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Green Line TL9 (TPC 109X), an ECW bodied Leyland Tiger, loads in Buckingham Palace Road for Windsor whilst working route 704.
For several years Edinburgh Corporation Transport issued these wee pocket sized route cards that showed fares and a basic timetable. At this time the routes 2 and 12 were linked at the Broomhouse terminus and although both services ran across town, the 12 via Princes St and and 2 via Grassmarket, to the same eastern suburbs they were not yet linked into the true 'Circle' they later bacame. At this date the 12 ran to Mountcastle drive Sth, not far off the road that the 2 traversed to its terminus at Newcraighall.
All ECT's services had these small cards at the time - my set consists of services 1 to 49!
In their ten short years of existance H M S Catherwood made quite an impact on the Irish bus and coach scene. From their foundation in 1925 until the effective nationalisation of their services both North and South of the border in 1935 they developed not only an extensive network of stage carriage services, a series of coach touring routes and holidays but they gained a reputation for the utilisation of the more modern type of vehicles, latterly being known for their use of Leyland chassis.
This map from the May 1930 timetable shows the weekday services across Northern Ireland, into Donegal from Londonderry/Derry and the East Coast cross-border services between Belfast and Dublin, along with their feeder services. This is a little a year after they rather contentiously acquired the short lived Londonderry Corporation Transport system having effectively bankrupted them by competition - something they'd tried and failed to achieve earlier in Belfast. Londonderry's bus services had come into being in 1920 after the closure of the city's horse tram system in 1919 and ranks amongst the shortest lived of municipal operators. Alongside passenger services Catherwood's also ran road freight services. All this activity must have been to the detriment of the variosu Irish railway companies.
In 1932 the British combine Thomas Tilling's took a substantial shareholding in the company but in 1933 the Irish Government acquired the routes and services in the Republic and in 1935 the remainder of the company was folded into the new Northern Ireland Road Transport Board.
AEC Swift 4P2R - Met-Camm B25D
New to London Transport during March-1969 . Coming to this Operator on its inception on 01st-January-1970 .
VLW422G is in Northfleet , Kent , heading for its home garage on via London Road on Route 496 .
Saturday afternoon 20th-August-1977
In the early 1980s the Bristol Omnibus Co. implemented its Market Analysis Project. Others will know more than I do about the history of this infamous market research scheme which aimed to identify the travel patterns of passengers. I think it was undertaken throughout the National Bus Co, if not the whole industry. As a result of its findings rural bus services were "Beechingized". Many were abandoned and those that remained were amalgamated. Main trunk services now had to take detours through housing estates and villages previously served by routes of their own. Single deck buses, many almost new, were disposed of and replaced by double-deckers in anticipation of heavier loadings. It was probably a Thatcherite scheme to make the industry more attractive to private buyers when it was deregulated in 1986.
In the late 70s the Company was still operating many of these loss-making rural bus routes. My favourites were a group of services known to we drivers as the "Thornbury Locals". These linked Thornbury, 12 miles north of Bristol, with various villages in the Vale of Berkeley. The driver stayed on this duty for a week, and no two days were the same. There were three different routes linking Thornbury with Berkeley. Wednesday was the day the tiny hamlet of Shepperdine, on the banks of the Severn estuary, received its weekly bus. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there was one return trip from Sharpness to Dursley and on Friday Thornbury was linked with far-off Yate, by way of Tytherington, Latteridge, Itchington and Iron Acton. There were few passengers to mar the driver's solitude and, since he was away from his home depot for the duration of the duty, there were always 40 minutes or so of "non-driving time" built into the schedule during which he could park up somewhere and spread out on the back seat to read his paper and have a snack. In the summer these routes were a delight to operate ...more like a week's touring holiday than work.
The bus worked its way out to Thornbury every morning on the 311 service. This particular journey had a permutation of the normal route to serve Marlwood School at Alveston. Here, having just dropped off the schoolchildren, I have parked to take a photo in Quarry Road. The bus is a Bristol LH with ECW bodywork. Bristol Commercial Vehicles had by now become part of British Leyland who, after a discreet couple of years, closed down this old and distinguished company to leave a clear field for its own products. The LH had many Leyland components, including its 0.400 engine; the capacity of Leyland engines was given in cubic inches, not litres. Drivers called them "Jumping Jacks" because of their lively riding characteristics. The LH did not long survive the MAP project and a large batch of almost new ones was disposed of. The photo was taken Friday 17th February 1978.
Ah. Kelvin Scottish Omnibuses, the short-lived and, if we are honest, unhappy offspring of the Scottish Bus Group in its dying days and formed from parts the long established Central SMT and Alexander (Midland) in the east Glasgow areas. Kelvin came into being in 1985 as part of the run up to bus de-regulation and by 1989 losses and the move towards privatisation of the bus industry saw it re-merged with Central prior to sale and eventual merger with stronger rival Strathcylde Buses.
One thing Kelvin had attempted, in common with various other operators, was to re-introduce conductor operated services using purchased second-hand ex London Transport Routemasters. This certainly introduced some interesting sights onto Scottish streets, if only for bus enthusiasts. I recall the afternoon when the first of Kelvin's arrived as I was with one of their senior managers that day and we went for a hurl in one. Kelvin's PR strategy included these badges for the "Clippies", the common nomenclature for bus conductresses (and indeed in my experiences for conductors as well) so here is one showing the competing services KCB introduced to tackle Strathclyde Buses 61 and 5/5A.
Y182 BGB, currently in preservation and stored at the Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust (GVVT) in Bridgeton, was delivered new to Hutchison of Overtown, a well respected independent bus & coach operator serving Lanarkshire, Glasgow and offering Scottish, UK and European tours. In 2007, with the owner deciding to retire, Hutchison’s operations, depot, vehicle and many staff passed into the ownership of First Glasgow/Lanarkshire. 182 was one of those vehicles, and was quickly repainted into the standard First Barbie livery.
Both of these 1:76 scale, Code 3, Exclusive First Editions (EFE) models are my own work and represent both periods of 182’s operational life. On the left, as it was when in service with Hutchison’s, wearing the special Golden Jubilee livery worn by 181 & 182, both Wright Renowns, and by the Wright Solars in the fleet. This model has undergone full exterior paint stripping and repaint, with custom transfers applied. The interior has been appropriately decorated, the seats given a grey moquette with multi colour stripes and yellow safety bars & grab rails. Interior signage has been painted also. The model has recently been completed with the application of correct Vehicle Registration Mark plates bearing “Y182 BGB”, and exterior mirrors have been reapplied. The bus has the recognisable Hutchison’s “Buggy Bus” signage to the windscreen and on windows to the near and offsides. Strathclyde Passenger Transport Zonecard pennants are also insitu, and the destination display shows Service 2 for the hometown of Overtown.
On the right is a representation of 182’s later life, following the First Glasgow takeover. The model wears the standard FirstBus “Barbie” livery, with only minor exterior changes made these being - the mirrors being painted yellow and correct VRM plates and fleet numbers (66282) applied. The interior has undergone similar changes to the real bus, with the seating moquette changed to the standard FirstBus purple, while maintaining the yellow safety bars/grab rails. A “bus stopping” display screen has been painted on, alongside generic onboard signage and a Welcome Aboard FirstBus sign on the drivers cab door. The cab door has also gained a plastic bandit screen, with a second plastic screen for passengers placed behind the main door in front of the first seat. This screen also has a “no smoking” sign attached. The destination board displays Service 240 for Lanark via Wishaw.
Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 - ADL Enviro 200
New to ( National Express ) Travel London 8548 during June-2010 . Subsequently passing to abellio London , when they acquired Travel London ‘s Routes and vehicles .
Acquired by Stephensons of Essex in a dealer capacity during the Autumn of 2018 . From whom I am unsure .
Used initially by Stephensons associated Company NIBS in the late spring / early summer of 2019 .
Subsequently it now appears for the last few weeks to be running out of Stephensons , Haverhill Garage in Suffolk , hence its appearance on Route 301 ( Saffron Walden to Bishop’s Stortford ) today .
( The above details in my caption may be incomplete , any help gratefully received ) .
Stansted Road , Bishop’s Stortford , Hertfordshire . ( passing my apartment block , out of view )
Tuesday afternoon 01st-October-2019 .
NY Waterway operates some of the ferries on Manhattan's West End that connect to Jersey. These International RE buses make up the bulk of their bus fleet, which is used as a shuttle service to supplement the ferry and services many stops on popular MTA routes in midtown.
Never being one to waste anything (!), I've spent a few hours of late re-working old illustrations I produced and making what I consider to be improvements.
The original to this one was a refugee from the early 1980s, and one of many which were simply black and white. Thankfully I tended to keep a photocopied original, so editing the 'blank' in this case wasn't too onerous.
The bus is one of a pair of Sentinel STC6 / Beadle buses which worked in the Newcastle under Lyme area for the Duggins 'Princess Bus Service'. Sentinel it will be recalled, stole a march on several of the mainstream British manufacturers by putting this and a smaller 4 cylinder variant (the STC4) designs of underfloor engined into service before they did. Indeed they even gave Leyland a bit of a bloody nose by stealing a reasonable order from local firm Ribble.
The Duggins duo were replaced in service by a large Plaxton bodied AEC Reliance and a smaller Plaxton bodied Albion Aberdonian. VRF 822 surviving until 1967.
From the October 1952 issue of the Lancashire United Transport's timetables. The LUT had its origins in 1905 when the Lancashire United Tramways took over the ailing South Lancashire Tramways. Over time the majority of the company's operations were of bus and coach routes, as the Lancashire United Transport company although certain tram routes had been converted to trolleybus operation in the 1930s and these were under the aegis of the South Lancashire Transport Company. The network covered a large section of south Lancashire's industrial towns, King Cotton and King Coal being of great importance, and the company served many smaller industrial villages and towns.
They also operated many services in conjuction with the numerous municipal operators, including Salford, Bolton, Wigan, Warrington, Leigh and St. Helens and other company operations such as Ribble. Indeed with Bolton and St. Helens joint trolleybus operations were technically run - Bolton being a real oddity in that they 'owned' a small number of trolleybuses that were to all intents and purpose SLT vehicles. The timetable still, in places refers to them as 'trackless trolley 'buses'.
Like many such publications the timetables include adverts both for LUT's services, especially coach and private hires, as well as for local companies and shops. This remarkable advert is for the Bolton based Rutland Mills who sold their services as "The Carpet Imp"! The Leigh - Atherton - Bolton trolleybuses run by SLT stopped at the top of Adelaide St in Daubhill!
Zimbabwe.
There has been so much water, that the experience was a more-than-wet one. Mostly it ws very difficult to see something like a landscape or the mighty Zambezi River through the gusting spray. Most people did rent their raincoats at the entrance, but we didn't mind to get wet to the skin ..
actually one of the reason to have a good waterproof camera system :-)
We took a busservice from Kasane to Victoria Falls to avoid the hassles we would have had to drive ourselfes.
Seats on top, but even Ensignbus, renowned for their efforts at shifting crowds such as rail replacement might be overwhelmed here.
Imberbus 2023 & the crowds enjoy a vintage run in the countryside around Imber, part of the Ministry of Defence, opened up for the annual Imberbus.
"The Friendly Midland Red" was the strapline used by the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company for many years and the named General Manager seen here, D M Sinclair, was another constant for much of this company's existance. Midland Red was a part of the history of the English Midlands, and beyond, from 1905 until its demise in 1981. The head office was in Bearwood, a suburb of Birmingham that strangely straddles the old borough and county boundaries - originally part of Smethwick in Staffordshire, it beacme part of the shortlived County Borough of Warley in 1966 (and that was technically in Worcestershire) before being merged into the new Sandwell in 1974 at which point it was in the new County of West Midlands! However, it is this reason that saw BMMO's buses registered "HA" and not with a City of Birmingham "O" or "VP" mark.
For much of its existance it was notable amongst British bus and coach operators in that it constructed most of its own vehicles and the vignette here shows one of the post-war coaches, type C1 KHA 302 fleet number 3302, constructed in 1949 at the company's works although with bodywork finished by Duple to BMMO's designs. The coach division ran many long distance services as well as touring holidays and the bus division ran many hundreds of services as noted in the advert.
The company's 'wheel and tyre' logo is reminiscent of the London Transport roundel. The advert appears in the c1950 booklet "see Britain by bus and coach' aimed at attracting overseas and especially American tourists. Birmingham, it notes, will offer you a sincere welcome! Quite what our American cousins would have made of 1950s Birmingham, a pint of Ansells and a packet of pork scratchings, is a moot point!
Travel West Midlands, Dennis Dart 809 at the junction of Patsull Road and High Street in the South Staffordshire village of Pattingham on 10th July 1997. I think that this bus may have started life as a demonstration vehicle with Plaxton's of Scarborough, later coming to WM Travel via Smith's of Tysoe, T/A Your Bus?
Travel De Corcey MAN Evolution (AE05 OVC) makes it`s way through the village of Pailton with a 585b Coventry to Rugby Town Centre service. 27th April 2015
An advert from the nicely produced official guide to Poole Harbour issued by the Poole Harbour Commissioners. The Hants & Dorset Motor Services operated the services and vehicle types described in the advert and had adopted the name in 1920 when the 1916 Bournemouth & District Company, a BAT subsidiary, had acquired Trade Cars of Southampton. In the same year the Tilling Company acquired an interest.
In common with many such bus operators the 1920s were boom years and in 1929, following legislative changes that allowed the railway companies to acquire shares in bus companies, the Southern Railway became a part owner. This meant that in 1948 the company became partially nationalised - in 1949 when the Tilling group (who had acquired BAT's shares in 1942) sold out to the Government Hants & Dorset became fully nationalised and in 1969 passed to the NBC. The company was dismembered in the run up to privatisation.
From an undated but c1960 official guide to the County Borough of Warrington, then in Lancashire, comes a fold out map and guide to services fronted by a single page advert.
The municipal operation had, like most others, begun with tramway operation, in Warrington's case in 1902 with the trams withdrawn and wholly replaced by buses by 1935. The operation survived the 1985 deregulation and is, indeed, still a municipally owned company trading as "Warrington's Own Buses".
The route network was mostly within the Borough boundary but in common with most other Lancashire municipalities a number of joint routes, involving other operators, existed although the map does not necessarily make this clear! The diagram is unusually described as a 'skeleton map' showing the main outlines of the routes as well as rhe River Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal that bisect the borough. It also gives a list of services operated.
Under various guises there seems always to have been a service connecting Temple Meads Station to Clifton. At one time there was the 17, operated by FSF double-deckers. At a later stage there were the 40s, interworked with the 41s from Stockwood, and terminating at the Zoological Gardens. The 7/8 service was circular, alternating clockwise/anticlockwise and taking in Redland, and evolved, I think, from the City Centre Circle ...an early example of the silly practice of "branding" bus services.
Quite a hectic little service it could be, too. Yet, following the 1986 deregulation of the industry it became a "tendered" service ...i.e. subsidised by the local authority... during the evenings and at weekends. After leaving the industry in 1990 I thought to "keep my hand in" by doing casual work for the local coach firm (I can't remember its name ...it was based in Redfield) which had secured the evening/weekend contract. I remember a stint of about ten journeys in some kind of pointy-fronted midibus which didn't seem to have a clutch. Oh, there was a clutch pedal, which was presumably connected to a mechanism somewhere under the floor, but it didn't actually seem to do anything. On another occasion I spent the day on a vehicle whose air parking brake didn't have any noticeable effect ...just what you wanted on this notably hilly route. It was a trifle awkward when I came to a halt in a queue of traffic towards the top of Park Street. My choice was to hold the bus by balancing the clutch, or by using the footbrake and then trying to get underway without rolling back into the car behind. At least with the big companies one could be reasonably sure that vehicles were maintained to the legal standard.
But this is how I remember the 7/8 service ...operated by dual-door REs on, I think, a ten-minute headway. There always seemed to be two or three waiting outside Temple Meads and city centre traffic led to frequent bunching. Here, on Monday 14th January 1980, a full complement of passengers wait glumly for a relief driver to "take on", whilst others loiter on the pavement, weighing up their choice ...to await the by no means assured arrival of a driver and save themselves a stiff walk up Park Street, or to leg it and save 10p ...the bus probably overtaking when they were midway between stops.
The protest did not take place in view of the Coronavirus crisis but residents are finding other ways to make their representations heard.
From the rather fine 1966 book produced by Daimler to commemorate their 70 years of production. A view in the Derbyshire village of Repton showing a Northern Counties bodied Fleetline operated by the famous independent operators, Blue Bus Services (Tailby & George Ltd.) of Willington.
Wide Angle - Front view of Hutchison’s 182.
Pictured here at the temporary Belshotmuir depot, whilst the entire diorama undergoes significant investment and infrastructure changes, is the recently completed 1:76 scale model of Y182 BGB - a Volvo Wright Renown delivered new to the Lanarkshire independent bus & coach operator, which would last through ownership by First Glasgow and onwards into preservation. The application of correct Vehicle Registration Mark plates and reapplication of external mirrors signals the completion of this particular model which is celebrated with a photoshoot alongside two other stage carriage buses, both also bearing the standard company “Buggy Bus” signage. These are an Optare Delta which stands in for the Optare Vecta’s & Excels used by the real Hutchison’s, and a Dart SLF standing in to represent the real ALX300 used. To the right of the depot are two coaches representing the other aspects of the companies operations - Private Hire, Tours & Trips and Glasgow Express shuttle services.
As our ferry leaves the slip on Sherkin Island the local bus service takes those visitors who have landed to their accomodation! The whole experience on Sherkin Island was so relaxed and friendly, no sound but those of nature all round - heaven!
The City of Birmingham was, of course, not unique in spending several decades of the late-20th Century carving out a massive and highly destructive Inner Ring Road to cope with what was seen as the necessary growth in road transport and to aid 'segregation' of road users and pedestrian conflicts. In Birmingham this meant an almost 'cordon sanitaire' around the city centre that was later to be seen as a massive barrier to urban permiability - the long, often desolate pedestrian subways that were the solution to segregation. In fact Birmingham has now studiously partially removed the many sections of the Ineer Ring Road, Queensway, to reintroduce links between the centre and immediate areas.
However, back in 1972 as the Inner Ring Road was nearing completion, the City Council recognised that one fo the promised trade-offs of the new road needed to be delivered - the pedestrianisation of certain central area streets. In truth the initial scheme seen here was relatively modest - other cities that had followed the pattern of Inner Ring Roads such as Leeds would make bigger strides in the removal of traffic from such streets. Anyhow, the leaflet issued by the Public Works Committee of the City Council, under the name of the Council's then powerful City Engineer, Surveyor and Planning Officer, Neville Borg, describes the scheme and, along with a map and 'before and after' scenes, also shows the City Centre Bus Service that the West Midlands PTE was to operate - from memory this would morph into the Centrebus 100 service.
The leaflet - the title of which uses the contemporary fashion for typefaces, was formally detailing aspecys of the City of Birmingham (Pedestrianisation Order) 1972, a reminder that legal powers to close streets to traffic was a requirement. This side of the sheet includes Union Street and shows two Birmingham buses loading at pavement stops. The front vehicle is one of the old Birmingham City Transport "Standards" or "New Look" buses delivered in vast numbers in the 1950s and that gave many years of service - this is on the old 56 Castle Bromwich service then operated by the West Midlands PTE. Bringing up the rear is one of the early Daimler Fleetlines from the 1960s.
When she was a child my mother, who is now 97, lived and went to school not far from Salthill which was at the time a very popular holiday destination.
As I have never liked Irish seaside resorts and as my mother has always described Salthill as similar to Bray I never bothered visiting until this week. While my mother’s description is accurate to some degree I would describe it as being more attractive than Bray. Unfortunately I rained for the duration of my visit and because of the overcast sky my photographs are less colourful than I would have liked.
Salthill is a seaside area in the City of Galway in the west of Ireland. Lying within the townland of Lenaboy, it attracts many tourists all year round. There is a 2 km long promenade, locally known as the Prom, overlooking Galway Bay with bars, restaurants and hotels.
Salthill was, until 2007, home to one of the biggest non-fee paying air shows in Galway, the Salthill Air Show, which took place in June over Galway Bay. The show annually attracted over 100,000 people and generated over €1m in revenue.
I got the 401 bus from Eyre to Salthill Promenade - there is a bus every twenty minutes. To the best of my knowledge the bus fare is Euro 1.80 each way but as I have a travel pass I did not have to pay.
This vehicle was acquired from Tours (Isle of Man) - where I enjoyed a couple of evening excursions on it in the 90's. This year it has operated on a limited number of dates (one weekend remaining - 2/3 August 2014) on a special service between Hessle and Barton-on-Humber via the Humber Bridge.
From the October 1952 issue of the Lancashire United Transport's timetables. The LUT had its origins in 1905 when the Lancashire United Tramways took over the ailing South Lancashire Tramways. Over time the majority of the company's operations were of bus and coach routes, as the Lancashire United Transport company although certain tram routes had been converted to trolleybus operation in the 1930s and these were under the aegis of the South Lancashire Transport Company. The network covered a large section of south Lancashire's industrial towns, King Cotton and King Coal being of great importance, and the company served many smaller industrial villages and towns.
They also operated many services in conjuction with the numerous municipal operators, including Salford, Bolton, Wigan, Warrington, Leigh and St. Helens and other company operations such as Ribble. Indeed with Bolton and St. Helens joint trolleybus operations were technically run - Bolton being a real oddity in that they 'owned' a small number of trolleybuses that were to all intents and purpose SLT vehicles. The timetable still, in places refers to them as 'trackless trolley 'buses'.
Like many such publications the timetables include adverts both for LUT's services, especially coach and private hires, as well as for local companies and shops. This page has adverts for adverts showing that W H Smith were the contractors for advertising on both the vehicles and in the company's timetables. The second advert is for the once famous Littlewood's department stores. Littlewood's sprang from the 1920s football pools company based in Liverpool and in which the Moores family was involved. By the 1930s they had branched out into mail order, sending catalogues out with the pools papers, and in 1937 opened their first shop in Blackpool. The company grew to be one of the largest national chains but as the retail world shifted by the turn of the Twentieth Century the stores were progressively closed, the final ones vanishing in 2005 - an early harbinger of the massive changes on the High Street.
Tatty but interesting - a sheet of headed notepaper from one of the largest municipal transport departments in the U.K., that of the City of Manchester and, neatly, addressed to the General Manager of the neighbouring City of Salford, J W Blakemore. Interestingly, since Salford was elevated to city status in 1926 as Manchester had been in 1853, it would take until post-WW2 years for both undertakings to embrace the title of "City Transport". Here they are both still styled "Corporation Transport Department". Even that was relatively new as "Transport" was only really starting to replace "Tramways" as towns and cities such as Manchester and Salford started to emply motor buses, and trolleybuses, to supplement and replace trams. In Manchester's case, by 1934, the decision to ditch tramcars and replace by buses was in hand and that was largely the decision of the man who had signed this letter, the General Manager, R Stuart Pilcher.
Robert Stuart Pilcher CBE FRSE (1882–1961) was an influential figure in British urban transport in his day. Born in LIverpool he started his career in Montral, Canada, before returning to manage the tramways in Aberdeen in 1906. In 1918 he moved on to manage the important Edinburgh system that was, at the time, still employing the cable haulage system. In 1920 he oversaw the merger of the City system with that of neighbouring Leith when Edinburgh the two burghs merged, and whose system was conventionally elctrically operated. In the next few years he oversaw the complete electrification of the old Edinburgh system as well as seeing motor buses more widely introduced to the city's network, and during which time, he had time to become the president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts and be elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh - the latter accounting for the first set of initials after his name, the second set showing he was a member of the Institute of Transport.
In 1929 he was appointed to the Manchester post, then one of the 'top four' municipalities in terms of size - Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool being the other heavy hitters. In Manchester he soon made his mark, famously with the first large scale conversion of a tram route to motor bus operation. The Circular 53 route required single deck cars, had sections of single track with passing loops, and traversed endless busy city streets. The availability, by the early 1930s, of more modern, reliable buses (in this case Leylands) with lower height double deck bodywork, helped deliver improved services, takings and less need for capital investment in a tram system that mostly dated back to the early years of the century and required modernisation. Picher decided upon a complete replacement of the trams although there where some on the council who thought differently!
Trams used municipally produced electricity, not foreign fuel, and Picher not only saw the tramways deliver their final extensions (on reserved tracks along new highways) but also a batch of modern looking trams that were to bear his name as "Picher cars". At the demise of Manchester's tramways, in 1949 long delayed by war, several of these Pilcher cars were purchased by Edinburgh Corporation Transport and so went to a department he had famously 'trammed' to such good effect!
He also famously was somewhat backed into a decision to introduce trolleybuses, a halfway house between manoeuverabilty and muncipal electricity, and Manchester ended up with a decent sized fleet of them. These trolleybus routes, rather unusually, were jointly operated with neighbouring boroughs and Manchester had an unusually large number of such inter-working with both councils and company systems. By the ealry 1930s Manchester was at the hub of a network of cross-city 'express' bus services, similar to London's Green Line, but that was broekn up by the new Traffic Commissioners and complaints as to city centre traffic levels.
Once Manchester had decided to 'bury' its tramways these neighbouring tram operators had little option but to start to look at replacing theirs. This letter refers to services operated alongside Salford's into the vast Trafford Park Industrial Estate that required not only 'regular' services in working hours but a then vast number of works specials and duplicate runnings in peak hours. Trafford Park was famous for these works tram and bus services that continued for decades and that, although shifted vast mumbers of passengers, gave Manchester's transport department one of those public transport headaches - the requirement of a large fleet to meet peak hour demands that then often for the large part sat expensively and idly in garages.
One last note is it always slightly amuses me - MCTD's postal address was 55 Piccadilly and I enjoyed working for many years in 55 Broadway, the then London Transport headquarters!
Another Travel De Corcey 585 service, this time, AE06 OPH captured passing through Pailton, on the way towards Rugby. 27th April 2015
Last shot of the day, before being thwarted on the Air Ambulance bus, Travel De Courcey AE06 OPH passes The Bulls Head, Brinklow with a 585 Coventry-Rugby service. 27th April 2015.
A good selection of vehicles can be seen in this view of Green Line RS147 (EPM 147V) seen here waiting time at Ecceleston Bridge.
A Plaxton bodied AEC Reliance, it is working route 723 to Grays.
I hadn't really noticed the larger display screen at the rear of these Platinum branded buses - within the 'Robocop' look of the rear of these Enviro 400 MMC's. They are named too; well this one is - 6706 being Jess. The location is Pool Meadow Bus station, Coventry.
This service number has been in use for a good 30 years or more. What was the 159 Coventry - Birmingham service gradually became '900' from about 1985 and wholly numbered as such in 1986.
One of the various smartly turned out small Lancashire municipal operators - this is the front cover of the May 1961 edition of Accrington Corporation Transport's timetable. Stamped 'complimentary' means you would not have had to shell out 4d - four old pence! It is issued inthe name of H Eaton, the General Manager & Engineer, the posts often combined in small undertakings,
RMC1512 from Hatfield garage working route 716 at Golders Green station on 30th January 1977. This must have been one of the last times a Routemaster appeared on the service, the northern half of which was withdrawn and replaced by routes 722 and 732 in January the following year.
London Country AN236 (JPE 236V), an Amersham based Roe bodied Leyland Atlantean, is at High Wycombe working service 363 to Penn
Taken in the evening sun at the Torquay Depot of Devon General was London Country (Green Line) RS45 (XPK 45T).
This Plaxton bodied AEC Reliance had worked down on a National Express duplicate.
Travel De Courcey 546 (AE54 MVX) passes through Brinklow, Warwickshire with a 585 Rugby-Coventry service. Sadly the other 2 shots I tried for this bus were thwarted. Bowled for one, and clouded on the other. The livery is for the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance, a charity funded emergency service. 27th April 2015
The Wayfarer 200 on the 84 route to Leicester, Bus stopped at stage 11 Blaby as its a timing point, time to leave 14:43hrs. MMM... What can I do in 2 Minutes? Post this picture on Flickr perfect :-)
This was my first photo taken using the Flickr application on my Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray android phone.
Saturday, 16 November 2013
Passengers disembark SC29 (04 D 24976) at Dingle, which operated the 1400hrs Bus Éireann route 275 service from Tralee via Camp, Annascaul and Lispole.
Click here for a photograph by Fred Dean of the same bus, in Cork in September 2011.
SC29 is based out of Tralee Depot.
© Finbarr O'Neill