Author: Jim Blake Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473857260 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 139
Book Description
This book looks at the wonderful variety of buses and coaches operated by British Electric Traction group fleets in the 1960s, featuring previously unpublished photographs from Jim Blake's extensive archives. Not only did these fleets, which served most of England and Wales, have a splendid variety of British-built buses and coaches with chassis manufactured by the likes of AEC, Crossley, Daimler, Dennis, Guy and Leyland with bodywork by such firms as Park Royal, Weymann, Metro-Cammell, East Lancs, Northern Counties, Roe, Duple, Plaxton, Willowbrook and Leyland again but they also had an array of distinctive liveries. Many dated back to the early part of the century when the operators first started bus operation. The smart maroon and cream of East Kent, the dark green and cream of Maidstone & District or the light green and cream of Southdown, for example, were supplemented by ornate fleet-names, often in gold lettering. These three fleets were just a few of those that served seaside towns, and will remind readers of holidays they spent in the 1950s and '60s. Sadly, the years covered by this book are the final years of the BET group, which was taken over by the nationalised Transport Holding Company in late 1967, as a prelude to the creation of the National Bus Company, under which the distinctive liveries of the BET group fleets, and even some of the operators themselves, would disappear. The 1960s also saw the demise of many traditional types of bus that these fleets operated, owing to the introduction of rear-engined double-deckers, such as the Leyland Atlantean and Daimler Fleetline, as well as the spread of one-man operation. Many of the photographs featured in this book show the older types in their final days pure nostalgia for the transport enthusiast!
Author: Jim Blake Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473827175 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
This book looks at an important turning point in the history of the bus industry in Britain. 1967 was the penultimate year to the end of an era, when private and semi-nationalized company's operated the bus networks in this country.??After 1967 the network was never the same again, with the formation of the National Bus Company in 1968.??The NBC was a very bland organization compared to the colourful bus companies that had existed before nationalization, and many small municipal fleets amalgamated to form Passenger Transport Executives.??This comprehensive volume covers a large number of the bus companies throughout the country in 1967 and also has a good readable narrative describing Jim Blake's journeys travelling on these services across Britain.
Author: Kevin Lane Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited ISBN: 1445694484 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
An evocative collection of black and white images covering the National Bus Company across England and Wales in its early years from 1969 to 1975.
Author: Jim Blake Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473857236 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
This fascinating and informative book looks at the Tilling Group of bus companies during the 1960s. These operated approximately half of the inter-urban and rural bus services in England and Wales, and were nationalized by Clement Attlee's Labour Government in 1948 under the control of the British Transport Commission. Ownership passed to the Transport Holding Company Ltd in 1963, though the fleets remained under Tilling Group control.During the period covered by this book, the operators within the group had very standardized fleets, with the vast majority of their buses and coaches having Bristol chassis and Eastern Coachworks (ECW) bodywork. This was a result of these manufacturers also having been nationalized and controlled by the BTC and THC.However, some Tilling Group operators still had earlier vehicles with, for instance, AEC or Leyland chassis, which were acquired prior to the requirement for them to buy only Bristol products, whilst some also had coaches with Bedford or Ford Thames chassis built in the 1950s and 1960s.Unlike the BET fleets throughout England and Wales, most Tilling fleets also had highly standardized liveries, either of red with cream relief, or green with cream relief for their stage carriage buses, or the reverse of this for their coaches. There were some exceptions, though. The most obvious ones were Midland General and Notts & Derby with an attractive dark blue and cream, as well as the Royal Blue coaches of Southern and Western National, and the maroon and cream coaches of Thames Valley subsidiary South Midland.All Tilling Group companies became part of the National Bus Company in early 1969, and before long their traditional liveries became just a memory when the NBC imposed standard red or green liveries.Throughout most of the 1960s, Jim Blake travelled to these operators and photographed their vehicles, and spent many summer Saturdays at London's Victoria Coach Station, where their service buses as well as express coaches could be seen. He was fortunate to capture much of this changing transport scene on film, and presents some of these photographs in this volume. Many have never been published before.
Author: David Harvey Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited ISBN: 1445667975 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
Examines the history of each type of single-decker and offers a fascinating insight into the history of these captivating, iconic buses.
Author: Malcolm Batten Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport ISBN: 1399096125 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 162
Book Description
London Transport was created in 1933 with monopoly powers. Not only did it have exclusive rights to run bus (and tram and trolleybus) services in the Greater London area, it also ran services in a Country Area all around London. Green Line express services linked the country towns to London and in most cases across to other country towns the other side of the metropolis. This country area extended north as far as Hitchin, east to Brentwood, south to Crawley and west to Windsor. But what of the towns at the edge of the country area? Here the green London Transport buses would meet the bus companies whose operations extended across the rest of the counties of Essex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire etc. In some cases the town was at a node where more than one company worked in. At Luton there was a municipal fleet. Elsewhere, such as at Aylesbury there were local independent operators who had a share in the town services. It would all change from 1970 when the London Transport Country Area was transferred to the National Bus Company to form a new company named London Country Bus Services. This would later be split into four separate companies. Deregulation in 1985 and privatization in the 1990s led to further changes in the names and ownership of bus companies. Consolidation since then has seen the emergence of national bus groups Stagecoach, First Group, Arriva and Go-Ahead replacing the old names and liveries. But retrenchment by these companies has given an opportunity for new independent companies to fill the gaps. This book takes the form of an anti-clockwise tour around the perimeter of the London Country area, north of the Thames featuring a number of key towns starting at Tilbury and ending at High Wycombe, illustrating some of the many changes to bus companies that have occurred.
Author: Jim Blake
Author: Malcolm Batten
Author: Jim Blake
Author: Kevin Lane
Author: Michael Hitchen
Author: Philip Wallis
Author: Gavin Booth
Author: Jim Blake
Author: David Harvey
Author: Malcolm Batten