Utic Leyland 8109 in Evora

A Keighley & District:: Olympian Roe

I'm not quite sure if I loved or loathed this rather odd grey, light blue, red and white livery carried by the former West Yorkshire Keighley Depot buses, my opinion being swayed very much in it's favour as this operator was part of the celebrated Blazefield group of companies, the enthusiast's favourite. It certainly looked good on this still smart Leeds built Roe bodied bus that had returned home having been new to London and Country in leaf-green as LR64 before it's break-up after which it became part of the London Country North East fleet.

Black & White Motorways heads out of Warrington

One cold crisp winter lunchtime my camera caught this all-white NBC Black & White Motorways Leyland Leopard in the livery of National Holidays heading out of Warrington bound for Liverpool whilst working for National Express. In the background is an East-Lancs bodied Leyland Olympian coach of the Borough Council reminding us that in the early Eighties even bus orientated Municipals and PTA's were trying to diversify into coach work before the emphasis of the whole industry seemed to settle on the potentially far bigger cake that was competitive stage service work in urban areas like this.

Reisen mit Schlachter

It's hard to think this photo taken in Marburg of a Setra S215HD coach visiting from Hamburg with my friend Marion coming up behind was taken in the early Eighties. As elsewhere coach design reached a kind of peak before we started getting the humpback racing greyhound look and some might not like brightwork but to me it looks like a bit of welcoming icing on the cake just finishing it off nicely. Who wants political correctness in design on the streets anyway when buses should entice us still like children!

The Last Lynx

Like a good number of municipal operators in the Sixties, Halton or as it was known then Widnes became a 100% Leyland fleet. In the Seventies the Bristol RE joined the fleet but when British Leyland took them off the market Halton was lured back to Leyland with the National. However they took a good number of these and the later National2 too, and then not only became one of the fans for the Lynx they took the last examples built including this K-Reg bus seen in Liverpool. When the last of these were withdrawn a couple of years ago as elsewhere for the first time in many many years there were no buses carrying the Leyland name in the fleet which for many of us growing up all those years ago in the Fifties and Sixties might have seemed impossible to contemplate.

The Ikarus File

I bought some Staropramen Czech Lager today so feeling a bit nostalgic for certain things in the old Eastern Block I thought I would wash it down with an IKarus 280 in the Prague suburbs looking somewhat more interesting than the blocks of Communist concrete housing. No 4502 carries the name of it's home Garage, Repy on the front and these buses were quite a nice ride as they sounded a bit like a cross between a Bedford OB and Volvo B10M perhaps. Also in this view of course are Skoda cars, a classic Prague red and cream tram and some interesting trucks.

Evening Sunshine in Blackburn

Sometimes in Summer not only can we take photographs right into the evening if we avoid getting caught in the long shadows we can take some pleasing soft mellow images like this golden view of Blackburn Bus Station. I know that might sound a contradiction of terms but if one likes Leylands this was a pretty good place to hear those sounds too. No Ribble buses here but there were two Atlanteans from Blackburn itself and Hyndburn (Accrington) down the road, plus of course the best sounding Leyland of them all, the Leopard coach. This example working for Powercraft's on route to Guide Bridge obvious previously ran for Rennie of Dumfermaline as it was still wearing their maroon and cream colours.

Rush Hour in Porto

When I was in Porto in Summer 1984 this was one of the newest motorbuses a Volvo B10R No.844

First:: Lowland

There was quite a long period when the First Group confined it's once eye catching 'Barbi' corporate look to brand new vehicles that matched it's specification and at the same time it's many fleets retained their former identity often just modifying their existing layout to incorporate the First Logo or to add a splash of extra colour too. Some of the results were very pleasing and fresh as can be seen here on this Peebles based Leyland National caught hurrying away from Edinburgh Saint Andrew Square Bus Station bound for Penicuik. In Britain we were all to familiar with these integral buses in NBC red or green but National Mk1 buses were not so common north of the border as the canny Scots folk preferred to stick with their more orthodox tried and tested Alexander Y-type combinations particularly the dependable Leyland Leopard. Before the Scottish Bus group like the NBC further south was broken up in 1985, Lowland had been the southern region of the large Eastern Scottish and even though it's fleet was the smallest with just one-hundred vehicles it's operating area extended from just outside the Edinburgh conurbation to Berwick-on-Tweed on the border of England.

The mid-morning Wait

This could well be Gossau, one of numerous small sleepy towns or large villages stretched along the mail railway line between Zurich and Saint Gallen in the far North East near the German and Austian border of Switzerland. I expect nothing much changes and Post Buses still wait for trains to arrive before heading towards desolate sounding places like Waldkirch. I expect the church is still the same too but as elsewhere with good roads and modern transport it may still be quite peaceful but is no longer wild. Often if I was changing trains and had a few minutes to spare I would check out what was outside the station like this local Contractor's Volvo working for the PTT, a bus I also saw one day in St.Gallen too. Perhaps more of interest today are the Saurer trucks in the background as they are all part of the nostalgia for that unique Swiss-i-nes that is quickly melting like the snow.

Dreaming of the Millions: Sunshine Melting Snow

In the snow's of early 1982 one of the nicely proportioned Roe bodied Leyland Atlanteans of Metrobus the trading name of the West Yorkshire PTA pauses somewhere I was passing on the road to Halifax from Leeds or Bradford.

Lunchtime in Oranianburg

Once part of the former East Berlin a connected by the S-Bahn is the pleasant small town of Oranianburg and when I went there a few years ago there were few reminders of the past apart from this thinly disguised Ikarus hiding beneath it's pensioner's blue-rinse used by the local operator OVG. At lunchtime students board the bus to Henningsdorf.