Ribble at Ulverston

Three smart looking double-deckers at Ulverston in about 1980. I for one thought ECW bodies with white window rubber gaskets looked a lot brighter and much better on NBC corporate red and green and was most attractive. Not that I was a big fan of the National Bus Company though after the wealth of fine liveries that it replaced but somehow certain bus companies retained a certain sparkle and individuality. Amongst the reds, whereas Potteries and East Kent started to look somewhat dowdy, Ribble and Trent always maintained a smart fleet. In the centre questionably looking more modern than the two more conservative looking ECW Bristol VR's of 1972 displaced from Carlisle Nos 2000 and 2001 was a 1967 Leyland Atlantean by Northern Counties. This batch of fifteen buses with their panoramic screens saw a lot of service up towards the The Lakes.

East Berlin: Somehow The trees Just About Manage To Turn Green.

It looks as if someone let East Berlin to some drunken old men who never ate a good meal, cleaned out the bath or did their washing. Somehow the trees just about manage to turn green and I think paint must have been rationed, but believe it or not the outskirts with their faceless blocks of flats were even more ugly. It needed a good scrub too but the old trams were quite attractive. Of course all of this sullen drabness is gone but I quite miss it in a way especially the Reko trams built by the DDR's Reischbahnausbesserungswerk.

Derby: Blue Bus

Sadly three years after Derby Corporation took over Blue Bus of Willington in 1973 and it's routes between Derby and Burton on Trent one night a fire destroyed both the bus garage and all nineteen vehicles inside including the most famous Daimler Fleetline of them all, the the very first one which entered service as a works demonstrator with the registration 7000 HP. Fortunately not everything was lost and a couple of rare Daimlers deckers survived as they were at Ascot Road. But the Blue Bus look lived on for a while as it was worn at least by some Plaxton bodied AEC Reliance coaches built to 'Grant' specification. Seen crossing The Trent Bridge in Burton No.13 could even boast an attractive driver at the wheel but I think I would still have preferred one of the early Northern Counties Fleetlines as I always liked them or something older.

Bus Music: FBW Basle

In 1998 almost ten years earlier I had ridden on some Hess Bodied FBW's in Basle and on the off chance that they might still be some on Route 37 I thought I'd interrupt my quest looking for the for the Regie Post buses I hadn't seen and went hoping to get a new tape-recording of my favourite European make of bus. Nos.82-4 must have been the last one's left and had replaced those numbered in the Sixties from the previous occasion. I told the driver I wanted to tape "The bus music". He said "What music, there's no music on this bus?" So I made a bus sound, and he said it was a "din." What a philistine!

It's a long walk!

Unlike here in the U.K. where even National Trust property seems to be the property of someone else, in Switzerland the countryside seems to belong to everyone and they are free to roam. In Britain farmers even put barbed-wire across stiles and bulls in fields to deter less committed ramblers from crossing their fields. But things are getting better here too but one day maybe there will be well signposted routes for walkers, but they will have to add more time for calling in at all the pubs on route. When I visited the old PTT Regie Garage at Balstall in the Jura Region in February 1992 there ten buses allocated there and they were all Mercedes-Benz 0405's like P25264 with the exception of a solitary Setra.

There's A Stranger in Town from East Anglia

We still get a few strange coaches that come into Stafford Town Centre and stop for a while but at one time it was quite commonplace. Some were quite interesting too like this recent Cambus Leyland Royal Tiger Doyen in the livery of NBC's National Holidays, one of two delivered in 1986 waiting for the customers to finish their lunch at the town's Flamingo Restaurant in the Co-op in 1988.
I'm proud of this one! Also in Stafford from East Anglia and an almost unbelievable sight was this Southern Corporation Massey-Bodied Leyland PD3 on hire to Chaserider for a spell of driver training. Incidentally this was not the first Southend Corporation bus that visited the town as one Sunday in 1968 I saw a fairly new East-Lancs bodied Leyland Leopard with dual-entrance bodywork on Bridge Street Car Park. Alas I did not have a camera with me that day.

G.K.Kinch Coaches

Kinch of Mountsorrell won industry prizes for their coaches, so it was a surprise when with deregulation they decided to get rid of them an concentrate on bus work. It was certainly a treat to see turned out in their smart blue and yellow colours this former London Transport Leyland Titan in Nottingham. Two of the girls who had obviously had a busy afternoon shopping look like sisters to me.

Manchester Ringway Airport

This is where I have to go two or three times a week at least. In my youth Manchester Airport used to be known as Ringway and Birmingham Airport as Elmdon. Both have changed a great deal since then with Manchester becoming quite big and able to handle large Jumbo Jets like the Quantas example in this shot taken when there was still just one terminal. Today the airport buses are mostly Plaxton bodied Dennis's but quite newsworthy is they do have a couple of Mercedes-Benz Citaro ariculated buses too including a demonstrator on hire. When this view was taken in the Eighties Leyland National2's were busy at work on runway duties.

Ikarus Touring Coach

An Ikarus coach makes it's way along Unter Linden Strasse in the recently reunified East Berlin which was by now awash with tourists wearing bright clothing. However much of the former DDR hadn't changed much since the end of the war with many battle scarred and grimy buildings needing a bit of love and restoration..

Kurfurstendam Berlin

Many thought Berlin BVG's ubiquitous army of MAN SD Series Wagon-Union bodied double-deckers were a bit boring. Coincidentally rather like the Ikarus 280 articulated single-decker to be found nearby over The Wall in East Berlin they had very attractive front ends, but that was about it.

South Yorkshire of Pontefract

There was a second smaller operator called South Yorks based in Pontefract but the newcomer, the huge PTA had no grounds for complaint as the Independent operator has been working between Doncaster and Leeds since 1929. However by the time this photo was taken in the mid-Nineties in Leeds the operator had become part of what is now know as Arriva but thankfully Northern Counties bodied Olympian No103 was still wearing the old colours albeit covered in grime. Bus enthusiasts aren't very popular and some bastard upstairs on the bus is giving me 'two fingers'.

I suppose bus enthusiasts tend to fall into groups and take sides depending on what they grew up with. But as with football teams they tend to take sides whether it be Scania or Volvo, or Wright or Alexander. As for me I was always a Leyland man as opposed to AEC, but the Southall manufactures always came a close second. I just liked the Leyland image with it's Zoo Family and animal badges and those big chunky wheel trims. But most of all it was the sounds particularly the exhaust roar of the Leopard or crackle of the PD Series. So it was something of an Indian Summer for me when in the Eighties Leyland once more freed from British Leyland control tried to bring back some of that old Leyland Magic. The buses and coaches looked like proper Leylands again but in truth that is as far as the magic went for they still relied on old products and new ones like the Lynx were not developed to a sufficient standard. The Tiger wasn't a bad coach, but it wasn't as reliable as the old Leopard, and more importantly it wasn't as good as a Volvo. Larger operators still bought them as they were British. I used to visit Blackpool occasionally during the Summer with the express purpose of photographing buses and girls together and smart looking coaches like this Plaxton bodies Tiger belonging to 'Coachline' part of Sheffield based SYT.