, acquiring the operating licences, and absorbing the Volvo B6s into its own fleet.
In its final years in the ownership of First Eastern Counties and carrying the insipid ‘Barbie 2’ livery, M588ANG is recorded as being tax-expired after 4/07.
Of further note is The Cricketers pub in the background, a notable landmark in the Ipswich town centre. It is one of several ‘Tolly Folly’ pubs dating from the 1930s, built by local brewer Tolly Cobbold in a pastiche Jacobean style that was based on Helmingham Hall, the ancestral seat of the Tollemache family. The Cricketers is now a Wetherspoon outlet.
September 1995
Rollei 35 camera
Kodak Ektachrome 100 film.