Between 1978 and 1983 using the bus services run by the subsidiaries of the state owned National Bus Company, a ‘National Wanderbus’ ticket could take you almost anywhere in England and Wales.

 

A long day out with a ‘National Wanderbus’ ticket usually required a certain amount of planning with a map and a set of timetables, along with a ‘plan B’ in mind should the journey become endangered by late (or even failed) runnings.  However, my most memorable trip  was one which was totally unplanned.

Turning up at Crawley Bus Station early on 26th August 1982 I decided to see how far I could get simply by heading off in a westerly direction. My first bus at 07.33, a London Country Leyland Atlantean working the C1 town service took me to Crawley bus station. Crawley’s local C-Line services used fareboxes and didn’t issue tickets, the pre-printed ‘Wanderbus’ ticket bought the day before was essential to avoid paying the 30p flat fare.  At 07.49 another London Country  Atlantean on route 438 took me to Horsham. LCBS was one of the few NBC subsidiaries to favour the Atlantean over the Bristol VR as their standard double-decker, in their final form they were excellent machines.

Southdown couldn’t tempt me with much at Horsham, westbound services being patchy and infrequent.  So I chose Alder Valley to take me onwards to Guildford, a   Leyland National on route 283 and the first red bus of the day.

The timetable displays at Guildford’s Friary Bus Station read like a menu. Farnham, Basingstoke, Godalming, Petersfield, London Country/Green Line could take me back into Surrey or London but I wanted to head west. Then among the Alder Valley departures I struck gold: Service 214 to Winchester, leaving in five minutes at 09.45. In no time at all I’d settled into a front window seat on the top deck, admiring the view as the sturdy red Bristol VR made it’s way along the Hogs Back to Farnham, then on a gorgeous rural ride through Alton, Alresford, Kings Worthy and into Winchester.

Arriving at Winchester I’d  crossed a bus operator’s boundary, I was now in Hants And Dorset territory. There was always something strangely exciting about crossing such boundaries in NBC days. I don’t know why though. Hants And Dorset’s fleet were in the same poppy red as Alder Valley’s, but between them the buses managed to look slightly different, the way that the advertising posters were placed on them, the different typefaces used on destination blinds, subtle differences that maybe only a bus nut like me would notice.

From here, Hants And Dorset could take me to Salisbury, Basingstoke, Eastleigh or Romsey. For me though, it was their 47 service to Southampton, another Bristol VR leaving at 12.00.

This being a day trip, the next logical move would have been to accept Southampton as my furthest westerly point and turn back, maybe the limited stop service to Portsmouth to catch Southdown’s 700 along the coast to Brighton, but no. A Hants and Dorset dual purpose Leyland National was waiting to depart at 13.25 for Bournemouth, the afternoon was young, it just had to be done. After downing a sausage roll and a can of coke from the bus station cafe I was sitting on the aforementioned Leyland National enjoying the delights of the New Forest as the bus shared the back roads with the ponies.

I stepped off the bus close to Bournemouth pier just after 14.45, the hills of Purbeck and the Needles on the Isle of Wight both seemingly within touching distance. Had I really come this far by simply stepping on my local C1 at Crawley this morning? One thing was very clear though, I’d reached a point of no return, going back the same way, or any way by bus was out of the question. I’d made a ‘plan B’ for this by bringing extra money for a rail fare back home. Bournemouth, I’d decided, was as far as I could reasonably expect to travel west from Crawley for £2.97.

After a short stroll along the beach I boarded a Bournemouth Corporation’Yellow Buses’ Daimler Fleetline to the rail station (I had to pay normal fare on this one being a non NBC service), then boarding a fast train to London Waterloo, transferring to Victoria on Red Arrow 507 (another Leyland National but a series 2 version and paying full fare again, my ‘Wanderbus’ ticket not being valid on LT services), then a short walk to Victoria Coach Station to board the joint Green Line/Southdown ‘Flightline 777’ back to Crawley departing at 18.10. Showing the ‘Wanderbus’ ticket to the driver it was hard to believe that it was last presented to a Hants and Dorset driver in Southampton and I was now on a Southdown express service in London. In fact, as the Leyland Leopard coach made it’s way through the crowded streets of South London the rural meandering roads and byways of Hampshire and Dorset seemed a world away, despite the fact that I was still using the same day ticket and this was still included in my £2.97 outlay!

At 19.42, twelve hours and nine minutes after boarding my first bus London Country C1 took me back home. Crawley to Bournemouth can be driven in approximately two and a half hours, but not for £2.97, even back in 1982. By bus it had taken me just over seven hours, but the slow pace of the journey allowed me to take in and digest every change in the scenery, the subtle changes in local accents and the progressively slower pace of life as I headed further west. The London end of the journey was a massive shock to the system.

‘National Wanderbus’ gave way to ‘Explorer’ tickets in the mid 1980’s. The ‘Explorer’ lived on into privatisation but was dogged by the politics of the individual companies. Trying to re-create this journey in 2000 became fraught with problems. All was well until I reached Southampton when I was informed that neither Wilts and Dorset or First group buses could accept ‘Explorer’ tickets issued by my (then) local company Arriva . It was a nice idea while it lasted.

Geoff Nash.

So, that was my mega-day out with a National Wanderbus. But how far did you get?

I’d love to read of your long bus journeys, be it with a ‘Wanderbus’, ‘Busranger’, ‘Explorer’, ‘Rover’, or even on individual tickets. Send me your experiences in the ‘comments’ section below.

 

 

For those of us whose lust for buses was equalled with a lust for a day out this surely was the ultimate product, the ‘National Wanderbus’ ticket, launched by the state owned National Bus Company in 1978. Many of the individual NBC companies offered similar products such as London Country’s ‘Golden Rovers’ or Southdown’s ‘Busranger’ tickets but these were generally only available for use on those operator’s services. The ‘National Wanderbus’ allowed you to cross the boundaries from one operator’s territory into another. With some careful planning using the NBC’s excellent ‘Principle Bus Links’ map a good day out on the buses was guaranteed for a mere £2.97. Living in Crawley where I was largely restricted to London Country, the ‘Wanderbus’ could now give me easy access to Southdown, Maidstone & District, East Kent and Alder Valley. For the first time I could travel for miles in any direction on one ticket.

‘Wanderbus’ tickets were issued as a pre-printed card available from enquiry offices who would stamp the date of validity on them meaning that you could buy them in advance, useful if you wanted an early start the following day, there being no time restriction on the use of the tickets. You could also buy them on the bus, although not all operators offered this option. Many older ticket machines in use at the time could only issue tickets to the maximum value of 99p, so the driver simply issued three ’99p’ tickets, hence the price tag of £2.97.

There were certain restrictions. For some reason they were only available south of a line from the Humber to the Mersey, leaving the likes of Yorkshire Traction, East Yorkshire, Ribble, United, Northern General and Cumberland out of bounds. The tickets were not available for use on National Express coaches, neither could they be used on London Transport buses or municipal services (council or corporation buses), although arrangements did exist between some NBC companies and local councils such as Eastern National and Southend Transport, or Western National and Plymouth City Transport where there was joint running. Some also came to similar arrangements with local independents where they could provide links with the main NBC services. Southern Vectis on the Isle Of Wight opted out of the scheme, preferring to stick with their ‘Island Rover’ which they ran jointly with British Rail. Generally though, if the bus was poppy red or leaf green with the NBC double ‘N’ logo it was yours for the taking. If you were on holiday in another part of the country, the ‘Wanderbus’ offered a superb way to explore the area.

 

Sadly, ‘Wanderbus’ tickets were not immune from the individual politics of the operating companies. Some operators stopped issuing the pre-printed cards, but not all of them issued them from machines as I discovered one morning when London Country couldn’t sell me a ‘card’ ticket but Southdown (operator of my first bus of the day) couldn’t sell me a ticket on the bus. On another occasion City Of Oxford wouldn’t let me use my LCBS machine issued ticket on their fast 190 Express, unless I had a ‘card’ ticket I had to use the slower 390/790 services between London and Oxford.

However, it appeared that most sales of ‘Wanderbus’ tickets were to those of us who were bus ‘savvy’, the differing policies of the various companies meant it was not user-friendly to casual users or tourists. It’s possibly for such reasons that the ‘Wanderbus’ was gradually replaced by the ‘Explorer’ ticket in the early ‘eighties, sold in the form of a scratchcard which could be bought in advance and validated by ‘scratching out’ the required travel date and usually came with a leaflet suggesting places of interest or scenic round trips from the local operator(s). ‘Explorer’ tickets outlived the NBC, surviving today in their new guise as ‘Discovery’ tickets. But they too are vulnerable to the policies of the private companies, some not accepting them at all leaving large gaps in the network, rendering them unattractive to the non-bus ‘savvy’ who just want a simple round trip. The days of seeing a National bus and hopping on it just to see where it goes and knowing there will be an available connecting service at the other end are sadly behind us.

I shall be recounting some of my days out with a ‘National Wanderbus’ in future posts on this blog page. But I’d love to read about some of yours in our comments section below. How far did you travel? Did you get to use any non-NBC services with your ticket? Did you have to pay any supplements such as mine for the Tamar Bridge? Did you get to ride on any of NBC’s fast disappearing blue buses?

Images from this year’s Country Bus Rallies event.

 

This years event celebrated the centenary of the EAST KENT ROAD CAR COMPANY Ltd with an impressive line up of preserved vehicles at the Detling Showground.

For decades their cherry red and cream vehicles were a familiar sight as they threaded their way through an area stretching from Faversham to Hastings and Maidstone to Dover. Being part of the British Electric Traction empire there was major co-operation and joint workings with their BET neighbours at MAIDSTONE AND DISTRICT with whom they shared common management shortly after nationalisation in 1969.

The NBC era saw the much loved cherry red and cream buses re-appearing in the corporate National Bus ‘poppy red’ livery from 1972 but the individuality of EAST KENT remained, not least with the fact that none of their vehicles carried fleet numbers until 1977, until then only being identified by their registration plates. During this period there were several exchanges of services and vehicles between EAST KENT and M&D but thankfully the proposed complete merger and renaming of the two companies as NORTHDOWN was resisted. In fact the two companies gradually moved apart in the early 1980’s and then split formally in 1983 as a precursor to deregulation and privatisation, which happened in 1986 and 1987 respectfully, with a management buy-out of the company. The cherry red and cream livery was reinstated in a revised style, but this was to be short lived as the company was acquired by STAGECOACH in 1993, bringing their corporate image to the buses of Kent.

Ride with us on the 0800 departure of Metrobus route 460 from Crawley Bus Station to Reigate Station on 28th November 2015. All the views are taken on the move from the top deck of a Scania Omni Decker, so expect some camera shake, reflections and dirt on the windows, but remember, this is the genuine bus ride!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s face it. Most of us have a bus at some point in our lives. The bus that took you to school, work, into town during the day for the shops or to the cinema in the evening and we all remember the number. Mine was the 476, taking me from our neighbourhood into Crawley town centre. My Dad’s bus (in my young eyes at least) was the 405B because that took him to work and back each day. Long after some of you have ditched the bus for the car and long after the route number has changed, the bus that took you to all of these places will still be ‘your bus’.

In Reading the travelling public hold great affection for ‘their bus’. It’s not just the number they remember, it’s the colour as well. They also turn up every year when Reading Buses open their depot to the public for their Family Fun Day to pay homage to their bus. They get the chance to get close to it, sit in the driving seat, see it being washed, groomed and re-fuelled. They also take their bus home with them in one of our products, sometimes even as a gift buying ‘Grandad’s bus’ or ‘their friend’s bus’.

But there’s always something new to look for at Reading. Last year’s star attraction was ‘The Leopard’, a fleet of buses accordingly decorated to work a route with the same branding. This year it was ‘The Cow Bus’, a vehicle powered by methane and one which set a speed record of 80.78 mph, the fastest ever for a gas powered bus.

I wrote here last year about how the people of Reading love their buses. I’m pleased to say that they still do, and will for a long time.

The proceeds from the event went to the Alzheimer’s Society, Reading Buses charity for 2015.

Thank you and congratulations to everyone at Reading Buses for a very enjoyable day. Geoff Nash.

 

It’s obvious, isn’t it? In any major town where you when you need to catch a train you head for the train…er, sorry, railway station. Similarly for taxis you head to the taxi rank, so for buses you head to…… Surely there’s a bus station here? Surely in a town of this size there has to be a bus station?

Maybe then it’s not quite so obvious. Amazingly enough, towns and cities such as Brighton, Bournemouth, Tunbridge Wells, Southampton, none of them can boast having a bus station as such. They are not alone and I’ll return to this shortly.

Not so long ago the bus station was one of the dominant and most useful facilities of any town centre. Locations could vary, many being on the edge of the town centre, others would quite logically adjoin the railway station to provide an interchange facility, while some would have the luxury of sitting right in the heart of the town, such as in Stevenage where it formed part of the new town centre shopping square, or Guildford where the bus station is ‘stapled’ on to the Friary Shopping Centre.

While the facilities on offer could vary there would usually be an enquiry office, sometimes one for each bus operator if there was more than one. These would usually handle booking facilities for long distance coach services or local excursion companies. Quite often there would be a cafe which would be an extension of the bus driver’s canteen serving proper dinners! Those of us in Sussex may well remember the refreshment rooms provided by Southdown at Haywards Heath or Lewes, while Midland Red’s catering was well above standard, they even went as far as embossing their logo on the cups and saucers and even on the sugar cube wrappers. The quality of such facilities, along with the public conveniences was vital being that the bus station could also be the departure point and refreshment stop for many of the long distance express coaches. Indeed, a good bus station cafe was often THE place to go in town for a decent cup of tea.

On top of this, the bus station provided space for vehicles to lay-over between duties while their drivers took their refreshment breaks. But of course, providing these facilities is not cheap and those bus parking spaces occupy a vast area of land which could be earning money…….

It was this that sealed the fate of many bus stations in the era of privatisation. Bus operators that had previously been state owned now had to face competition from smaller newcomers on the scene. Each bus route had to pay for itself, there was no cross subsidy from serving a decent cup of tea and a hot sausage roll. Slowly but surely several bus stations across the country were sold off to the developers and the buses were relegated to on-street terminal and departure points. Having been faced with a long walk through a busy town centre while trying to find the correct bus stop, the intending passenger then has to wait on a pavement already crowded with pedestrians and shoppers. Enquiry facilities, where they exist, are often relocated to a shop unit somewhere in the town centre, but not always somewhere obvious. A way to entice people back onto public transport? I think not.

Many bus stations still survive, albeit in some cases with reduced facilities, although the one at Winchester still has it’s traditional canteen style cafe intact, definitely worth a visit! But while some towns like Bedford have been lucky enough to see their bus stations up-graded or rebuilt, in all too many they are an endangered species, their futures (or lack of) usually decided by those who would never use a bus.

Some images from the day.

         

 

         

 

         

 

         

 

          

The first unfortunate creatures in this category to hit the streets of London were the AEC Merlins in 1967. I use the term “unfortunate” because in my observations there really wasn’t much that was wrong with these buses, they were just the wrong type in the wrong place.

This was the result of a decision forced upon London Transport in the mid 1960’s by the government to buy “off the peg” models and save the cost of designing their own. The Merlin was a version of the AEC Swift chassis, admittedly not one of AEC’s most successful products, but it managed to find several satisfied operators elsewhere across the UK.

The London version came in three variants. Firstly the MB, a 36 ft long 50 seat single door bus to be used as a conventional driver only single decker. Perfect for the job so it would seem. A two door version was supplied to the country area, some replacing RT double deckers on town services, others replacing RF single deckers on rural routes. The trouble in all cases was that at 36 feet they were just too long for the roads along which they operated.

Next came the MBS, designed as high capacity people carriers with the emphasis on 34 standing passengers in the front section and seating only 32, mainly at the rear. Their intended use in the central area was on short hop local journeys and in the country area on town services with “Autofare” self service ticket machines where they soon became referred to as “cattle trucks”, especially after the Autofare machines were removed and the MBSs found their way onto longer rural or trunk services where again their length, along with their minimal seating capacity proved problematical and unpopular.

Finally, the MBA class to which I’ll return shortly.

The Merlins were somehow dogged by unreliability and were unpopular with garage staff. But then, for many LT engineering staff at the time if it wasn’t an RT, an RF or a Routemaster and couldn’t be dealt with easily at their Aldenham or Chiswick works then it simply didn’t stand a chance. I’ve also been told that where they were used on routes converting to driver only operation the timetables were not altered to take in the extra boarding time for fare collection and the vehicles had to be “thrashed” to maintain timekeeping

So, back to the MBA class, built for and run exclusively on the central area RED ARROW express services, linking several London main line rail termini with shopping or business areas. Although seating only 25 at the rear, the vast space at the front providing standing room for 48 made them the most perfect inner city people carriers of their time and the RED ARROW services were an instant success. The MBAs seemed to thrive on these services, especially on route 500 where for nearly twelve years they whizzed passengers up and down Park Lane on a punishing schedule between Victoria and Oxford Street, not bad for a supposedly unreliable vehicle!

The 36 feet length problem was addressed when a shorter version of the Merlins, the SM/SMS classes arrived in 1970 but like the MBs were similarly deployed where they couldn’t fit in. LT just didn’t like them. By this time double deckers were back in fashion and the notorious DMS arrived to be loathed just as much as the Merlins and dogged with the same unreliability. But these were Daimler Fleetlines, they worked perfectly well in other cities so why not London?

My gut feeling is that it’s simply because they weren’t an RT or a Routemaster………

Geoff Nash.