Tag: Phil Blinkhorn
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The Back End of the Bus
Of the thousands of photos of buses now on the web and in print, photos of the back of vehicles are very much in the minority. Yet many a subtle change in design can be just as easily gleaned from photos of the rear as much as photos of front three quarters nearside or offside…
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Early interest in Buses
I’m not sure from where I get my interest in transport – it certainly isn’t a family tradition. In the late 1940s my father was a maintenance electrician with Williamson’s ticket printers of Ashton under Lyne which printed tens of millions of bus tickets. He sometimes brought transport magazines home and, even before I could…
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To School by Bus – Part Four
Not read Part Three Click here I mentioned that the daytime schedule on the #31 was not enhanced at rush periods and there was a good reason for this – the #31A. The #31 ran from Manchester, by 1958 using the Chorlton St terminus, to the Cheshire village of Bramhall and was exclusively MCTD. Never…
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To School by Bus – Part Three
Not read Part Two Click here The alternative route to school in 1958 was through Didsbury and Withington, along Wilmslow Rd. As with the route along Kingsway there were two services available but they were of an altogether different nature to the #29 and #40. The Manchester #1 was a limited stop service between Gatley…
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To School by Bus – Part Two
Not read Part One Click here In September 1958 the Manchester Corporation #40 from Parrs Wood to Albert Sq was entrusted to the Northern Counties bodied 1953/54 batch of Leyland PD2s (3300-3329) all of which were delivered to Parrs Wood where most stayed for the next 15 or so years until withdrawn – apart from…
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To School by Bus – Part One
54 years ago few children were driven to school by their parents and most of those who, at ten or eleven, passed the Eleven Plus exam and went on to grammar school (and not a few who didn’t and went to secondary or technical school) found themselves travelling by bus using normal services, often changing…
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Days out with Martin Hannett
If you Google the name Martin Hannett you will find details of a man who made his mark as a record producer with Factory Records to a level which some describe as inspired genius and was so involved in drugs and alcohol that they, it is said, eventually killed him at just short of 43…
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SELNEC and New Half Cab Bus Production
Whilst not wishing to break the date limits of this site, I’ve recently come across something intriguing that I’d all but forgotten relating to a design that definitely falls within the site’s scope and has brought up memories of something I tried to sort out in the 1980s and to which I never found a…
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From Heaton Moor to Ashton under Lyne 1956
In early 1955 my father started work as a rep for a London based electronics components company, covering the whole of the UK and Ireland except the Home Counties – though visits to London were frequent. During school holidays I used to travel the country with him and was able to see a much wider…
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Stockport Corporation Transport Fleet 1958-1969
At the start of 1958 Stockport Corporation’s transport undertaking was in a relatively healthy state. Unlike its large neighbour, Manchester, it had not suffered too greatly from public ire at the ever rising cost of fares as it had been able to keep fares relatively stable (apart from a halfpenny increase on all fares at…