BUSWORLD PHOTOGRAPHY

I AM CHRISTOPHER LEACH THE ARTIST. I started this blog so that I can share with everyone my vast collection of transport photographs showing a personal and nostalgic view of the industry with images that span some 45 years taking in the U.K and some of Europe. I have no darkroom and so rather than being the perfectionist after tidying them up I upload the images warts and all, and even those that won't scan squarely or are scratched. In a way it adds age and character. You are all free to download these for your personal use but please remember I still own them and you are not just free to use them without prior permission for any knd of publishing. Click on images to enlarge them and if you want to see more leave your comments or visit my website for the mother-site with galleries including those Buses & Girls: PICTUREWORLD

Sunday 22 June 2008

West Bromwich might not look much but it's buses had colour


Fortunately even the most hard-nosed unsentimental of the big bus groups see the PR benefits of painting buses in commemorative liveries. But National Express owners of WM ( The former West Midlands PTA) did a cracking job when they painted mostly Metrobuses in the colours of it's former Municipal members Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall, Wolverhampton and this the lovingly recreated elaborate West Bromwich. It's a pity when about half a dozen birmingham buses received the treatment it's other big constituent, a hefty chunk of the once very important Midland Red didn't get it's nostalgic bus for photographers to catch as it ground to a halt at all the wretched lights on the Birmingham to Wolverhampton, New Road but by this time there were none of the old Midland Red Garages left on the system to operate it from except of course Digbeth Coach Station which was being used by Midland Red West. West Bromwich is a poor district on the edge of Birmingham and once very much a part of the Black Country with it's over-riding industrial drabness but once like the football club gave the town's fleet of individualistic traditionally liveried buses a little more to be proud of than the smaller neighbours.

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