For those interested in old buses (and coaches)

[Merfyn Jones]

Some interesting pics - I especially enjoyed the Ipswich Benz, I used to run annual university field trips to the north of Ghana from UST Kumasi in one of a pair of these 0302 buses in the early 1970s, beautifully smooth vehicles - even on unsurfaced roads. State Transport used to run a fleet of Setra buses in the same years between the main regional cities and Accra. Rear engined, they were much noisier - I wondered whether they were air cooled like the occasional English buses fitted with experimental Deutz engines.

 

Can I ask the location of the second one down, the Bests Tours 'chara' adjacent to the church with the 'French' looking public building in the back?

It seems very familiar for some reason -  the sandstone, presumably Victorian Gothic, has a west midland or NW England look about it.

 

dh

 

Looks like Chester Cathederal.

[Gwiwer]

While on the subject of former London operators and MB coaches an honourable mention should go to Wahl / Redwing (I never did understand the relationship there) with a number of bright red and curvaceous coaches which I think were O302s.

[runs as required]

Looks like Chester Cathederal.

 

 

Bravo! Confirmed with Google street view - note how the tree needs a bit of a sensitive prune now.Thanks very much.

It was familiar because 60 years ago we used to be sent off to Chester from Liverpool as students to practice building recognition and analysis. So I must apologise about labelling the cathedral Gothic revival, though it does look, as Pevsner used to remark, 'imaginatively restored'.

 

Chester's buses were interesting in the late 1950s - best of all were the dark maroon Corpy. Foden deckers, IIRC both handsome Massey and distinctive Northern Counties.bodied versions

Crosville too ran some breezily 'seaside' looking reverse livery coaches  - my favourites were a batch of very unTilling MCW bodied Leyland Tigers alongside the reverse livery ECW Lodekka coaches running all the year round out to North Wales.

 

dh

 

Edit a week later

I've found: a link to the old Massey bodied Foden here and to one of the Crosville reverse livery Leyland Tiger Weymann express buses now beautifully preserved here

Edited January 16, 2018 by runs as required

[RANGERS]

Another selection of Lincs vehicles, this time mostly from the Lincs Road Car Co fleet which show them in Transport Holding Co, National Bus Co and Yorkshire Traction Co ownership.

 

The classic Bristol VRT, this one supplied new to LRCC in 1970, pictured in Summer 1977 in Spalding Bus Stn, a town now devoid of such services and struggling to maintain a bus service of any description.

 

Another example for the era when lightweights were being added to the nationalised fleets in an attempt to reduce costs, A Bedford VAM70 with Duple Viceroy body of 1970 pictured in Melton Mowbray on an Associated Motorways Service from Scunthorpe to Cheltenham in 1972.

 

A typical LRCC single deck coach of the 1960s, Bristol MW with 43 set ECW body in the classic style, pictured here in Nottingham.

 

The bus version of the MW was almost identical but this example was another used acquisition, West Yorks Road Car Co being its one previous owner. The state of the business and the policy of buying used contributed to LRCC being the last NBC operators of many types, the MW included. Spalding Bus Stn in 1977 again is the location.

 

Things changed only slightly after LRCC was eventually privatised, Yorkshire Traction buying the company and updating the fleet with significant numbers of used Leyland Leopards, Tigers and Atlanteans. This was one such Leopard, having travelled south from Scotland where it had been deemed redundant by the recently privatised Tayside Scottish Fleet. The body is the bus version (short window bays) of the classic Alexander Y Type

 

A Leyland supplied new to LRCC in 1981, this Leopard with Duple Dominant IV body lasted with LRCC until finally being scrapped in 1999. Pictured on layover in Richmond Dr Skegness, outside the bus stn.

 

This was a rarely specified dual purpose version of the Bristol LH, supplied to comparatively few operators but seen as a cost effective means of providing replacement for the LS and MW DPs when they were becoming life expired. These coaches travelled the length and breadth of the country on Associated Motorways and subsequently National Express services but with the same mechanical spec and virtually no additional accoutrements for the passengers over their service bus siblings, travel in them was a tiresome experience.

 

Always an impoverished fleet, used vehicles were frequent additions to the fleet throughout its life. In latter NBC years, such was the precarious financial state of the business that it was unable to fund re-certifying vehicles as they came up for test and chose instead to dispose of a number, taking redundant but serviceable vehicles from other NBC fleets as replacements. This Bristol LH6L with Plaxton body was one such, acquired from United Automobile.

Edited January 14, 2018 by RANGERS

[SRman]

Those Bristol LH buses weren't very inviting fare! The earliest flat-front versions with the shallow windscreens looked particularly forbidding, even before one boarded them.

[Gwiwer]

Those Bristol LH buses weren't very inviting fare! The earliest flat-front versions with the shallow windscreens looked particularly forbidding, even before one boarded them.

Agreed 100%. They weren’t very nice to drive either. But Nationals couldn’t go everywhere and the LH / LHS was NBCs only alternative. The ones with Plaxton Supreme grant-door bodies must have been the low point. Presenting the elderly folk of Cornish villages with a mountain of steps and not even a decent fixed handrail.

[chriswright03]

Rangers some great pictures of Lincs Roadcar there.  When I joined Stagecoach we were still running some in their livery from Louth.  Incidentally can you recall when Lincoln |City Transport was taken over?  I assume that was by Roadcar.

 

Likewise when did Grimbsy and Cleethorpes Transport cease?

 

I am fairly ashamed to admit that having driven for Stagecoach for five years or so that I found out little about the history.  Having said that one of my Union colleagues and indeed former MD were true bus nuts enthusiasts and would often tell me stories about the old days.

[RANGERS]

Rangers some great pictures of Lincs Roadcar there.  When I joined Stagecoach we were still running some in their livery from Louth.  Incidentally can you recall when Lincoln |City Transport was taken over?  I assume that was by Roadcar.

 

Likewise when did Grimbsy and Cleethorpes Transport cease?

 

I am fairly ashamed to admit that having driven for Stagecoach for five years or so that I found out little about the history.  Having said that one of my Union colleagues and indeed former MD were true bus nuts enthusiasts and would often tell me stories about the old days.

 

Lincoln CT passed to Yorkshire Traction in 1993. The council had sold the business to a consortium of employees, management and Derby City Transport in 1991 but too many buses and not enough passengers led to the inevitable consolidation a couple of years after. The view at the time was the business was teetering on the brink and the YTC option was the only one left to avoid collapse.

 

Grimsby-Cleethorpes was sold to Stagecoach in 1993, Lincs RC together with the rest of Yorkshire Traction in 2005. Although the operations were merged at Victoria St (GCT depot) in 2005, they were legally run as two separate operations on two operating licenses until 2010 when the GCT licence was extended to cover the LRCC vehicles and the service registrations transferred to GCT. Although the trading name is Stagecoach Grimsby-Cleethorpes, I believe the services are still run on the licence of Grimsby-Cleethotpes Transport.

[chriswright03]

I started there in 2010 but a recent court case I was involved in from my Union days where a driver tried to sue them was against Lincs Roadcar.  Now that may have been because the driver was initially a Roadcar driver.

[RANGERS]

I started there in 2010 but a recent court case I was involved in from my Union days where a driver tried to sue them was against Lincs Roadcar.  Now that may have been because the driver was initially a Roadcar driver.

Quite possible, LRCC as an entity still exists today covering the rest of Lincs, only the Grimsby area services and vehicles were transferred to make the legal admin of them with DVSA and the Traffic Commissioners less complex. The staff probably still work for LRCC as far as their contracts are concerned.

[Enterprisingwestern]

Lincoln CT passed to Yorkshire Traction in 1993. The council had sold the business to a consortium of employees, management and Derby City Transport in 1991 but too many buses and not enough passengers led to the inevitable consolidation a couple of years after. The view at the time was the business was teetering on the brink and the YTC option was the only one left to avoid collapse.

 

Grimsby-Cleethorpes was sold to Stagecoach in 1993, Lincs RC together with the rest of Yorkshire Traction in 2005. Although the operations were merged at Victoria St (GCT depot) in 2005, they were legally run as two separate operations on two operating licenses until 2010 when the GCT licence was extended to cover the LRCC vehicles and the service registrations transferred to GCT. Although the trading name is Stagecoach Grimsby-Cleethorpes, I believe the services are still run on the licence of Grimsby-Cleethotpes Transport.

 

As an aside. Victoria Street garage still had tramlines inside the depot when I was resident in the area in the late 80's/early 90's.

 

Mike.

[chriswright03]

As there are still drivers at the Depot from the old GCT (Council) days and of course from Roadcar the Terms and Conditions were a nightmare to deal with.  GCT drivers had more Annual Leave than the rest which caused problems.  Roadcar drivers never had a float which caused problems.  I think they have just managed to iron out the T's and C's recently which they were looking at when I left 4 1/2 years ago.

 

I enjoyed working at Grimsby and had I not had a RSI on my right arm from operating the doors and hand brake continually I would still be there.  I was saddened to hear that last week they had 17 buses vandalised during the night on the Dockside.  As you may imagine that would have a massive affect on the service that morning but I am told that help was called in from all quarters with Depots from elsewhere supplying replacement buses and the damage being repaired very quickly.  A credit to the workforce.

 

On and Mike the tramlines  are still there.

[Giles]

Another selection of Lincs vehicles, this time mostly from the Lincs Road Car Co fleet which show

 

LRCC VAM 70.jpg

Another example for the era when lightweights were being added to the nationalised fleets in an attempt to reduce costs, A Bedford VAM70 with Duple Viceroy body of 1970 pictured in Melton Mowbray on an Associated Motorways Service from Scunthorpe to Cheltenham in 1972.

 

 

This takes me back - in the early eighties, I had a Bedford Viscount fully converted to a mobile home, which I used to live in the NAP car park on Warwick Rd, Earls Court during the week with my dog for work, and drive home to the Midlands at weekends. I used to take in on holiday in the summer driving round mid and north Wales with a sailing dinghy towed behind....

This was in the days just before travellers became a problem, and one could do this sort of thing without raising too many eye-brows. It also wasn't much more expensive to run than my car!

Edited January 16, 2018 by Giles

[runs as required]

This takes me back - in the early eighties, I had a Bedford Viscount fully converted to a mobile home, which I used to live in the NAP car park on Warwick Rd, Earls Court during the week with my dog for work, and drive home to the Midlands at weekends. I used to take in on holiday in the summer driving round mid and north Wales with a sailing dinghy towed behind....

This was in the days just before travellers became a problem, and one could do this sort of thing without raising too many eye-brows. It also wasn't much more expensive to run than my car!

Interesting and resourceful.

My son had a talented keyboard player friend in South Shields who decided on a furniture design course in High Wycombe in the late eighties. He lived in a bay window Transporter in the College car park during term time.

We bumped into him briefly last year and, now in his fifties, the course had evidently served him well.

dh

[RANGERS]

This batch takes in operators from the North West, predominantly Lancashire but extending North into Cumbria, South into Merseyside and Cheshire and East into N.Yorks.

 

Not quite Lancashire but almost, and unlike many of the fleets featured previously, Bibbys of Ingleton are still trading and serving the dales and fells,  ranking among the most respected names in the industry. The Ford R1014/ Plaxton Elite III was typical of the fleet up to the swing to heavyweight chassis in the 1980s, first to Leyland and subsequently DAF. Pictured at the British Coach Rally in Blackpool in 1975, Bibby's have been prize winners on numerous occasions at this and the UK Coach Rally in Brighton.

Eavesway have gone from strength to strength in the 50 years or so since this Bedford VAM14-Plaxton Panorama was pictured alongside one of its sister vehicles. Nowadays VanHool Alicron, Altano and Astromegas are the mainstay of the fleet which include many of the Premier League footballers among their passengers.

An early example of the Eavesway football team transport was this Volvo B10M- Duple Dominant III which served as the transport for Everton when new in 1982. Its pictured here on less illustrious duties in Blackpool.

Godfrey Abbot were on old established Manchester concern before being acquired by Greater Manchester PTE, the name continuing as a trading name for the coaching activities of GMPTE. This AEC Reliance-Plaxton Supreme III was the last AEC delivered to GMPTE in 1978.

Another example of the lightweight era for NBC, a Ford R192-Duple Viceroy Express delivered to Cumberland in 1971. 

The Plaxton Viewmaster was a comparatively rare vehicle and the high floor layout caused major problems when mounted on the Leyland Leopard chassis. With steel springs, the challenge of meeting the 32 degree angle when subjected to a tilt test was almost insurmountable. The remedy was strategically placed ballast in the form of water tanks to lower the centre of gravity. The result of this engineering masterpiece was windscreen washers with guaranteed lifetime supply. The vehicle was operated by Barry Cooper Coaches of Stockton Heath, I believe they were absorbed into the Maynes of Manchester business in the early 1980s. 

Another late model AEC Reliance, paired with the stylish Duple Dominant II body from 1979 and among the final batch of AECs delivered to Smith-Happiway-Spencer, at the time part of the Rank group and one of the largest coach operators in the UK. They merged with Shearings in 1985, initially branded as Smith-Shearings but subsequently shortened to Shearings.

Selwyns of Runcorn commenced trading in the late 1960s from a former BRS depot in Runcorn and are still around, now a subsidiary of the French RATP group, predominantly operating National Express routes from depots in Runcorn and Manchester Airport. This Bedford YRQ-Plaxton Elite II was from the early days and was the first large coach supplied new to the company in 1972.

[leopardml2341]

In my view, the Smiths Happiway - Spencers livery (and the era from which it came) represents THE highpoint in British coaching.

 

An era where people's holiday hopes and expectations were less adventurous than the upcoming Freddie Laker and his skytrain philosophy that now characterises so many cheap flight ideals.

Edited January 21, 2018 by leopardml2341

[great central]

In my view, the Smiths Happiway - Spencers livery (and the era from which it came) representers THE highpoint in British coaching.

Seeing the name above the windscreen brought back memories of seeing a similar vehicle converted into a stock car transporter in the mid 70s for Wilf Blundell.

[w124bob]

Anyone ID the bus marque and operator(Bristol?), the train is the Dursley Donkey with 46526 just before withdrawl of the passenger service. Picture is dated Aug 4th 1962.

http://www.dursleyglos.org.uk/html/dursley/railway/cam_dursley/cam_dursley_quag_bridge_bus.htm

Edited February 25, 2018 by w124bob

[RANGERS]

527JHU was a Bristol MW with ECW body belonging to Bristol Omnibus Co, at the time the pic was taken, it was based at Marlborough St depot in Bristol.

 

Details here http://www.bristolsu.co.uk/mw/operatordetails/bristolomnibus/527jhu.htm

[runs as required]

In my view, the Smiths Happiway - Spencers livery (and the era from which it came) represents THE highpoint in British coaching.

 

An era where people's holiday hopes and expectations were less adventurous than the upcoming Freddie Laker and his skytrain philosophy that now characterises so many cheap flight ideals.

As a teenager we used to live in (cold & wet) NW Derbyshire and I was always dazzled by the apparent luxury of these beautifully polished red and black touring coaches that parked for overnight stays at the Palace Hotel Buxton.

The Motorway age BMMO is available as a diecast model, but the earlier Duple bodied C1 BMMO to me is the real beauty - all crisp white anti-antimacassars.and curtains!

 

dh

[w124bob]

Growing up in the heart of Leicestershire I have a soft spot for Midland Red particularly the D9, used to get the 658 into Leicester.

[Sheffield]

I grew up in south west Leicestershire, and I have to say that many people in the area did not have soft spot for the Midland Red. Expensive, unreliable, and certainly not friendly. was a common experience.

[luckymucklebackit]

Not really a bus book buyer, but I was in W.H. Smiths in East Kilbride on Sunday and they had this rather nice volume on the clearance shelf for the princely sum of £1

 

Jim

[leopardml2341]

Not really a bus book buyer, but I was in W.H. Smiths in East Kilbride on Sunday and they had this rather nice volume on the clearance shelf for the princely sum of £1

 

Jim

The top of a slippery slope.......

 

Now where's mi list of, Scottish bus, books I'm wanting to pass on......

[Gwiwer]

I grew up in south west Leicestershire, and I have to say that many people in the area did not have soft spot for the Midland Red. Expensive, unreliable, and certainly not friendly. was a common experience.

That was also my experience during a brief stay in Evesham. Stratford Blue, on the other hand, seemed to be a much more customer-friendly concern. Almost a shame that they only worked in on one route. But for vehicle interest Midland Red had it.