Thirty-five years ago, at the start of the 1970s, the British bus and coach industry was radically different to that of today. Most large urban areas, as well as many of the country’s smaller towns, still possessed municipally-owned bus operations. The trolleybus was still operational in a small number of places and thoughts of a tramway revival were years away. Although the National Bus Company and Scottish Bus Group had been established, the constituent companies within these nationalised groups still largely retained their individual identities. Virtually every bus and coach on the roads had been built within the British Isles and the demise of such great names as Bristol, Leyland and Eastern Counties would have been thought impossible. Concepts such as deregulation were alien; indeed, greater thought was given to ideas of integration with the first of the Passenger Transport Executives having just been established.
By 1970, bus and coach operation in Yorkshire and north west England was dominated by the subsidiaries of the newly-created National Bus Company, most notably West Yorkshire, East Yorkshire, North Western and Ribble, although there were still numerous municipal operations in places such as Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Hull, Bradford, Blackpool, Leeds, Halifax, Preston, Barrow, Blackburn, Burnley and Huddersfield. The municipal operations in Greater Manchester had recently been transferred to the newly-created SELNEC PTE whilst those of Liverpool, Wallasey and others had become Merseyside PTE, although at the start of the decade most ex-municipal vehicles in service retained their traditional livery. Whilst the NBC would rapidly impose its corporate image on its subsidiaries during the first part of the decade, in 1970 the pre-1967 liveries were still in use and the variety of vehicle types was also impressive.
As interest in this era increases, this new series from Ian Allan Publishing is timely. It appeals to those nostalgic for the period before the arrival of corporate identity and garish new liveries and provides useful reference material for all those recreating the era in model form and those involved in bus preservation.
Title: North West England And Yorkshire (BUS OPERATORS 1970)
Author: Gavin Booth
Format: HB 80 pages
Publisher: Ian Allan Ltd
Pub date: June 2007
ISBN 10: 0711032025
ISBN 13: 9780711032026
List Price: £16.99
