Tuesday 28 March 2017

AKU 165T: Operator's They Come and Go In a Flash

As a kid I read my copies of Buses Illustrated religiously and could even recite details of operators I didn't even know, for instance names tat always came up in Fleet News and I still think of Wilson of Carstairs, and Jones of Aberbeeg etc. But snce Deregulation not only have many many of those much loved operators gone many of those that started to fill in the gaps didn't even last long enough for me to learn their names. A good example is this Leyland National B loading in Carrs Lane Birmingham on a trip to Tamworth and as for the 96 didn't the cities first Atlanteans work that route from Washwood Heath Garage another detail imprinted on the memory that clings defiantly to the past.
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3 comments:

  1. Ross28 March 2017 at 18:37

    Serveverse? Serverse?

    I seem to recall they had almost as many ways of spelling their name as they did buses in their fleet...
    I also seem to recall that they were somehow tied in with the Burman/Tame Valley mob, who kept reinventing themselves on a regular basis as new companies.

    The words "Fly, "By" and "Night" spring to mind... ;-)

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  2. christopher30 March 2017 at 03:04

    Fly by night might sound harsh and some of these entrepeneurs might also have been enthusiasts trying to live the dream none making much money, perhaps they just had trouble keeping afloat especially when then DVLA or is it VOSA weren't too reluctant to remove a licence to operate which caused them to resurface again later.

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  3. Ross30 March 2017 at 10:16

    Fly by night is a bit harsh, yes, and I suspect that the owners may (at least originally) have been enthusiasts - and I had a soft spot for Tame Valley's "Go With The Gherkin" branding - but if they were enthusiasts, it seemed at the time that they were the sort of enthusiasts fully prepared to play with the legalities of company ownership in order to get round the legalities of bus company operation, and that's perhaps not exactly what we want to see in our bus operators!

    I suspect that many of the deregulation-era start-ups wouldn't even get off the ground today and whilst it means there's far less variety it also means there are far fewer dodgy operators around.

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