coachmann

The next operator north of Stockport was the Stalybrdge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Joint Board (it's name was even longer before the war!). When Thorneycroft ceased PSV production in the mid 1930's, the 'Joint board' turned to Daimler chassis. The little green trams were on the way out and the Daimler's pre-selector gearboxes made it easier to retrain ex. tram drivers. No.168 was the Daimler demonstrator purchased by the SHMD in 1937 and is about to pass one of Manchester corporation's bogie trams that had just left Hyde market circa 1946.... The Daimler COG6's were a familiar sight until 1958 and had quite a luxurious interior. The Gardner6 engine had a purposeful sound and these buses were very lively, unlike some of the post-war Daimlers. I traveled on these as much as possible, not just in Hyde but on the joint No.8 route from Oldham to Stalybridge during the time when the Joint Board had the weekday service. The upper deck front looked much like the back on these late 1930's Northern Counties bodies... My cousin Carole and i were but 10 year olds when given the fare from her home in Godley to Hyde market one Saturday afternoon. I seem to remember our elderly Thorneycroft single decker had perimeter seating and we sat with our backs to the front bulkhead. The one we rode on circa 1952 was in a sight better condition than the one below (which had become a canteen).... The SHMD wartime Daimlers were also very lively machines. This one at Ashton's old 'Cricket Pavilion' style booking office and crew's canteen had a Brush body and an AEC engine and is working a Saturday morning short run to Hyde... This John Fozard photo of one of the short-lived Brush bodies shows the characteristic bright metal strip on the back and the corner fenders, however, this bus differed from the others in that the cream band below the lower deck had not been taken down to the raised beading. A Manchester Crossley DD42 stands beside it on Piccadilly's cobbles..... The joint board was a few years behind the other operators in the area in not adopting a simpler livery until around 1958 when the dark green was slowly replaced by a mid to light green. This shot on the outdoor bus park beside the SHMD garage, known to crew's as the 'Ponderosa', depicts a less than proud looking Joint Board where patch painting clearly wasn't working. Of note is the unique Atkinson double decker.... Coachmann washing his bus down at Greenfield in 1974. I had restored the bus to its original dark green livery and 'Grasscroft Halt' (Dave Beilby) of this forum was busy with his camera...

Locos are often sold at less than half price. No one could say the Bachmann Compounds were duds.

North Western Road Car Company crossed all the town and city boundaries around Manchester and I found their pre-war Bristols fascinating. I think it was in Newton that I saw purple buses after dark. It took this young lad a while to work out the strange green street lighting had an a affect on the red of the NWRC buses! The ones I looked out for were the buses with pre-war ECW body, although I was unaware of the body swaps that took place on this company. When the pre-war buses were given new Willowbrook bodies after the war, twelve pre-war ECW bodies were retained from which nine were made serviceable. This seemingly pre-war original was in fact bought from Potteries Motor Traction and was given one of the restored ECW bodies in 1952. Their Gardner 5LW engines shattered the peace of any street they negotiated..... The North Western saloons pottered around the small villages around Delph, Greenfield and Uppermill but I cannot recall ever riding one. This was taken in Rochdale en route to Harrogate circa 1976.... Another post-preservation example is this Leyland PD2 passing Llandullas in North Wales.... Now that's what I call a bus! While I was hacked off at Crosville getting some of the North Western when the company was chopped up, I had to admit these AEC's looked smart with the new style insignia... Pity about the red back wheel....

Stockport managed to get 18 to 20 years out of its wartime Massey bodied Guy Arabs without massive rebuilding whereas most other operators opted for new bodies as soon as things quietened down in the bus building industry. This one is in Hyde bus station on an enthusiast special along with a pre-war Leyland Tiger saloon... Post-war order were often split between Crossley and Leyland. This 1951 PD2 is also seen in Hyde bus station on the Ashton-Hyde-Stockport service in the company of SHMD Daimlers.... Some of Stockports buses were transferred to Oldham depot after SELNEC took over, because of the latter towns dire need for decent buses. The state of the body shows well the folly of adopting Dayglow orange and ivory for the Pennine towns. Obviously, no lessons had been learned from Rochdale Corporations experience with all over cream. This ten years old East Lancs bodied PD2/40 was photographed at Grotton on the service via Oldham to Holiinwood...

Unlike railway lines, which we had to go in search of as small boys, buses were readily accessible. Even at an early age I could identify the 'make' from its radiator be it a bus, lorry or car. Bus bodies took rather longer to learn about. The sheer variety of chassis and liveries in 'the Manchester area' made the hobby all the more interesting, but I had to wait until 1950 before being allowed to go off on my own in search of my paternal family that remained in Hyde. We had moved to Oldham, pretty much a Leyland/Roe municipality, while the Hyde I left was a mainly Daimler user. In between was Ashton-Under-Lyne which I niavely regarded as a wartime Guy town, but which I soon realised had Leylands and Crossleys. Another operator was Stockport, a Crossley user like Manchester, but with other chassis as well. Both came into Ashton, while Ashton and Manchester also had trolleybuses. So between Oldham and Hyde, I had a large choice of chassis and bodies to ride on and made the most of it on Saturday mornings when it seemed that anything that could turn a wheel was on the road for shoppers and men working a half day. Below is a Stockport Corporaton Crossley DD42/5 of 1946 entering Stockport Mersey Square... The more modern appearance of this Crossley DD42/7 is apparent. It was from the final batch delivered in 1951 and I saw them when new. Stockport was very conservative and all the post-war buses were 7' 6" wide. It wasn't until 1956 that Stockport bought its first 8' wide buses when operators such as Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale had gone for 8' wide buses at the first opportunity around 1947....

Curiously, I forgot to mention in post #11 that I worked on BR Passenger Parcels throughout most of 1959. We had round 8 which covered Salford. This took in all the Jewish sweat shops and raincoat factories, Frederick Road bus garage, soap and other factories alongside the ship canal including the ship canal railway at Mode Wheel Depot and a few garage workshops. Brian Mills mail order also provided plenty of domestic business. In those days, industrial steam abounded and it was always a good excuse to have a look around. We fueled up in one of the goods yards that had tracks across the main streets where the tiny L&Y 0-4-0ST 'Pugs' spent their lives. The summer of '59 was a warm one too. Our regular van was a blood & custard pre-war Morris commercial except when we had a heavy Dennis 'Flying Pig'. The parcels depot had its own wooden platform at Manchester Victoria and I had my sandwiches up there so I could watch all the steam movements. We unloaded everything at teatime at Manchester Central via lifts down to underground rooms, then I would cadge a lift in a very lively 3-wheel Scammel to Victoria for the train home to Oldham.

I worked on the footplate in 1960 at Lees 26F and loved it. No attempt was ever made to hide my enthusiasm for the life, which stood me in good stead with the people who matter. I was also left-handed, which made firing a doddle on the London Midland. My interest in late teens only extended to the prototype, not modelling, so I cannot say the job affected a hobby. There were external problems due to shift work, so I got a job on the buses, my other hobby, and that was that.

The North Wales coast roads have some restrictions on vegicle height and are no-go areas for normal height 14' 6" buses. Whether folk still use the terms lowbridge or highbridge I don't know, but I am sure most folk know what I am referring to.

I took the camera to hospital today to photograph the free bus on the park & ride. The driver told me it is the only Highbridge bus (14' 6") in North Wales. No doubt you guys will know it's history.... A pair of buses on the stand at the hospital... Beautiful views from the top deck looking across the fields towards Rhuddlan resembling one of those model railway backscenes... Room with a view....Bodelwyddan marble church....

I look forward to seeing your ex Ambulance full brake.

Never having been a cutter & shutter. it is too much effort for so little achievement if one ends up with a compromise. I considered the simplest way was to etch them, which is what I did. But I started with the Midland-built variants started by Reid around 1922 and moved onto LMS Period I stock afterwards. Once the chassis had been etched, it was only a matter of etching different 57' bodies. The real coaches were designed to use standard components and production did not cease until 1930....

Talking about what Hornby could make but probably wont; when considering which loco to mass-produce, the question must be, how many thousands of people out there will buy one of these. Seeing as a popular and numerously preserved GWR 'Manor' has never been done to replace the old split-chassis duffer, I wonder what chance anything has these days. Anyone who was around the East Coast route in steam days might well be wondering where the Thompson Pacifics are in 4mm, but who would risk their shirt on one when the old "No Thompson's abortions on my layout" mentality still exists among folk who keep the RTR companies in business. One thing I will say for Hornby is they do the job 100% when an updated loco is produced as DCC Ready. Bachmann on the other hand appear to measure DCC as a small-market hence the half-hearted modifications made to locos to accommodate a DCC plug. Trying to fit speakers to these locos is a problem left to those what really want sound. What amazes me is the potential some locos have that is never exploited. The LNWR 'Coal Tank' 0-6-2T for instance was probably produced because one is preserved and it makes a companion for the Super D 0-8-0. Maybe it's just me, but I would have done it with push-pull auto vac equipment plus an LMS push pull driving trailer, that way I sell a loco and a coach. And to cash-in on the pre-grouping fad, the 0-8-0 could have been done with a round top firebox, new spectacle plate and LNWR square-base chimney. The upgraded LMS Jubilee 4-6-0 is still the vertical throatplate short firebox type, etc etc.

Easier still if its raining. Just build now't 'cos you cant see ow't.

All the satellite towns surrounding Manchester that had their own bus fleets were known for their chassis types. SHMD was known as a Daimler fleet when I was young. One particular type of bus had attracted my attention through its deep cream band below the lower deck windows and so one day I was delighted to ride on one from Ashton St. Michael's Square to Newton. The body was built by Brush; a sort of relaxed wartime design. I never saw one again and this puzzled me for years. This photo by john Fozard shows one in Newton where Flowery Field railway station is now sighted. My paternal gran lived quite nearby..... It wasn't until many years later that I discovered that Nos.36 to 45 with Brush bodies were given new Northern Counties bodies in 1954, still to a width of 7' 6". I had been riding on them all the time without knowing! Here is one at Newton Cheshire Cheese, terminus of the 11 route from Ashton-U-Lyne....

I was given to believe there was a lot of surplus wartime grey about in the later 1940's. Certainly everyone seemed to live off army & navy surplus trousers and bed blankets etc.

My earliest memories from childhood are being told not to climb into the cornfield behind us because a little boy had had his head cut off (I presumed by the windmill type thingy being towed around by a tractor) and not to go down the lane because a little boy had drowned. Up the lane wasn't mentioned so I presumed no boys had died watching traffic on the main Stockport-Hyde road at Gee Cross! I took the red trams for granted seeing as we traveled on them down to Hyde market. Below is a Stockport tram in Mersey Square.... The real attraction in Hyde town centre was the buses and they were everywhere. The very first bus I took a real interest in was an SHMD Joint Board Thorneycroft Darling because water and steam were bubbling down the radiator. This inquisitive child's eye noticed a gap in the slats down the centre of the radiator where there had once been a vertical bar. This I drew when I got home. That gap must have lead my dad to think I had drawn an AEC until Uncle Harry pointed out that one wouldn't see an AEC in Hyde. Then the penny dropped! The Thorneycroft deckers were withdrawn in 1948.Two designs of Northern Counties body are seen in the picture shot under Stalybridge Railway Station....

The late John Fozard took the photo below. I don't know when we first met......We seemed to have been friends forever. ANW 682 was one of a batch of AEC Regents bought by Leeds in 1936. Roe bodies became a familiar sight when we moved to Oldham but I never saw one like this.... A much later AEC Regent from Eastbourne Corporation that I shot passing Rochdale on the 7th August 1977 Trans-Pennine commercial vehicle rally. The East Lancs body and swooped livery was reminiscent of Rochdale Corporation....

That's a smashing story. The lads drove the Oxford Regent to our house once when they were short of a driver! Good job it avoided the low lamp posts!

There are enough books around showing new construction in the early 1950's being given unfitted BR grey from new. Equally, there are enough pictures showing the grey only being applied to metalwork only (this applied to fitted Red Oxide livery too). Wagon painting was clearly not a priority and so Big-Four and ex.Private Owner wagons carried on as before with perhaps the addition of newly painted number with appropriate pre-fix, sometimes on a black panel if necessary....sometimes not. Nevertheless, some workshops did turn out Big Four repaints in BR grey. The LMS had adopted bauxite before the war for unfitted and fitted wagons, so in the BR scheme of things they looked like fitted wagons and fitted goods brake vans when they weren't. Many of the wagons I saw in the extensive yards a Oldham Clegg Street, Royton Junction and Diggle in the early to mid 1950's provided a picture of various greys and browns, much of it weathered with the usual track dust that was prevalent in steam days. The 'stand-out' grey wagons were the steel minerals. With the introduction of DMU's en-mass from 1958-9, modernization seemed to be creeping into every other area of BR as well and it was noticeable that more goods trains consisted of red-oxide wagons, so maybe BR started to paint wagons grey at that time in order to make it obvious to yard men which were the unfitted ones.

The clearest pictures I have come across show the simple livery on ex.LNWR coaches. In their case the double yellow waist lining was applied to the waist panel depending on the style of panelling, but the two cantrail yellow lines were often omitted altogether. Looking for photos clearly showing lining on coaches in the mid to late 1930's is like looking for a needle in a hay stack because the well known railway photographers of their time took mainly ¾-front wedge shots for maximum impact when published. Amateurs copied the 'masters'. Jenkinson & Essery did a lot of original research from the early 1960's onward and I doubt anyone else will come up with alternative information at this stage of the game. Simpler liveries were adopted by the GWR, LMS and SR for financial reasons following the 1929-30 depression. LMS full panelled gold leaf and fine red lines livery was very expensive and time consuming to apply, it's last application being on the initial Stanier flush sided coaches of 1933. The more these coaches came on stream, the more Period I coaches were cascaded to less important trains. Those coaches given full panelled livery last would no doubt retain it until the late 1930's and some through the war years when patch painting and varnishing was more often the simplest, cheapest and quickest way of preserving an external finish.

We used to joke that Gold Star had sold its stock of blue paint to Arriva... The 'travel-by-bus' experience has grown on me. The scenery towards St.Asaph looked smashing from the top deck this afternoon. A bus-pass could open up a new hobby!

Try this scanned from 'An Illustrated History of LMS Coaches 1923-57' by David Jenkinson and Bob Essery.... Pureley an example of how LMS 1934-47 livery looked on a Period I coach. Even on a model, the light reflected off the raised beading could be construed for full panelled lining on an old black & white photo...

One of my Crosville shots from 1st August 1980 that I had overlooked. I think it shows the latest and the oldest buses at that time. Taken at Rhyl Station forecourt, Bristol VR PLG 426V shares a stand with open-topper XFM 225. Today, they are both classic buses, although I'm afraid a VR never will be in my eyes....

Ex.Devon General AEC Regent V, Reg 975 MDV, leaving Rhuddlan in the mid 1970's. It retained its red livery with Gold Star and was never repainted. When I took the first Devon bus on a run, it had no brake lights or indicators so I fell back on hand signals Then the heavy goods vehicle checkers waved me inside the cones at Bodelwyddan, but luckily for my licence(!) a bloke at the other end waved me through and out again! The two ex.Salford Corporation PD2's. New around 1963, WRJ 182 and WRJ 184 came to Gold Star with several sisters. The two that were put into service are seen in the Abergele Comprehensive school yard on 6th September 1976. By 1980, decent half cab buses were hard to come by and by 1980 Oswyn did what he said he never would do and bought an Atlantean PDR1/2 with Mett/Camm body.. Having bought buses from Manchester's satellite towns for some years, END 853D actually came from Manchester Corporation itself (via a third party of course).... One of the touring coaches YLG 200R, on 6th April 1977....

A bit of Gold Star in colour. Friend John Holmes was staying over with us for a few days. Chasing the buses in his car, he wanted a picture in front of Rhuddlan Castle. Sadly the print is no longer a decent quality, but it shows ex.Bury Corporation GEN 222 after working the No.2 Girls bus... An earlier picture in the school yard showing three conductors and four drivers in front of Maidstone & District PD2 and Bury PD3. Left to right: Conductor, driver, Geoff, 'Daktari', coachmann, conductor and conductor....Flares ruled... Backtracking a bit, PD3 (ex.Bolton) and one of the PD2's (ex.Salford) on the Rhuddlan 'Straight' in a snowstorm. I remember the railway track that once crossed the road at this point from St.George Quarry to Rhyl Foryd Pier... Ex.Bolton UBN 312 passing the old Town Hall on Rhuddlan High Street en route to garage. Today's Rhuddlan Models is close by where the car is in the distance... Mid-afternoon line up in St.Asaph goods yard with the Cathedral in the background.... Left to right: Salford PD2 (not in traffic), Devon General Regent V, Bolton PD3 (not in traffic), Salford PD2, Bolton PD3, and two more Devon General Regents (not in traffic)...