Thank you , this , well I am lost for words! My wife and I were the next pair due to go on the Duckhams to the Port run. We knew Paul and Collette very well , worked on Croxley with them , made an old couples day…
Like many others I have my own personal memories of RT buses in the 60s and 70s. Although the RT was hit hard during the seventies , you sometimes didn't know just how lucky you were when you saw them still running and to ride on. Thanks to the failure rate of the Merlin, Swift and Fleetline that caused the RTs to carry on. Although Routemaster RMs took their crown by the early 70s RTs still looked right still very much recognisable. As with many, I was sorry to see them go in April 1979.
My dad was a south bank driver from 1970 till 76 then he moved to central depot on parliament road where he did another ten years then je kumped sides and went to tees and district in loftus ive followed his footsteps and drove for local coach firms and now arriva .but all the other older drivers say the job has changed beyond recognition for the worse to .😢
You could catch a bus anywhere at anytime. No fuss, no noise, never remember standing waiting for a broken down bus Occasionally the pole would come off the line Out popped the driver grabbing a pole and hoisting the fallen rod back onto the line Conductors took your money and chatted You got used to the same conductors Always friendly and helpful. Shame the took them off.
I remember Ipswich in July 1981 with the ‘Regents ‘ and the legend ‘Electric House’ . They were still there remarkably in ‘85 , and I had a ride on one. They were semis👍
Superb quality film. Quite foggy in places as was common then. Singer Dionne Warwick was struck by a trolley bus in Glasgow during a foggy night. No-one heard it because they were so silent, unlike the clackety trams.
The Politicians that run Bradford should look at this video and see what a total cess pit they have made of the place.....we all know it's down to the riff raff from abroad that were allowed in and flourish with their own kind and demands while the true townsfolk are ignored. Shame on the place.
What a great film! As a native of Middlesbrough who remembers the trolleybuses as a child, I really loved seeing them again. Thanks for posting this video. E.J.M. Abbot did a great job filming this. I live in Austria now, and we still have trolleybuses in Salzburg, and Linz has both trolleybuses and trams. I have great affection for these types of public transport!
The UK in good times. Clear roads, not a non british import car in sight, no hood rats roaming the streets with a man bag and face covered and could buy a house with just the one wage being earned. Oh and when the UK used to have a language that was English 😉
I was born in 1938 and so I remember many old machines still in service. In partiucular visits to the seaside where ancient machines eaked out a living for brave small businesses in providing mystery tours around the local countryside. Great video, well done.
I can just about remember travelling on London Trolleybuses as a small child. With the advancement of battery technology I presume you could now have a fleet of electric buses serving a town without the need for what some would describe as unsightly overhead wiring. The major disadvantages of the old trolleybus systems were the poles coming off, inflexibility, if something was blocking their route, and the fact that they could not overtake each other.
I needed to know why they don’t dig a tunnel and do an extension for the main line Train so that they can extend the unused abandoned underground train stations. Why couldn’t they use the part D78 Stock train doors on the sides and also restructure the front face of the A60 and A62 stock and that includes the class 313, class 314 and class 315 remix and make them all together and also redesign them an overhead line and also make them into Five cars per units and also having three Disabled Toilets on that Five cars per units A60 and A62 stock trains and also convert the A60 and A62 stock trains into a Scania N112, Volvo B10M, Gardner 6LXB, Gardner 6LXC and Gardner 8LXB Diesel Engines and also put the Loud 7-Speed Voith Gearboxes even Loud 8-Speed Leyland Hydra cyclic Gearboxes in the A60 and A62 stock, class 313, class 314, and class 315 and also modernise the A60 and A62 stock and make it into an 11 car per unit so it could have fewer doors, more tables, computers and mobile phone chargers. A Stock Trains and also having 8 Disabled Toilets on those A stock trains. Why couldn’t we refurbish and modernise the Waterloo and city line Triple-Track train tunnel and make it more Larger and extend it to the bank station, making it into a Triple-Track Railway Line so those Five countries such as Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland And Sweden to convert the waterloo and city line Triple-Track Railway tunnel into a High-Speed Railway lines? The Third Euro tunnel Triple-Track Railway line to make it 11 times better for passengers so they could go from A to B. Then put the modernised 11 car per unit A Stock and put them on a bigger modernised Waterloo and city line Triple-Track train tunnel so it could go to bank station to those Five countries such as Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland And Sweden. The modernised refurbished 11 cars per unit A stock could be a High Speed The Third Triple-Track Euro Tunnel Train So it is promising and 47 times a lot more possible to do this kind of project if that will be OK for London Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland And Sweden. oh by the way, could they also tunnel the Triple-Track Railway Line so it will stop from Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex so that the Passengers will go to Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden and also extend the Triple-Track Railway Line from the Bank to Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex Stations so that more people from there could go to Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland And Sweden more and more Easily? Why couldn't they extend the Piccadilly line and also build a brand-new underground train station so it could go even further right up to Clapton, Wood Street can they also make another brand new underground train station in Chingford and could they extend the Piccadilly Line and the DLR right up to Chingford? All of the classes 150, 155, 154, 117, 114, 105, and 106, will be replaced by all of the Scania N112, Volvo B10M, Gardner 6LXB, Gardner 6LXC and Gardner 8LXB Diesel Five carriages three disabled toilets are air conditioning trains including Highams Park for extended roots which is the Piccadilly line and the DLR trains. Could you also convert all of the 1973 stock trains into an air-conditioned maximum speed 78 km/hours (48 MPH) re-refurbished and make it into a 8 cars per unit if that will be alright, and also extend all of the Piccadilly train stations to make more space for all of the extended 8 car per unit 1973 stock air condition trains and can you also build another Mayflower and Tornado Steam Locomotive Companies and can they order Every 37 Octagon and Every 17 Hexagon shape LNER diagram unique small no.13 and unique small no.11 Boilers from those Countries such as Greece, Italy, Poland, and Sweden, can they make Mayflower and Tornado Steam Locomotive speeds by up to 142MPH so you can try and test it on the Original Mainline so it will be much more safer for the Passengers to enjoy the 142MPH speed Limit only for HS2 and Channel Tunnel mainline services, if they needed 16 Carriages Per units, can they use those class 55’s, class 44’s, class 40’s and class 43HST Diesel Locomotive’s right at the Back of those 18 Carriages Per Units so they can take over at the Back to let those Mayflower and Tornado Steam Locomotive’s have a rest for those interesting Journeys Please!!!!!!, oh can you make all of those Coal Boxes’s 17 Tonnes for all of those 142MPH Mayflower and Tornado Steam Locomotive’s so the Companies will Understand us PASSENGER’S!!!!! so please make sure that the Builders can do as they are told!!!! And please do something about these very very important Professional ideas Please? Prime Minister of England, Prime Minister of Australia, Prime Minister of Sweden, Prime Minister of Germany, Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister of Poland and that Includes the Mayor of London.
This is my favourite bus ipswich have ever had in service, I used to love sitting just to the right of the entry doors and watching the driver go through the gears. I would love to drive one one day. Great video 👍
Great stuff!! I remember on cold wet nights how the lines used to spark!! Then the curses of the driver attaching the arms back on to the wires with a big long pole!! Everybody cheering when the lights came back on, then off the bus went!!…. I always liked riding the “trackless” from Smeaton street school,were it use to turn around, to Eston square!!…
Dave, the films were scanned on a converted cine projector, using a Raspberry Pi camera, and post processed to adjust colour and stability of the image.
A wonderful film I travelled on the last day. from Bradford Movie Makers. we are currently archiving over 300 films 8mm Standard, Super 8, 9.5mm and 16mm.
Mike, if you want to leave a comment with some more info in it, I can update the main description to provide more details. The info I wrote is all the information I had!
Glorious video, thanks for this. As a baby born in Ipswich back in 1966 these buses are so familiar. I recall back in 1978 my pal and I rushed out of Westbourne High, ran up Castle Rd and hopped on Rushmere Heath 3 to go up town and watch Grease at the ABC pictures. Used the Whitton 9 or 9b too many times to count.
As an ex bus mechanic from BK, I do remember the RTs on route 62. These buses certainly had a rough life. Many were parked in the large open area because there wasn't sufficient room in the garage. I also attended the 2019 event at Barking, when many vehicles ran over the old 62 route. I was also pleased to see RT 1, driven by Leon Daniels. Although many of us engineering staff remember this bus as 1037j, the vehicle used at West ham for training purposes. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.👍
Lived in thornbury until i was 23 left in 1985. Thornbury itself now is a real dump, and leeds rd is just mental busy after 3pm, theres 27 curry houses, 13 waffle shops, 6 chicken shops, 11 sari shops.
DID YOU REALLY KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOURS AND LOCAL HISTORY IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND - NORTON GREEN, BILLINGHAM, DARLINGTON, MIDDLESBROUGH, NEWCASTLE, STOCKTON, YORK & YARM Most people living in the North of England think they know their neighbours and local history but how would you know your neighbour worked for MI6? Most who knew the Fairclough family didn’t have a clue that from the seventies Bill Fairclough was a secret agent (MI6 codename JJ) working for various intelligence agencies. What’s more they had no idea he was following in his parents’ footsteps. Bill's parents met during the Second World War when his father, ostensibly working for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), worked secretly on creating bombs to wipe out the Nazi's industrial hinterland. They married in Yarm in 1941. After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Dr Richard Alan Fairclough continued to work for British Intelligence (MI1). Not long after retiring from ICI in the seventies, Richard Fairclough opened and ran an antiquarian book shop business in Yarm until his death in 1987. The book shop was a bit of an enigma as it was also a haunt for spooks. When not gated at St Peter’s School, York Bill Fairclough spent most of his childhood and early teens in the North East of England. As a child in the fifties he was educated at Red House School in Norton. He lived in Billingham and then in a vast white house (once the home of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) in Norton Green overlooking the duck pond. In Bill’s teens, the Faircloughs lived in Middleton St George and later in Yarm. He also lived in flats he rented near nightclubs he helped run during the late sixties and early seventies in Portrack, Stockton-on-Tees and Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne. Conveniently for him they were near the offices of the firm of Chartered Accountants he worked for in Middlesbrough and Newcastle upon Tyne. So if you lived, worked or visited any of these places you may well have unwittingly encountered this “spooky” family, been their neighbours or inhabited the houses they lived in. A quick web-search will even disclose some of the addresses where they lived. Mind you, if you live in any of them now, best sweep them for bugs! Details of where the Faircloughs lived and worked are given in most of Bill Fairclough’s bios on the web such as can be found at everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/bill-fairclough. If you were as fascinated as we were, you can also read the raw fact based thriller Beyond Enkription, the first stand-alone novel to be released in The Burlington Files series (theburlingtonfiles.org/#/reviews). It’s a memorable and distinctively different noir espionage thriller based on his and his family’s experiences in 1974.
I was 7 in Huddersfield, when trolleybuses were running. Though my parents would drive to Co-op in Bradford, brown and muffs department store as well aa Rackhams, with it's staff operated cage lifts 2 elevators side by sids, and wooden step escalators.
