Bus Rally Blues: Bus & Coach Wales

I find Bus Rallies to be a pleasant day out going somewhere different and being with friends. As for the events they are a bit strange and rather artificial. Bus rides are certainly a plus but can be a bit boring when one has to visit a local brewery on an industrial estate as happened at Merthyr Tydfi last week-end. I could have ridden on the East lLancs bodied Leyland Leopard which once belonged to Rhymney Valley as it's 87, PWO 87Y but opted for a much more traditional half-cab bodied AEC Regent of South Wales Transport instead especially as I had travelled down on another Leopard..

Bluebird & Maynes in Manchester

The Manchester bus seem has lost much of it's interest now that Independents like Maynes have gone and on a visit today I saw no Blue Bus either. Although Mayne still operates coaches it's red and cream buses no long give the city a traditional flavour. They favoured Scania in later years whilst Blue Bus liked Dennis's like this East-Lancs bodied example W5 BLU.

Ribble's old Kendal Garage

Ribble had a garage at Station Road in Kendal which also shared a small part of it's allocation of forty-eight with Garstang and Grange. Following Privatisation it passed to Stagecoach who covered it's buses in these candy-stripes. Still I am rather impressed as the company which like Ribble kept it's predominately white panelled fleet looking clean and smart. The two centre vehicles a Duple Laser bodied Tiger and the open-top ECW bodied Olympian are typical NBC stock and came from Ribble whilst the Alexander bodied Olympian and Volvo single-decker were very typical of Stagecoach at that time. When Stagecoach took over Greater Manchester South it divided it's operation so that the former Ribble operations became known as Cumberland long used by Ribble's smaller BTC neihbour to the west of the county which was also now owned by Stagecoach.

Beau Voyages

The holiday season has come to an end in the South of France. Here is a memory of hot sunny days taken in Corsica in 1988 of a coach belonging to Beau Voyages in Setra's more flamboyant days,  but it is a style I have grown to like perhaps through the torments of  nostalgia rather than taste..

Abbott's of Blackpool in Plymouth

Blackpool was such a feast of transport delights it was easy to overlook it's top coach company Abbott's who ran a smart fleet of AEC Reliances before having to to turn Leyland with first the Leopard like Duple bodied EFR 97W and then later Tigers. By the time they sold out they had turned to Volvo.

I'm a little gem!

Dodge minibus you may think so, but I'd rather photograph the attractive shoppers. The minibus boom was a bit of a low period really and if it wasn't for this type of image I might not have bothered with them at all. Dodges like unsophisticated Greater Manchester Northern Counties 1889 D889 MDB were probably the least liked of all by the driver.

Ian Allan's Staffordshire Bermuda Triangle

Living in the northern areas of Britain we long suspect that Southerners and of course those who live in London think we live in a world apart that doesn't really matter where for instance a weather forecaster might tell you exactly which street in Hounslow might experience a few drops of rain whilst omitting to tell the viewers that a hurricane is approaching the Shetland Islands. I'm exaggerating of course but when Ian Allan finally compiled a book of major British Independent Bus operators in 1986 they seemed to get everything in the London area including 'airport handling buses' yet somehow missed out all the fascinating bus operators in the Staffordshire Potteries. Poole's of Alsager Bank was just one of them but there was also Berresford plus Stonier, Proctor, and Turner all worth inclusion. Poole's favoured heavyweight Leyland Leopards for it's hilly urban services to Newcastle and Hanley and Willowbrook RBF987M is seen departing the latter