I'm not sure if I lived the livery chosen for the North Western used again this time for the former Ribble buses in the Merseyside and South Lancs area. Probably the neat type-face saved it and these Park Royal bodied Atlanteans seen in Liverpool looked rather attractive and probably not much worse than the former NBC poppy-red.
It was very 1980s, that livery.
ReplyDeleteTo me it certainly didn't work as well as Midland Fox's red and yellow or Badgerline's green and yellow; I think red and blue was the wrong colour choice, not working well together, but I also think the silver band breaking it up toned it down and stopped it being awful.
But... Along with all the other new liveries of the day, bland or brash, tasteful or awful, they brightened the streets up (we tend to forget that the 1980s streetscape was fairly bland and colourless compared to today) and are were far more interesting than Arriva's bland blue or Stagecoach's never-quite-clean white or First's we're-not-grey-at-all which cover the country today. Poppy Red and Leaf Green may have gone, but I'm not sure that what has ended up replacing them is much better, especially as the municipals and PTEs have also been swallowed up by the big three!
The grey window rubbers went well with the silver band and lettering and at least it went out of it's way to be different but like a lot of fancy ideas at that time it must have looked 'the business' on the drawing board. I think this a Ray Stenning 'Best Impression' livery for Drawline but sadly not as nice as Kentish or London & Country. I agree some vehicles looked quite smart in NBC colours especially the DP's and those operators who didn't spray over the black bits and brightwork and fit reflective number-plates which looked wrong on older buses. Trent always looked smart.
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