Top Tour Berlin

 BVG the Berlin bus operator was running a small fleet of coaches plus a few sightseeing buses in that lucrative market. This Mercedes 0407 had been cut down and de-roofed to make an attractive chara for it's Top Tour. Personally I would much have preferred  to ride on the MAN double-decker with Stadtrunfarht Berlin, another former BVG bus.

Flying The Ensign

 Bus dealerships and scrapyards hold a certain fascination for bus enthusiasts and especially when viewed from outside. I regularly had to drive passed the large Ensign premises at Purfleet. I am sure the old East Kent Guy Arab converted to open-top had a bright future but I cannot say the same for the Wast Midlands East-Lancs bodied Daimler Fleetline 4462 TOE462N ordered by Coventry Corporation on former LT DMS Fleetline OJD 449R but you never know.  

JGU 724K. DMS on Oxford Park & Ride

The driver of this former London DMS now confined to Park & Ride duties has to cope with the hustle and bustle of Oxford in the Eighties.

Stagecoach Devon Bristol VE: It's Illustrious

When Stagecoach bought Devon General not only did it continue the tradition of operating open-top sea-front services the vehicles continued to be named. Of course if one didn't know Illustrious was named after a battleship the intending passenger might just think the Bristol VR had serious reliability issues.

London & Country National Greenway SIB 6714

The Drawline group included East Lancashire Coachbuilders and so not surprisingly they were given the contact to body many of the buses. Most memorable was perhaps the National Greenway which was a stripped down National Mark1 and rebuilt as a new bus and now featuring the still popular but shortly to disappear old fashioned big Gardner engine. I think the London and Country version of the 'house livery' was the most attractive as seen on this bus at the Elephant and Castle south of the Thames..

A Macmillan Solo

Macmillan Cancer Support is what it says and I know that as they provided me with a cancer nurse when I was ill but it is funny that a charity which promotes togetherness should have a bus called a Solo. Modern buses have uses apart from stage carriage service and with it's large windows and low-floor this Optare midi-bus model makes a good exhibition vehicle as seen here in Stafford.

Midland Red Rebodied C3 Touring Coach UHA 190

Before the M6 was built all the traffic from Birmingham to the North West used to come through Stafford including touring coaches. In 1962 Midland Red had some Fifties C2 and C3 coaches fitted with new Plaxton bodies for extended tours bang up to date with the new Panorama. They were delivered in an off-white creamy livery which was short-lived as can be seen here, but a little was allowed to remain which didn't seem to detract from their appeance at all. This coach would have gone through the town and passed down Greyfriars where Sid Taylor had his scrapyard  the final destination for many a BMMO and no doubt where the old Willowbrook body of 4190 still could be found. Maybe it might have been the best place for this Ilford Sporti camera as well but I concede these hazy old photos do have a certain amateurish charm well suited to old dog-eared notebooks and other bus spotting memories.

Scrap Body off midland Red WHA 229H

Seemingly a sad end for a Midland Red Leyland Leopard as what was left of it lay forlorn in a corner of the premises of Martins of Middlewich. Thankfully this old Plaxton body was replaced a new one for I well remember this coach from new as it was allocated to Stafford and I was told it was a flyer too. By the time this batch was being built in 1969 this design had been replaced by the more streamlined Panorama Elite. I can only imagine Plaxton had a lot of body parts in stock and gave Midland Red a good deal.  

A Bit of Blue Tack in Bolton: Blue Bus PIB 5144

The pressures of Deregulation called for a lot of extra buses to flood the streets and cause mayhem. As the focus moved sharply away to busy urban work as opposed to longer coach based services a lot of these vehicles became redundant. Rebodying some of these brought in plenty of work for East-Lancs and as with this example with Blue Bus of Horwich a body from Willowbrook of Loughborough. For many of us the Loughborough manufacturer brings back many fond memories but like a lot of the British Bus Industry declined to the extent that it disgraced it's once proud name. These new bodies were usually put on still sound Leyland Leopard chassis and had a resemblance to the Lynx which also turned out to be lacking a lot when it came to quality. I guess otherwise some of the Leopards would have gone for scrap so at least cash strapped operators got some money out of them. Blue bus of course are one of the villains of the industry in the sense that they tried to run Fishwick's, the good guys off the road.

London General Greenway WLT 696

With so much uncertainty in the bus industry during the period just before and just after Deregulation operators were forced to use their money wisely, and as well as this resulting in a plague of low-cost minibuses operators tried to get optimum returns from their stock and with a swing away from coachwork and especially as many of them had poor quality bodywork rebodying as buses became quite commonplace. As well as that East Lancs introduced the Greenway as a way of both extending the life of elderly Nationals and a means to make them more operator friendly. Often after conversion they reappeared somewhere else but London Buses had it's Red Arrow National2's rebuilt as Greenways and returned to their normal duties such as this one at Victoria which had gained the registration number off RM 696.

A Redeployed AEC Regent at Cosford JCR 292E

Seen at the Cosford Air Show in the Eighties was this former Southampton AEC Regent with most of it's East-Lancs body removed. I imagine it was used to tow gliders and light aircraft.

MAP: On The Buses with Doctor Beeching

Most bus enthusiasts of a certain age will remember M.A.P a kind of Doctor Beeching knife job on all the NBC bus services that were not viable. Rural East Anglia and Lincolnshire would have been rich pickings for the red pen but at least it found employment for a former Trent MCW bodied Leyland Atlanteen 67 ACH seen in Newark. I'm not sure if it was used as a mobile office or just display and information unit. One good thing about MAP, they didn't rip up all the roads the empty buses once used too, but on the other hand it might have been a bit of blessing for our congested towns.

Sightseeing Bus in Liverpool

The much hated chemo effects roll on for I might have remembered to take my camera with me to Liverpool last Sunday but I left the battery at home! But have no fear I still have some from last year I have not used up yet. The Plaxton bodied L-Reg bus of 2003 bus gives the show away as it once ran in London, but restrictive contracts mean that quite modern buses have to find new lives elsewhere like this one in Liverpool.

Old Leylands Nrever Die.....

....but they might just get a red nose. Seen in the Eighties this Dutch example seen in Copenhagen was a survivor of an era that had vanished there.

Classy Racing Transporter MLL 748

The high roof must have made this old BEA AEC Regal an ideal conversion into a racing car transporter. So many times I used to pass things like this regularly and never stop always putting it off but thankfully this time I did. It used to stand quite happily here beside the Walsall Inner Ring Road but no doubt today it would be set alight or just vandalised I'm afraid.

Tributes to Diana and Tributes to Jim Berresford

Beautiful warm sunny spring weather greeted the POPS rally this year being held at The Britannia Stadium. Taken in Stone this looks like a planned shot but I was in fact sitting on another bus giving rides knowing that the preserved Alexander Y-Type Leopard wasn't far behind us and shooting a moment sooner or later and I would have lost it. Of course it is tempting to say that this scene brings back memories of the past but the truth is that some local preservationists are nuts about the long defunct Berresford and Stoniers and have built up a tribute fleet in their honour and to be truthful these gleaming buses are far smarter than the real things ever were.

Recycled: BV52 OCM Travel Coventry.

I don't know if digital cameras wear out but my last Nikon Coolpix seemed to. None of them were that brilliant but this one produced images with a grey sheen a bit like those old darkroom negatives from stale developer. They got so bad I ended up giving the camera to my brother and now he feels wronged and feels I should pay to have it back! Anyway I'm slowly going through my files and trying to improve and save some of the best. This was taken a couple of years ago where there was a museum rally and open day at Harnell Lane Garage in Coventry. It was nice that National Express West Midlands gave the local fleet it's own livery which reminded me of Cambus. But I have to admit it was a bit insipid even from a decent lens. Anyway now I no longer need to use the camera, I'm tagging all these photos recycled then you won't blame me for the poor quality. lol