ɹnoɯɹɐdsıɹɔ's photostream  

January 1985 and there's a dusting of snow on the Plynlymon range as Crosville SNL589 rounds the bend on the main road at Comins Coch on the final stretch of its afternoon run from Dolgellau to Aberystwyth. The horizon is nowadays marked with wind turbines.

This was a Dolgellau bus with an Aberystwyth man at the wheel. He would have taken over at Machynlleth, having taken a vehicle up from Aberystwyth to meet the bus on its way from Dolgellau. The Dolgellau bus would operate school services in Aberystwyth in the afternoon before returning to Dolgellau in the late afternoon, the driver and vehicle reconciliation taking place on the A487 at Esgairgeiliog.

The third upload of roadside captures where I happened to catch vehicles passing. This time it's on the Runcorn side of Halton borough, again in 1985. Crosville buses pass near Delph Bridge; ENL844 was Liverpool-bound on service H20 and SRG199 was making a relatively rare appearance on service H32 to Warrington. By this time the RELL was down to five specimens at Runcorn and their dual door layout suggested use on local rather than long distance services so this must have been pressed into service as a last resort here.

Fiddler's Ferry looms large across the river which can be seen at low tide in the background. In between the two buses is the control tower of the Old Quay swing bridge on the Manchester Ship Canal and just scraping into the frame on the right, the floodlights of Runcorn FC's Canal Street football ground, long since sold for housing development.

Following on from the previous upload, a chance shot of vehicles passing in Widnes, here's another. This time it's a photo taken in 1985, back in the good old days before deregulation when you knew where you stood from one day to the next.

Service 10 was the Cronton route and National no. 21 has almost returned to the town centre terminus. I once saw a photo of a Halton National with a subsequent owner in which it was captioned as being new to Blackpool Transport. Similarly, I imagine this one being assumed to have been new to Burnley and Pendle. Halton Borough, you see, didn't ever have a registration marque of its own so that its vehicles were always registered somewhere vaguely nearby but seemingly randomly.

RELL no. 6, headed outward through the town, bears one of the operator's traditional Lancashire plates from the last year before things went haywire in 1974.

Though this street is still with us it no longer serves as a thoroughfare, the centre of Widnes having succumbed to the cancer of retail development in the intervening years. The main road that no. 21 was about to take to reach the town hall terminus has given way to an ADSA car park.

A chance encounter as I strolled from Runcorn to Widnes town centre probably before working a late shift.

North Western's elderly National no. 205 is headed for Hough Green Farm on service H30 while Halton Transport's rather more up-to-date [for the time] National 2 no. 29 is headed in the opposite direction on competing service 14 from Hough Green to Whitehouse industrial estate. Whitehouse was named after the Taste and Decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse and no pornography was produced in any of its factories.

Just out of shot on the right are the remains of Widnes South railway station which at the time were in use as a garage and car sales premises, specialising in second hand minis. The station building has since been demolished. The railway bridge still carries trains between Ditton Junction and Fiddlers Ferry power station.

Representing a type which was to become widely used by operators all over the UK in the years after bus deregulation, the GM standard, here with Leyland Atlantean chassis and Park Royal bodywork.

Long established Leicestershire independent G. K. Kinch of Mountsorrel near Loughborough was participating in the free-for-all on the routes between Leicester and Loughborough. This view was taken in the village of Birstall.

If my remembery serves me well this was taken on the last day of a Coast and Peaks Rail Rover ticket where a group of us had assembled in the Leicester area to witness the use of some ex-Crosville Olympians which had been transferred to Midland Red East's new subsidiary, Fairtax. I later found myself riding off to Melton Mowbray on the last ever Bristol VRT before we regrouped to hit the fantastic Brunswick pub by Derby station on the return journey. What fun you could have when you were young, free and single.