Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
This photo is full of fascinating details. To the left we see Piccadilly Gardens, and beyond that Portland Street - the building to the left of Aytoun Street later became the headquarters of Greater Manchester PTE, and the right became the site of Greater Manchester Council's County Hall.
The buses tell us that this scene dates from 1950 or thereabouts. Manchester Corporation Transport buses are everywhere, or course, but the bus with the white roof in the foreground belongs to the North Western Road Car Company of Stockport and is about to set off to Alderley in the Cheshire countryside.
The strange, old-fashioned single-decker just right of centre is an old bus that has been converted to a staff canteen, issuing cups of tea and buns to crews whose buses are terminating at the bus station. Beyond that we can see a Stockport Corporation Leyland just setting off back to its home town, and in the background we can just glimpse two trolleybuses - one each with four and six wheels. On the right we see tram tracks collecting water on this wet day, but Manchester's last tram ran in January 1949 and there are no trams to be seen here - until 1992, when this scene was transformed by the creation of Greater Manchester's Metrolink system.
If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.gmts.co.uk.
© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.
Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
This photo is full of fascinating details. To the left we see Piccadilly Gardens, and beyond that Portland Street - the building to the left of Aytoun Street later became the headquarters of Greater Manchester PTE, and the right became the site of Greater Manchester Council's County Hall.
The buses tell us that this scene dates from 1950 or thereabouts. Manchester Corporation Transport buses are everywhere, or course, but the bus with the white roof in the foreground belongs to the North Western Road Car Company of Stockport and is about to set off to Alderley in the Cheshire countryside.
The strange, old-fashioned single-decker just right of centre is an old bus that has been converted to a staff canteen, issuing cups of tea and buns to crews whose buses are terminating at the bus station. Beyond that we can see a Stockport Corporation Leyland just setting off back to its home town, and in the background we can just glimpse two trolleybuses - one each with four and six wheels. On the right we see tram tracks collecting water on this wet day, but Manchester's last tram ran in January 1949 and there are no trams to be seen here - until 1992, when this scene was transformed by the creation of Greater Manchester's Metrolink system.
If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.gmts.co.uk.
© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.