Category: Articles
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The First PTEs – Part One – Ashton under Lyne
Phil Blinkhorn and Roger Cox Not read from the beginning, click here With its blind already set for the next outward journey, LTC 768 a 1950 H30/26R PD2/3 travels along Warrington Street, unrecognisable today, towards the bus station. Route 128 was originally trolleybus route 217. Haughton Green was a small village beyond Denton which lost…
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The First PTEs – The Beginning of the End for the Corporation Bus – SELNEC – Introduction
Phil Blinkhorn and Roger Cox For almost 80 years the Corporation Bus was a fixture in many cities, towns and even rural areas around the United Kingdom. A low cost social transport service providing for many councils a nett income generator, the colour schemes and coats of arms carried were as much an identifier of…
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Fascinating Aspects of Scheduling at Samuel Ledgard
Chris Youhill Have you ever wondered how the buses and the crews reached their home depots at night?? Well usually there was no problem as the service timetable worked out suitably, but occasionally some interesting little tricks had to be devised and could be incorporated into the duties at any available time of the day.…
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Northern General Transport Percy Main Depot – Part Three
Ronnie Hoye Not read Part Two click here A handful of Percy Main’s service vehicles carried the Wakefields name, and we’ve seen a couple of examples, but we turn now to the other side of their operations, they also had a superb fleet of coaches. I don’t think it ever exceeded twenty in number, but…
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Northern General Transport Percy Main Depot – Part Two
Ronnie Hoye Not read Part One click here The layout of the lights on this Weymann bodied AEC Regent suggests that it could be from 1940, but the registration indicates post war. Percy Main had six, FT 5222/7 – 112/7, and they set the trend for many of the post war vehicles. This 1946, Guy…
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Northern General Transport Percy Main Depot – Part One
Ronnie Hoye The story of The Northern General Transport Company Ltd starts in 1913, but the history of some of its subsidiaries goes back even further. Two of them were Tynemouth and District Transport Co and Wakefields Motors Limited; this is a brief and by no means complete history of those two. It would take…
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The Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company Limited
Ronnie Hoye I am extremely grateful to Tony Fox, and Bill Donald, for their help in putting this article together. The Tyneside name ceased to exist as an identity in 1975, inevitably, some records have been lost entirely, and in instances where I am aware of more than one account of events, I have pointed…
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Rochdale Regent Vs
Donald McKeown Lancashire in the fifties and sixties. All that variety! Well, that is perhaps what most enthusiasts will think, but as one who was there at the time, I can tell you that it was merely a variety of Leyland Titans. Of the 27 pre-1968 municipal bus fleets in Lancashire, all but one operated…
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North West Independents – Book Review
Pete Davies One of the recent titles from Venture Publications is Neville Mercer’s review of Independent Bus Operators in North West England, number 31 in the Super Prestige series. Although I have been based in Hampshire for over 40 years, my roots are in the North West, Bolton and Lancaster to be precise, so I…
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Guernsey Motors/Railways Fleet Number 77
Peter Davies A 1958 Albion Victor FT39KAN with a Reading FB35F body Registration 8226 – YFO 127 Guernsey fleet number 77, an Albion Victor followed a string of Albion’s supplied to Guernsey Motors and Guernsey Railway. Designed externally to look like coaches they are in fact buses, Licensed to carry 35 seated passengers and 7…