Provincial and a Murky Day in Pompey

Portsmouth lost it's municipal buses for minibuses, Southdown became a Stagecoach stripe but on the plus side long established Provincial from nearby Gosport became a familiar sight. It was a pity though that they mainly ran Leyland Nationals but at least they still wore their traditional colours and looked quite pleasing on a nice day!

Die Post Setra on a Valais Grey Cold Day in Brig

Switzerland when bathed in sunshine has a magical quality and even the railway system with it's old wooden stations and it's period industrial concrete sheds has a toy-town fairy-tale feel about it. Perhaps that's because it's still the way I remember it from my schooldays in the Sixties. But go there when they get some British weather with dense cloud and rain and it seems like an old-fashioned dump. So yes of course they get horrid weather here too but when in winter it was bad I used to take the train up into the mountains for I could live with the alpine snow outside the window. Usually after a lousy week the last two days were just perfect and I ended up not wanting to come home. As well as being a well know pont on the rail route from Geneva to Milan the town of Brig has a Die Post bus fleet which always interested me but this Setra which looked very much the same was actually owned by one of it's many contractors.

Showing Our Age. Eastern National VHL 177L

The destination of this preserved Eastern National ECW bodied Bristol RE at Lincoln might not be PC enough for some but is perhaps appropriate all the same as like heir vehicles a lot of preservationists are getting old too. Let's hope in the future our less official heritage will be taken more seriously by society as once we lose it we will never get it back.

Thamesdown Dennis Dominator SMW 56Y

As well as the South Yorkshire PTE the Dennis Dominator gained a lot of orders from the remaining municipal operators including Thamesdown. No.56 with Northern Counties bodywork looked rather smart in the blue and cream livery.

When the Ku-damm was Berlin

One forgets how busy this key area of West Berlin was for all the real action now is centred in the old East Berlin around the once quiet and deadly dull  former city centre area of Lindenstrasse. So as the old saying goes  what goes around comes around. But  from this view we can easily imagine how people in the East who obviously knew what it was like must have longed to eat in the restaurants and buy the goods in the shops in this bustling utopia of Capitalism. Now they can live in debt like every one else who loves shopping too much. Quality wise not one of my best but it certainly catches the lively spirit of the Ku-damm as a Setra of Immel and Kolb ferries the tourists who came from all over West Germany to see it as well. It is still busy here but somehow no longer feels like the very heart of Berlin but that is not such a bad thing either

Slavik Koper at the Customs Post in Trieste

Coaches from Croatia with West Europeans on board leave the Communist East on a day trip to Italy, and Trieste that beckoned was notable for being at the end of the Russian controlled Iron Curtain.

Rain Greets Ellen Smith at Bretonside

Some wet weather greets these Lancashire folk as B887 WRJ their Ellen Smith Plaxton bodied Leyland Tiger arrives at Plymouth Bretonside and is told where to park. The attendant left this job but would still have greeted the coach day-trippers as he got a job plying for trade down at the Barbican for the boats out to the naval dockyard. Growing a big bushy beard and with his strong west country accent he was ideally placed for the role down at the waterside.

A bit of Inspector Morse Code

A Stratford Blue Leyland Leopard with Plaxton bodywork  in Oxford being passed by a different type of Leyland but bearing an equally iconic name and although I rarely watched it I expect Inspector Morse on the box drank Morrells Oxford Ales helping bringing those culture vulture tourists to the fine city. At this time I'm not sure if the X50 still went all the way to Birmngham but it certainly did in NBC days.

Grant doored Leopard at Barnsley Station

In the new order of Leyland Nationals, Bristol VR's and even Fords, at least the NBC adopted the trusty Leyland Leopard as it's standard coach chassis and no doubt Yorkshire Traction like a number of former BET operators was pleased about this as they had always been keen buyers of the type. As well as all-white coaches YTC was one of a number of operators who had Plaxton Supreme bodied examples with bus grant doors in a more pleasing red and white livery. No.153 was among later additions to the NBC fold in Barnsley, a National2 and an ECW bodied Leyland Olympian.

No not Pere UBU, it's Crosville's UBU 72N a Seddon

 If you don't know who Pere Ubu was he was an outrageous character invented by the writer Alfred Jarry and based on a former schoolmaster, but I suspect many more will know it as a rock band from Cleveland Ohio.

When the NBC sprang into life and  dictated it's standard vehicle policy the Leyland National had yet to materialise and consequently  the in-house state owned Bristol and ECW were hardly in a position to suppy the significantly enlarged fleet now that it was stealing former BET Group orders off AEC, Daimler and Leyland, and its bodybuilders like Alexander and Willowbrook too. I think some would have been glad of the work during this difficult period  but as well as heaven forbid the introduction on a large scale of lightweights from Ford it went to Seddon and ordered one-hundred not very popular Seddon RU's for Crosville. Everything about the NBC was cheap and cheerful and these Gardner powered buses must have looked like a good substitute for the now doomed Bristol RE. As well as the main batch Crosville acquired a former demonstrator which it numbered SPG 699 and allocated to Chester.

First Potteries Omnicity

Very typical of the First Potteries fleet are these Scanias whose wheel trims rattle noisily as they go past but the Omnicity bodies are quite eye catching. First hasn't tried to shake off it's 'Barbi' image but at least this application seen in Hanley is quite cheerful compared to all that grey they used to use.

Sauer Post Bus at Chur for Laax

Because of winter sports I expect many of you will be more familiar with Swiss place names like the ski village of Laax than the decent sized valley town of Chur where the bus goes from. I'm afraid it is a few years since Saurer RH's ventured up there and I imagine snow-boarding was still in it's infancy when this was taken in 1990. Most of the PTT examples of this bus bore their own body-style but twenty like P25649 built by R&J in 1982 had a style more akin to those supplied to it's contractors. However it was easy to tell them apart as on those the lower front panel was left black.