Often Independents buy second-hand buses and then like the livery so much they adopt it as their own. I think this must have happened at Sheffield Omnibus where they must have bought some Atlanteans off Preston who wore this livery. However even though it looks like one of those buses East-Lancs bodied Atlantean came from Portsmouth who used the former Municipal maroon and white. Sheffield Omnibus was always smart and I like the subtle graphics which always add a bit of class or look of quality.
I always felt that Sheffield Omnibus managed to look far more like the incumbent former-municipal operator than the genuine former-municipal PTC did, as here.
ReplyDeleteIf either bus looks like it's being run by a brash upstart, it's the National in that bright yellow!
Some of the Independents knew how it should be done whilst the incumbent large operators tried to show off their size with more playful popularist liveries which just made them look ripe for a take-over.
ReplyDeleteI think the other problem was that some of the incumbents made the mistake of trying to make themselves appear new, hip and with-it by mimicking the bright brashness of the 80s yoof culture, but the eternal problem is that middle-aged blokes (such as me today!) simply don't understand that yoof culture and will always, but always, get it wrong, which makes their attempts to mimic it fall flat.
ReplyDeleteIt was the simple adjustments which worked best for me: WMT changing WMPTE's cream for silver looked quite classy (until they went for the cheaper grey!), for example; Midland Red West replacing NBC white with cream and switching to 50/50 proportions was simple,
classy, and perhaps even classic (although doing the same 50/50 with the yellow on their Midland Express coaches just didn't work) and perhaps Lincoln's swapping the green base for white and using simple green stripes which kept the link with Lincoln's traditional colours. Modern, but not brash.