WMPTE 2791, Tipton Road, Dudley, 1985
A scene that has greatly changed in the passing years. The view is of the top of Tipton Road at Dudley, looking towards its junction with Birmingham Road, with the former Midland Red bus garage (Dudley Garage) seen behind the oncoming bus.
Today, a large traffic roundabout and modified road layout occupies much of the ground in this view. Dudley bus garage is no more, the 'Duncan Edwards' bypass running directly through the site of the former bus garage.
As for the Walsall based Metrobus 2791, this had been an exhibit at the 1984 commercial motor show. Unlike its sisters, the bus sported a digital style dot-matrix destination display housed in a larger than normal aperture. This made the bus easily recognisable when head-on from a distance, setting it apart from it contemporaries.
Electronically controlled dot-matrix destinations were a new fangled thing in the early 1980s, and were of a complex eleco-mechanical design. Consequently, these destination displays could be very temperamental and also difficult to set up. Often when they went wrong, the display became an unreadable scrabble of yellow dots. I do not recall the maker of these destination displays, but it was likely Bright-tech or Hanover Displays? The only other West Midlands Metrobuses fitted with these dot-matrix destinations were the 14 Tracline-65 Metrobuses built for the short-lived guided busway at Short Heath in Birmingham.
2791 was withdrawn in 2004 and sold to Roberts of Hugglescote for further use. There is on Flickr, a 2018 dated image of this bus in use as a burger bus in Półwiejska, Poznań, Poland.
Photo - May 1985.
WMPTE 2791, Tipton Road, Dudley, 1985
A scene that has greatly changed in the passing years. The view is of the top of Tipton Road at Dudley, looking towards its junction with Birmingham Road, with the former Midland Red bus garage (Dudley Garage) seen behind the oncoming bus.
Today, a large traffic roundabout and modified road layout occupies much of the ground in this view. Dudley bus garage is no more, the 'Duncan Edwards' bypass running directly through the site of the former bus garage.
As for the Walsall based Metrobus 2791, this had been an exhibit at the 1984 commercial motor show. Unlike its sisters, the bus sported a digital style dot-matrix destination display housed in a larger than normal aperture. This made the bus easily recognisable when head-on from a distance, setting it apart from it contemporaries.
Electronically controlled dot-matrix destinations were a new fangled thing in the early 1980s, and were of a complex eleco-mechanical design. Consequently, these destination displays could be very temperamental and also difficult to set up. Often when they went wrong, the display became an unreadable scrabble of yellow dots. I do not recall the maker of these destination displays, but it was likely Bright-tech or Hanover Displays? The only other West Midlands Metrobuses fitted with these dot-matrix destinations were the 14 Tracline-65 Metrobuses built for the short-lived guided busway at Short Heath in Birmingham.
2791 was withdrawn in 2004 and sold to Roberts of Hugglescote for further use. There is on Flickr, a 2018 dated image of this bus in use as a burger bus in Półwiejska, Poznań, Poland.
Photo - May 1985.