Saturday, 25 February 2017
PMT Paramount Leisure Tiger in Manchester
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4 comments:
I think PMT started using the ParaMounT name (with PMT usually in red and the other letters in blue) after receiving their first Plaxton Paramount coaches just before the end of NBC ownership, and I always assumed they'd "borrowed" the name from the coaches thinking it fitted in well with their operations.
Of course PMT was at that time, as you say, a very confident organisation, unlike the pathetic shadow which has been left after the years under FirstGroup ownership.
That said, it's interesting how few of the former-NBC companies still have coaching divisions; I have a feeling that there's possibly only EYMS left!
The Hulleys (Silver Service) coach behind is also interesting, as it's working an X66 journey to Mansfield, a post-deregulation variant of the X67 LincMan service which by then no longer went anywhere near Lincoln so had an entirely inappropriate name. Another service group which has long gone, of course.
Thanks Ross, a well as PMT and Paramount Trent did the same thing with it's Trent Tigers. The big excuse for deregulation was to open up the market and although I believe extended tours and ordinary coach work is probably a bit more of a specialist operation for the big boys to bother with especially when some struggle to run buses just look what happened to all the various private cross-country express operators like Yelloway, Grey Green, and Premier Travel all gone. Now there is pretty well a monopoly and on National Express it's often hard to get a seat on part of one's journey and they tell you to travel another day!
Some names to remember there, Christopher! All destroyed, of course...
For those who don't know, Yelloway fell foul of the deregulation joke organisation that was ATL (you could never call it a bus operator!), being destroyed along with Sheffield's SUT and "Crosville England"; Grey Green became Cowie and in turn Arriva which long ago walked away from any coach work at all, with the sole exception of the last remaining Green Line coach service, 757 London - Luton Airport (I don't count their 724 or First Berkshire's 702 as Green Line any more, as they're both now just bus services), and Premier Travel became Cambridge Coach Services and was closed down by National Express Group when that mob decided that actually running coaches was too much hassle so they'd just hire everything in.
And as for Trent, I absolutely fail to understand why there seems to be so much of a love affair with them. A 'really good bus company' they are not in my experience, and if you compare their operating area to that of "original Trent" in the 1960s or "Trent plus North Western" in the 1970s, you can see just how much they've retrenched!
It seems strange to me that the whole "Local Express" market of the 1980s has almost entirely vanished since the millennium. Is there really no call for Limited Stop services of the sort that Midland Red, Ribble, the Yorkshire companies and Southdown ran, or is it simply that modern bus companies can't be bothered running anything that needs tachographs?
.
p.s. I hope the chemo is going well. My other half has successfully survived thyroid cancer, although she's now been diagnosed with the early stages of breast cancer. All being well that should be operable so she should have many years left and I hope that you will too!
Thanks for your kind wishes relating to my cancer, I had my second session of chemo today and it hit me rather hard I had trouble breathing outdoors despite my face being well covered and I had hundreds of sharp pins in my fingers and toes and they took some warming. I will survive it in good shape I expect and I hope your wife does the same.
As for Trent as it was it was perhaps my favorite of the BET red and cream brigade as it's buses always looked well turned out and it's garages welcoming, I was even given a garage allocation list at Nottingham. And whereas even firms like Southdown could look scruffy in NBC days Trent buses were always clean and smart. pity by the Sixties they weren't quite as interesting as PMT or Trent but those operators buses weren't half as smart.
Yes ATL should have another letter as it's almost a swear word.
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