A selection of photos from the first weekend (4th and 5th October 2008) of Arriva UK Trains managing in house the railway replacement bus and coach operations of its two UK rail franchises – Arriva Trains Wales and CrossCountry.

A selection of scanned bus photos from the past 20 years.

(The photos in this gallery are not mine but are from my collection and are without copyright or acknowledgment markings).

Ben Stanley was a coach and bus operator based in my original hometown of Hersham, Surrey. Their depot along Burwood Road is long gone, but is nicely remembered by the naming of the now residential area as ‘Stanley Gardens’.

The photos in this gallery were taken long before me and my camera came into this world. They are however from my personal collection and are without copyright or acknowledgment markings.

Ben Stanley was the longstanding operator of the Hersham to Walton-on-Thames local bus route, which today is numbered 564. The route has seen a number of operators over the years since deregulation, when first numbered 264 and home to one of London Country’s original 1986 Mercedes Benz minibuses. Since then the route has been in the hands of Armchair, Tellings Golden Miller and now Travel London.

A small selection of photos from the excellent Mid Hants Railway’s 2008 Alton Bus Rally and a visit to the Cobbett Hill Depot of Alder Valley Travel, who kindly allowed me to take their L705 FRD (DAF Optare Spectra) to the rally and drive the proprietors preserved Greenline AEC Regal IV MLL 763 (RF226) on special services at the event.

My grateful thanks go to Alan Fairbrother (also the lead organiser of the event) and Noel Clark of Alder Valley Travel for a thoroughly enjoyable day.

It was also good to meet so many friends, associates and former work colleagues.

Stagecoach in Wales Dennis Dart/Caetano Compass R422 AOR is rather unusual in having a Plaxton Pointer II front grafted onto it!

T47 BBW and T615 BBW
MAN 24.350 Jonkheere Monaco's
68 seats with belts, toilet, servery and air conditioning.

Ex Stagecoach Oxford Tube. Now in the Wiltax fleet. First vehicles in the new TGM 'Group coaching livery'.

Whereas here in the UK low floor buses feature automatic gearboxes, Malta is unusual in that around half of the low floor bus fleet have manual gearboxes.

Such things as a manual gearbox Optare Excel or Dennis Dart seem somewhat noval to me, hence this collection!

A long time coming but open top buses are now permitted for use on Malta and Cancu Supreame have been granted a service licence.

Services have started using Leyland Fleetlines which have been on the Island for some years. These are complimented by a front entrance Routemaster (RMF).

Now more modern Volvo D10M double deck buses are being introduced (shown under preperation in the collection) and Leyland Titan's are also on the way!

Various photos in connection with route and/or service launches or publicity photo shots duing my career

KCY 884 looks like just another ordinary Volvo B10M with Plaxton Premier 3500 bodywork, it's even badged as a Volvo B10M. Infact its not a Volvo B10M and in my opinion its something rather special and worthy of a special feature here on my site!

I saw this coach in Valetta on my first day out in Malta and very quickly noticed that there was something very different and unusual about it.

Using a combination of some rivet counting knowledge (not normally like me!), reference to a PSV Circle book and a subsequent conversation with the driver it turns out that this is in fact is a Leyland Tiger fitted with a locally assembled body built using Plaxton Premier body parts. Very rare indeed as no Leyland Tigers were ever fitted with a Plaxton Premier body, the last ones receiving the very last of the Plaxton Paramount and Plaxton 321 (ex Duple 320/340) body types.

The initial giveaway of the difference was the Leyland Tiger steering wheel, colunm and indicator stalk, however further inspection went on to show Leyland Tiger wheel hubs on the front axle, Tiger style (non B10M) ZF gear stick, accelerator pedal and a non-standard handbrake leaver.

I'm rather fond of Leyland Tiger's and it was pleasing to see one fitted with this more modern style bodywork, especially as the chassis was one of the later ones fitted with the more powerful, reliable and easier to keep going nowadays Cummins L10 engine.

Leyland Lynx FBY 703 on Malta. Ex Travel West Midlands 1989 example now converted to be wheelchair accesible (DDA compliant?)

Leyland Lynx's, whilst never popular here in the UK towards the end of their lives, when in ramped floor and split step arrangement have, in my opinion, one of the most user friendly entrance step and interior arrangments that exist on a high floor bus and it was pleasing to see that a book leaf ramp had been able to be fitted to the front entrance platform of this example now operating in Malta in order to make it a wheelchair accesible bus complete with a set of seats removed on the near side at the front to make a wheelchair bay.

Whilst I found the Lynx's I had dealings wth during my career difficult to keep on the road, I always found them a fun, responsive and pleasing vehicle to drive and have always liked their 'ahead of their time' modern looks.

Vehicles from the fleet of Thames Bus which was taken over by Central Parking System of UK Limited in October 2003 and formed the initial basis of the local bus operations of Centra

Concorde being moved along the A30 in Hounslow during the early hours of 4th April 2004 where it was moved by road to the River Thames, moved onto a pontoon and salied to Scotland where the plane was re-assembled as an exhibit at the Museum of Flight outside Edinburgh.

Various photos of the Centra operations (more recently Flights Hallmark)

Hallmark Coaches, Coleshill (Birmingham), upon its takeover by Centra

My preserved 1973 AEC Reliance 6U3ZR/Plaxton Panorama Elite C49F coach in London Country Greenline livery.

I have owned this coach since October 2003, purchasing it from Cobham Bus Museum after we sold Thames Bus to Centra. The vehicle has been maintained with a class 6 MOT until 2006 and is now under preperation for a return for the 2008 rally season along with my recently aquired second preserved vehicle - Southdown Leyland National AYJ 97T.

Class 50 motive power - what more can be said!

Standard private hire and contract coaches of the Wiltax fleet

Double deck buses in the Wiltax fleet (past and present)

Executive front line coaches operated by Wiltax

Single deck buses operated by with Wiltax fleet (past and present)

DAF DB250LF Plaxton President bodied double deck buses now operated by Wiltax in single door 72 seat (with seat belts) format.

Various bus and coach liveries, branding and publicity items which I have designed/produced during my career.

Liveries include...

2002 - Thames Bus - Two tone blue (with mustard releif stripe) livery and company logo

2003 - Centra 'origional' - Silver and White livery with blue stripes. Initially for coaches this was later adapted for buses and an allover silver version was introduced for tabled executive specification coaches.

2004 - Centra 'bus' - Red, blue and silver livery. Route branded versions later introduced for routes 472, 71/81, 426/446 and 400.

2004 - Timetrak - Simple block colour livery with new colourful and simple logo and stylised large clock image designed for this small Surrey based operator.

2005 - Jet Coach - An adaption of the already adapted Flights coach livery with a silver base, now using gold stripes with the Jet Coach logo and route branding.

2005 - Minibus Executive Travel 'MET' silver corporate livery - Silver base with graffite grey and black logo and sashes. This was an enhancement of the company's previous white based livery which used a multi-coloured version of the MET logo.

2006 - Wiltax Buses - new 'swooping ball with three flying stripes' logo, modern font typeface and revised vehicle livery striping introduced to replace the previous 1980's style flat stripe logo and livery which was copied from BTS.
Various vehicle rear end adverts and branding were also developed.

2006 - Wiltax Coaches - Slver based livery designed to be clean, fresh, modern, simple and to show some relationship to the orange and mustard bus fleet livery. This livery 'plays' with the side window lines of the vehicle to provide a smoother sweeping effect, a concept which has later been trialled with the oranage bus livery on 2 Plaxton President low floor double deck buses in the fleet.