Vandereyke of Belgium

Naturally Copenhagen is a magnet for touring coaches from abroad and in 1982 outside the railway station I spotted this fine LAG Panoramic bodied turbo powered Volvo belonging to an operator from Belgium.

M & D: Autumn in Tunbridge Wells

It was a dull and dank late-autumn afternoon too back in the Eighties when I last visited the smart Kent town. As you can see there were still a few old Leyland Leopards of Maistone and District running about including Marshall bodied 3459 on the 231 to Edenbridge.

No it's not Lisbon or Reading it's Porto

These blue and orange AEC's in Lisbon or Porto remind me of another keen operator of that make called Smiths of Reading which operated about eighty-eight vehicles. However private firms with more than fifty vehicles were nationalised as part of Portugal's orange and cream RN fleet, but there were plenty of small ones left to add to the variety when I visited there in the Eighties. RN buses were even more common in the South such as here at Faro.

Volvos in Lisbon

The one nearest the camera has a body by Salvador Caetano whose livery seems to echo the heavy sandstone brown of the imposing buildings and the whiteness and chrome plate of other traffic.

Warstone Green Bus: Leyland Olympian Single-Decker

Warstone of Great Wyrley ran many interesting buses including this MCW bodied chassisless Leyland Olympian single-decker. In the early days their smart traditional looking dark green buses visited Stafford on Market Days taking the back road service to Penkridge along country lanes taking in the village of Acton Trussell which used to be served by double-deckers on a local service 873 by Midland Red in the old BMMO days. This bus No.14 arrived in 1975 soon after Warstone's started running buses and came via Haydern of Chirk.

A VBK 50 Volvo at Lyngby

One of the nice things about exploring Copenhagen's larger suburbs like Lyngby was not only seeing the number of former Independents buses still wearing their original colours but in the process the Danish capital's operator HT had acquired some interesting buses too. These included a pair of Volvo B10M-60 buses with VBK 50 bodies dating from 1980. This pair Nos.6006-7 became part of HT in 1982 when Hjortekaer Trafik was taken over but when I was there again at the end of the Eighties little had changed and they were still wearing that smart dark green and working their original routes like the 185 to Holte and Bakkefaldet.

It was about 1980 and too foggy to cast a Stone in Stone

Well it was not that bad but we used to get a lot more fog than today in the Seventies. Think of Bassetts of Tittensor and one thinks of maybe Fodens the Bristol LH or the Leyland Tiger and Leopard coaches or even Bedfords. But perhaps their best known coach was this odd man out being an AEC Regal that was very similar to the London Transport RF buses being built in the early Fifties. Painted on the front of it's well rounded Plaxton bodywork was the legend 'Speedy' which suggest this AEC's heavyweight equivalent to Leyland's Royal Tiger was also something of a flyer. It was pictured in Stone just north of Stafford on a cold foggy winter's day with another fine AEC this time an Alexander Y-type bodied Reliance of Potteries creeping past in the morning rush-hour. Fortunately both RMB 240 and DVT 167J have become preservation candidates with the Regal being in the care of the museum at Wythall near Redditch.

Blackpool: A grand day at the seaside

From the end of August to October it should be a busy time in Blackpool as trippers come to enjoy an Indian Summer and see the famous Illuminations. But this year has not been the only washout and as you can see we had some pretty awful wet weather in the Eighties too. At least on this one of Blackpool's last new delivery of Leyland Atlanteans from 1984 the large bonded plate windows of it's East Lancs body afforded wonderful views of the rain. All the damp holidaymakers have to decide now is whether it will be an early Fish and Chip Supper or a nice cup of tea next.

Pile them on, room for more on top: OKay it's IOS not Mykonos

It's all go during the summer months on Greek islands like Mykonos which all seem to have a quite different character and charm. Thought of as the Greek Capri as well as being famed for it's white windmills and mascot Pelican, Mykonos has a good deep harbour big enough to support expensive boutiques selling clothes and trinkets for the Mediterranean cruise ships that berth here whilst it's more colourful cosmopolitan side makes it a gay and nude beach paradise. Indeed there are even two famous beaches, one mixed where tourists like us gathered called Paradise and the other for the more brave called Super Paradise which was very gay and colourful. To them you could take a breezy ride on a boat or stand and bake inside rugged buses like this typical Greek locally bodied forward-control Mercedes where the bouzouki music somehow managed to make itself heard above the rattles and groans from the hard working German engine. Still 1981 was a long time ago but I expect Mykonos is just the same, but of course the old buses might still be there on the quayside but sadly they will be a lot newer than this classic beauty.

P.S. Sorry this is Ios, but I'm sure you won't mind reading about Mykonos instead.

Western National: Bristol LH Plaxton

The National Bus Company allocated a large number of Plaxton Grant-Bodied Bristol LH coaches to it's West Country based Western National and associated Devon General fleets including 3313 a narrow 7ft 6ins wide example with a Supreme Express body. Seen at Plymouth Bretonside between duties it looked very smart and more like a coach than a glorified bus wearing Western Nationals bolder post-privatisation livery. As usual some attractive women appear as if from nowhere walking into view. Why does it always happen to me....lol

PMT: A New Leopard Grant-Bus

Buses are only new once and it's always nice to get pictures of them at about the time they enter service. In National Bus Company days a seemingly brand new Potteries Leyland Leopard Grant-Coach Duple was caught passing Stafford Gaol on a private hire in the summer sunshine of 1978.

Snow at PTT Hutten

Although there were always plenty of post buses waiting there at departure time in Wadenswil outside the station, the garage itself with an allocation of seven was some distance away high up in the hills above the town and Lake Zurich at Hutten on the route to Menzingen. Even when I was first there in the early Nineties it had already been for some time a typical in this part slightly less interesting Mercedes stable. However as happens elsewhere on the postal network usually there was an older often non-standard bus too that was officially the garage spare. At the end of it's life with the PTT 1982 P25829 moved from it's home at Winkel (Bulach) to perform that role here. Had they not told me where it had not moved to I might have missed this Suarer RH too. In the end there were only ten I never saw and when I first started seeking them out in 1990 already five had been sold so I did well to see so many. By this time in the mid Nineties I only needed a few so at this closing stage a photo became quite a common accompaniment too and especially when it was a nice crisp bright snowy winter view showing also a more typical Mercedes but the low-key functional nature of these post bus garages which many would never think of making a record of.