The bus in question is a Leyland National that started out as 24 (RBO 24R) with Taff-Ely. When they were taken over by National Welsh this bus remained initially in Taff-Ely blue working from National Welsh's depot in Bedwas and this is how it appears in the first photograph in Newport bus station. In the second photograph it has been repainted in the bright red and yellow livery used for National Welsh's operations based around Caerphilly which used the fleet name Caerphilly Buslink. In January 1991 it passed to Glyn Williams in Crosskeys who painted in their standard green and white livery. Newport was a key destination for Glyn Williams's operations so it was inevitable that this bus would appear there, as seen in the final picture.
Thanks as always go to the photographers who have made this unusual combination of views possible.
The gallery covers all bus services operating in the Rhondda valleys until the Stagecoach takeover of Rhondda Buses in 1997, a date that is already much longer ago than it feels to be. Rhondda Transport had a virtual monopoly of bus operation in the valleys and that tends to make determining the scope of the galleries a bit simpler. Only one major service in the valleys remains to be fully covered, which is the 172 Aberdare to Porthcawl which was operated from the Red & White depot in Aberdare until 1992 - this will get covered before too long and the period from 1992 to 1997 is already covered.
The coverage also extends south to Cardiff, dealing with the joint Rhondda and Western Welsh services between Cardiff and Pontypridd. To complete the geographical coverage this has also included the Cardiff to Creigiau/Church Village service of Western Welsh, but in any case this route became worked by Porth depot and Rhondda Buses in later years. When the next major South Wales gallery is completed, which will cover Red & White services from Cardiff and Pontypridd to Aberdare, the gallery will achieve almost complete coverage of bus services in Pontypridd, at least in the twentieth century.
Rhondda Transport was very strongly associated with the AEC Regent and here is a typical example, although not quite so typical as it was one of five RT-type chassis which were never common new to operators other than London:
After being absorbed by Western Welsh the operations at Porth then became National Welsh and following the Market Analysis Project there were extensive service revisions in 1981 which led to the New Rhondda local identity on the standard NBC poppy red livery:
Then in 1992 after National Welsh collapsed Rhondda Buses Limited was established and the valleys had their own local operator again. A new image, based on the final National Welsh livery, was adopted and the quality of presentation improved markedly. A lot of new buses arrived, mainly Dennis Darts, and they could look very smart in the sun:
The coverage also extends to routes jointly operated by Rhondda Transport. The service from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil was joint with the municipal operators of the two towns (or city as Cardiff later became) but latterly was worked exclusively by Merthyr Tydfil. As a result their fleet is quite well covered as most of the vehicles found in the fleet worked the service at one time or another. The Leyland Leopard was a favoured chassis in Merthyr Tydfil for some years and is probably the most typical vehicle:
The most unusual joint operation covered the brief participation by Rhondda Buses in the TrawsCambria service and as a consequence I have covered the earlier history of that service which brings some unexpected vehicles and locations such as this Crosville Cymru Leyland Leopard leaving Caernarfon:
I hope you like this taster of the latest additions and go on to explore them in detail. I always welcome any contributions, both photographs and also historical information, you can either comment directly on the photo or get in touch using the contact page.
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Whilst it may not appear that there is much progress on the gallery, in fact there is a lot of work taking place on a major new gallery of well over 1000 photos. I am expecting this will become live in the next couple of months. It will be followed by updates to some of the existing galleries.
The Vienna gallery sees a significant update which has covered many parts of the system but particularly more recent extensions such as the new line to Hausfeldstraße on the north side of the Danube. It will also probably be my last chance to add photos of the venerable c3 trailers, there are just four survivors built in 1960/1 and they are unlikely to be there when I next return, in fact it transpires they were making their last run almost as I wrote the blog, on commemorative trips relating to major service changes on 2nd September 2017.
One of the added photos is this unusual view of the very busy terminus at Schottentor which has two services terminating on the upper level and no less than five below:
I have also added coverage of the very special system at Gmunden. Up to now the shortest tram system in the world (I believe) with a fleet of three service vehicles (the newest dating from 1961) plus a couple of vintage trams, the staff of six provide an excellent service. It is also notable for having a significant length of track with a 10% gradient. It is owned by the famous Austrian operator Stern und Hafferl and current plans will see it linked to the line to Vorchdorf and operated by modern Vossloh articulated trams. However, in the gallery at the moment the old order reigns supreme:
Finally, the trams of the city of Innsbruck get a gallery. This is a modern and expanding system but one with a lot of history. It also features a couple of spectacular routes in the line to Igls and the Stubaitalbahn to Fulpmes. Hopefully the photo below says it all:
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This new update comprises approximately 450 new images covering all aspects of Pontypridd UDC and Taff-Ely BC operation. The trolleybus fleet is now included and the coverage of the route network has been improved, both in geographical coverage and in outlining the evolution of the network.
I should like to thank again the many photographers who have supported the gallery with some truly excellent images, it has been a delight to work with much of the material made available.
After many months of working on this I have lost the ability to read through the captions critically and so there are bound to be errors and omissions. Please feel free to point them out as I want the gallery to be as accurate as possible.
Work will now proceed on updating several other galleries and moving on to other aspects of bus operation in South Wales, with the emphasis being on operation in the Valleys. The next new gallery will be on Rhondda Transport but I'm not making any promises when!
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The latest photographs were taken only yesterday, as I'd realised one or two gaps in coverage which could be easily rectified and some other opportunities arose in the process. The last galleries to be done were those for the South Pennine Community Transport services from Holmfirth which, despite initial scepticism, seem to have become sustainable and hopefully will be with us for some time. They are now using this Ford Transit and have just taken delivery of another, although that is intended for some new services around Marsden:
There have been also historical photos added, one of my favourites being at almost the same place but over sixty years earlier:
I hope you've enjoyed the additions. I shall carry on recording the current scene and hopefully there will be new historical photographs to add as well and there will be another update at some point in the future.
The next update is to the Pontypridd/Taff-Ely gallery and there is quite a lot of additional material to come.
]]>The keywords follow some standard rules but end up a little idiosyncratic as you have to develop your own rules - sometimes time tells you the rule wasn't quite right but it isn't practical to go back and change everything. It's useful to give an idea about the way keywords are assigned so you know how they can help you in a search. Keywords are normally assigned for registration, chassis, body, operator, previous operators and location:
Registration
This is always shown without the spaces as this gives a more effective text string for searching, for example "FBU827".
Chassis
The chassis make and model are assigned separately, for example "AEC" and "Reliance". In some cases the top-level model variant is shown, for example "Titan PD1" and "Titan PD2" but sometimes the specific variant has to be used as there is no logical other way. With Bristol, for example, they hardly ever gave models a name and "RE" would be a useless search string as it occurs in too many words. Here I use the full designation, for example "RESL6G".
Body
The make and model name are again used, but here model names are less common. I don't normally go for sub-variants, for example the different versions of Panorama Elite, but you will find exceptions! I have also not used the MCW "Orion", something I only realised lately and it was too late to correct. Where abbreviations are commonly used for coach builders I will use that as well - two common examples are "MCW" and "NCME". MCW may not always be used accurately as technically it referred to the sales organisation for Metro-Cammell and Weymann but I have used it more for Metro-Cammell products.
Operator
This is the most idiosyncratic part. I try to reflect the operator name in a way that will be searched for, but I realised that just putting "Oldham" would find all photographs taken in Oldham as well as Oldham Corporation buses, so I put "Oldham Corporation" and for municipalities I generally put the same, even for Manchester where Manchester City Transport was a later name. UDCs will have the name and UDC, for example "Pontypridd UDC" but sometimes in addition the initials like "PUDC". Other operators have the fleet name and where there are familiar abbreviations they are also used, for example "BMMO". "NWRCC" and "WWOC". PTEs have the full name and also initials (e.g. "WMPTE") except for SELNEC which appears on its own along with the division like "Southern" when appropriate.
Previous operators
This follows the same rule as for Operator but includes any operators who had operated the vehicle before the date of the photo. This includes examples that were ordered by one operator but were delivered to another (due to takeover or diversion). It is only ever retrospective and doesn't look into the future after the date of the photo.
Location
This is more self-explanatory and will generally just be the place where the photograph is taken. Sometimes there is more than one name, to give a place and a more specific location. Three such examples are "Oldham" and "Mumps", "Delph" and "Carrcote" and also "Greenfield" and "Greenfield station"
It's complicated to explain but much simpler to use, remember that if you want more photos like one seen, pick the appropriate keyword(s) from those displayed. Remember also that I'm human and errors and omissions are more than likely!
]]>One or two scans have been improved (well that's my view...) and I have changed the watermark to a new design to be used on all pages in the Saddleworth Buses gallery. Feedback on that change is welcome. I have also updated all the keywords and I will add another blog entry soon to set out the policy on keywords to help you make use of them.
This comprehensive gallery would not have been possible without the willing support of quite a lot of photographers who are acknowledged against all their contributions. They have provided a diversity of both period and location that I could never have achieved.
I have also covered the evolution of the route network, but there is a lot of work to do on the route histories and they must be considered "best guesses" at the moment. There is good geographical coverage of most routes.
There will be another update in time and I would welcome any further contributions of original photographs to fill gaps in the gallery. Comprehensive it may be, but there are many gaps yet! Please contact me if you are willing to help.
I'm trying to make it an accurate reference source so please let me know when you find mistakes (as you surely will) - I welcome corrections.
I hope to gradually extend the route coverage to other parts of the Valleys, but this will take time!
Another theme developed this year is industrial railways. I visited a lot of installations (mainly collieries) in the early seventies and took a lot of photos almost exclusively of steam locos, but most have remained as negatives until now. I'm approaching it on a location-by-location basis, adding all my material relevant to the location at the same time. So far I have covered two pits in the Barnsley area with a small gallery relating to Emley Moor colliery (Skelmanthorpe) and a much larger one at North Gawber colliery (Mapplewell). Industrial steam photos are at http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/f817456669:
Finally, a bit more on a more familiar theme is a small selection of Rotherham trolleybuses. Some of these appeared in the recent Middleton Press book on Rotherham trolleybuses and it was only as a result of that I came to realise that the English Electric photographer captured some rarely-seen locations and workings. Enjoy a few Daimler trolleybuses at http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p216309036:
I hope to add another Saddleworth Buses update before long. Thanks for looking!
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http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p385437336
What will follow soon are a series of updates to complete the project, as much as a project of this nature can ever be finished!
Thank you all for your interest over the years.
]]>Digital photos always use the EXIF data and display it with the title "Taken". I don't then normally put a date in the caption.
Scanned images will have no EXIF data. On the right hand side they will say "No EXIF information is available" which is how you determine that they are scanned images. If I have date information I will put it in the caption, except where the image is one clearly taken at the same time as the previous photograph.
When a gallery is composed entirely of scanned images I will sometimes disable the "Date taken" display to avoid confusion. At the moment this has mainly been done with the Bradford trolleybus gallery.
If you look at the EXIF data that will also give the time of the photograph. I always now set my camera on GMT and leave it at that as that remains constant and adjustments can always be carried out to correct to local time afterwards. In practice I couldn't guarantee changing the time zone at exactly the right time in autumn and spring and also whenever i travelled to or from abroad. This does not apply to photographs from 2006 and a few in July 2010 (new camera syndrome!).
]]>353 - Ashton to Denshaw:
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p595786569
223 and 224 - Leeds to Manchester via Halifax:
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p978253862
431 to 434 - Carrcote to Diggle via Oldham:
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p834803536
Whit Friday - Buses and coaches visiting for the church walks and band contests:
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p694032605
Buses visiting Saddleworth:
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p1043707267
Other works services (i.e. not Greenfield Paper Mill):
http://davidbeilby.zenfolio.com/p993068372
Hope you enjoy them!
