C351 SVV: Your Bus, but blink and you'll miss it!

Growing up I remember good Independents either like Whittle changing their fleet every couple of years or more usually running the same old buses for years on end to the point where we knew them all a bit like a PSV 'Whose Who." Yes everything had it's place but with Deregulation everything changed constantly and despite Your Bus briefly running this extremely unusual almost 40ft long Jonckheere bodied Scania few would remember it or even think it strange. C351 SVV was seen in Digbeth Birmingham but I'm sure here too they suffered from the same severe manoeuvrability problems that they were originally cursed by on London tendered routes.

Willigott but will it go as far as Sweden?

When it comes to image and tidiness the Danes are certainly a bit like the Swiss. I usually found their buses and coach nicely turned out but other Scandinavian countries can be more casual as can be witnessed by the very unprofessional signwriting on the blue Swedish Coach. I'm not sure what it was but it was quite elderly but certainly adequate for the short hop for backpackers and young weekend drinkers who took this short trip via the ferry from Malmo to Copenhagen. Today of course it's spanned by an impressive railway cum road bridge.

The Greater Manchester Prototype Olympian NJA568W

Greater Manchester built up a large fleet of Northern Counties bodied Leyland Olympians but it was easy to spot the prototype by it's grill and un-peaked front dome.

Dumfries: London's Unwanted Fleetlines KUC986P

I'm sure London Buses never got over the fact that it turned down it's own FRM rear engined Routemaster for having not got on with it's fifty Atlanteans after amassing a huge fleet of 2646 DMS Daimler Fleetlines quickly decided they were not suitable for London either. But every cloud has a silver lining and operators right across the kingdom for the very small to the largest PTE's snapped up these bargain buses like Western Scottish whose former DMS 1986 DR 988 was seen in Dumfries.

Off, a quick nip to the loo in Penkridge

At 8.30am Penkridge seems very quiet but that couldn't be further from the truth as the popular market is just over the road and this is their Saturday. I have always been bothered by Arriva's Turquoise  livery as I am slightly colour blind in the sense that through sunglasses or photographs like this I see it as light blue but to the naked eye it appears like a rather horrid green. Now that West Midlands Travel does it's own 54 Service to Stafford supported by the i54 we now enjoy two buses and hour to Wolverhampton. The Arriva bus takes longer as it goes via Brewood and even though anything is better than a Dennis Dart these once superior Wright bodied VDL's are now showing their age with rattles and oily smells.

Martin's of Middlewich Yard HWH 260F

An assortment of buses hoping to find good owners in the yard of Martin at Middlewich including from Greater Manchester, a former Bolton Atlantean with East Lancs body.

3294 at Hallesches Tor

A snapshot of Berlin how it used to be. Close to The Berlin Wall this area used to be a quiet backwater, once the heart of the city but now somewhere not too busy most of the time where one could enjoy the slightly surreal blend of monuments that have lost all meaning and beautifully ugly functional U-Bahn architecture and of course the political undercurrent that had made this place how it was. They seemed rather bland at the time but anyone who liked the sounds of the MCW Metrobus would have loved MAN buses like 3295 of 1983 which was then still quite new.