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.
A pictorial history of buses and coaches of the period, drawn from a British transport photographer’s vast collection. British Buses and Coaches in the 1960s is an overview of the bus and coach scene during a decade of great social and economic change in Britain’s history. This volume looks at the interesting and varied number of bus and coach operators that still existed, before and just after the formation of the National Bus Company in 1968. With around 300 photos, Jim Blake has compiled an informative volume of material from his extensive collection of negatives taken during that period, which give a flavor of how things were at that time of great transformation.
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variety of buses and coaches operated by British Electric Traction group fleets in the 1960s, featuring previously unpublished photographs from Jim Blake's extensive archives.Not only did these fleets, which served most of England and Wales, have a splendid variety of British-built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!
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.
Road passenger transport management is an important role, involving the planning and coordinating of passenger transport operations, including routes and schedules. Managers ensure that passengers reach their destinations safely, on time and in the most cost-effective way. Road Passenger Transport Management covers all the essential tasks a transport manager is expected to master. Road Passenger Transport Management provides tips and tools for working with customers, planning routes and scheduling delivery times, as well as managing a team of supervisors, administration staff and drivers. The authors include guidelines for coordinating staff training and arranging vehicle maintenance, MOTs and tax payments, as well as organizing vehicle replacements and managing contracts and developing new business. This is a contributed book, with expertise shared from well-known academics and practitioners who have spent many years in the passenger transport field. The tools and case studies in this vital new guide will enable readers to learn new skills or build on existing expertise. Online supporting resources include sample performance reports and target assessment forms.
AEC, Bristol, Crossley, Daimler, Dennis, Leyland and others were all manufacturers of passenger vehicle chassis which could be seen throughout the country in the years following the end of World War Two. They produced a wide range of double deck and single deck buses and coaches, bodied by a considerable number of body builders. With the exception of Dennis, all those chassis makers have now disappeared, along with nearly all the body builders. In addition, most operators of this variety of vehicles are no longer in existence, being primarily absorbed into larger operations. This book can only give a small indication of the major role Steve and his Quantock Heritage fleet have played in preserving not only part of the engineering history of this country, but its effect also on social history. In practical terms he has displayed this by enabling the general public to see, enjoy, and also use vehicles of a bygone era.
