Home»All Photographs»Welsh operators»Rhondda's Buses»Rhondda Buses Limited vehicles

Rhondda Buses Limited started operation from Porth depot on 5th February 1992, when a consortium led by Julian Peddle bought the Porth depot and the operations based there from the receivers of National Welsh. The depot at Bedwas along with the operations based on Caerphilly was bought on 12th February 1992. The consortium members went through their own changes over the years and prior to the Stagecoach takeover Rhondda Buses was partly owned by what were at the time the three major British bus groups. FirstBus had a stake through an initial investment by PMT, Stagecoach through Western Travel and Arriva through the Cowie ownership of Stevenson's of Uttoxeter.

Additional operations were acquired in Caerphilly on 15th May 1993 when Cyril Evans sold the stage carriage services and vehicles, but not the coach business, to Rhondda Buses.

The initial Rhondda Buses operation was using the operator's licence of Tellings-Golden Miller until Rhondda Buses could apply for their own and became the legal operator from 10th May 1992. At first coach services were rapidly relinquished but in 1994 the TrawsCambria operation was taken over from Tellings-Golden Miller.

The final acquisition was Parfitt's at Rhymney Bridge, taken over from 1st April 1995. The business was run as a wholly-owned subsidiary but in 1997 was gradually integrated into the main operation. Parfitt's coach interests were sold to Harris of Pengam in 1996. The Parfitt's services are not covered in this gallery and will be dealt with elsewhere.

Rhondda Buses inherited a rather motley collection of vehicles and were quite quick to rationalise and improve the fleet. The Bustler minibuses went very quickly and quite a few strategic secondhand purchases were made. In addition new buses steadily arrived with quite a large fleet of Dennis Darts being the most familiar.

The notable feature of the era was the relative lack of service changes. After many years of continual service revisions by National Welsh this provided a welcome degree of stability.

The Rhondda Buses era came to an end on 22nd December 1997 when the company was bought by Stagecoach Red & White.

The very varied fleet operated by Rhondda Buses has made it difficult to find a neat structure for the vehicle galleries - I hope what I have done is reasonably easy to follow. Where practicable I have included the fleet numbers of the vehicles featured but sometimes it was too complex a list to be worthwhile.