ɹnoɯɹɐdsıɹɔ's photostream  

The Crosville service from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Stwlan Dam was the ultimate bus service. Nothing could compare with the steady climb up a narrow track with a few passing places and a hair-raising series of hairpin bends near the summit. It was a seasonal service tying in with the Ffestiniog Railway at whose station it called at Tanygrisiau. This was next to the lower lake of the hydro-electric power station whose upper dam provided the destination. The bus drivers had the key to a private level crossing over the Ffestiniog railway, after which you would grip the seat in front as the Bristol LH roared up the inclines, ever steeper until the impossible switchack at the top. I even did it in an RE once, whose brakes were very smelly back at Blaenau.

On this occasion I was treated to the regular performer for the 1985 season, SLL640. At the summit there wasn't much to do but the bus waited for twenty minutes or so anyway, giving me time to snap away. Here is the LH with the dam behind.

The downfall of the 50mm lens when applied to "scenic" bus photography. This negative came from one of the first rolls that went through my first SLR camera in December 1984, the results of which had me asking myself what more I wanted from my new camera, what was I disappointed with?

Well, results like this, where large empty areas ruined the look of the pictures. Here I've gone for an aggressive crop to a panoramic format but what I really needed was to zoom in. OK, I'd have lost St Mary's church on the left but the picture wouldn't be so slim and tiny. As it is I've thrown half the picture away, but rather that than swamp the frame with acres of emptiness. If you click on the image you should now get a decent-sized view on black.

ELL327 was new to Crosville as CLL327 in National Express livery and strangely was allocated to Runcorn depot, even though Runcorn didn't have a great deal of NX mileage at the time. Eventually it succumbed to dual purpose livery and a career on the local coach services that became ever important in the 1980s. At Runcorn it often saw service on the H32, H44 and H45 services when it wasn't pounding along the motorway between Chester and Manchester or on the summer service to Rhyl. Here it was returning from Warrington via Castlefields Avenue with Halton Castle behind.

Disaster awaited this coach little more than a year later.

The Egerton Arms [today] was a feature opposite Wrexham bus station, never looking particularly welcoming I have to say, and at my tender age I had yet to discover the delights of real ale so how I regret never dropping in now that the Border brewery is a dim and distant memory. It was just down the road from here too. I also regret not having been able to sample ERL300 on this trip to Brymbo via the crazy housing estate hanging off a hillside at Tanyfron on service D14 but I had another bus to catch and had to make do with this photo.

The driver is just starting to turn onto the bus stand at Wrexham bus station having just run off the layover area. I had the pleasure of driving two of this batch in later years and found them rather heavy on the steering but that didn't put me off taking them wherever I could all the same.

Another former West Kirby National finding a new home in Crosville's South Cambrian division when a number of B-series Nationals went North to replace the venerable Dunham Massey REs which met a premature end at Warrington due to structural defects inherent in their non-standard design. By this time SNG363 had had its Gardner engine fitted, hence the fleetnumber code SNG.

Here we are in Tregaron where the bus did a double run to the square on its way from Aberystwyth to Lampeter and I had done my usual hard-faced turn and asked the driver if he'd pick me up on the way back so I could get a photo. This allowed me to get my only bus photo to feature a fully-fledged "domestic" going on in the corner there.

The bus is indicating for a left turn to take the A485 to Lampeter. It would make a detour off that road to serve Llanddewi Brefi. I have no data on how many gays there were in the village back in 1985.

Not sure whether they spelt this wrong on the blind or whether the driver used the wrong destination because it was the first version he came to on the blind [I suspect not] but this bus is bound for Comins Coch with one m. The one with two ms is between Machynlleth and Newtown.

Prompted by comments by my esteemed contacts I went off on one about the joys of the telephoto lens in the comments under this photo here. Well, here's another example of the fun you can have with a telephoto lens on an SLR film camera. Nowadays with a digital camera it's quite easy to go telephoto yet do you see lots of bus photos like this taking advantage of the extra scope of the digital age?

Those pointy buildings seemingly up in the air are the Old College of the university of Aberystwyth. And they are actually on the seafront, it's the bus that's up in the air as it passes the Penglais Campus entrance halfway up Penglais Hill. It's SNL410, one of the large batch of Nationals that was having its 510 clatterboxes ripped out with gusto by Crosville and replaced with Gardner 6LXBs. By 1985 there weren't many left to do and the SNL prefix tells us this one was still in the queue.