Home»All Photographs»Greater Manchester Operators»GM North/First Manchester

This gallery starts with the splitting of GM Buses in readiness for privatisation which took place in December 1993. GM Buses North was formed to include depots in the northern half of the conurbation and a management buy-out took place in March 1994.

In March 1996 GM Buses North was sold to FirstBus and given the name First Manchester. At this stage the livery still continued the orange theme started by SELNEC but moved to an all-over orange in a slightly darker shade which went on to feature blue or yellow lines.

First Manchester soon took over management of two other FirstBus subsidiaries. First Pennine in Dukinfield's operations were taken over from 27th December 2000 but the First Potteries connection did not last too long as the responsibility was transferred elsewhere. In terms of this gallery the First Potteries connection was limited to their early involvement with Pennine which had resulted from the takeover of Pennine Blue. It led to an influx of mainly new vehicles and some other limited vehicle transfers which ran in the Potteries red and yellow livery. First Potteries was split in 2010 with the Cheshire and Merseyside area depots coming within the scope of First Manchester until they were sold to Stagecoach in 2012.

In 2012 First Manchester took a slightly different name, First Greater Manchester. Although this described their operations at the time the first stage in the contraction of the operations in Greater Manchester took place with the sale of Wigan depot to Stagecoach in December 2012. A combination of closures and sales to other operators meant that First Greater Manchester was limited to a single garage in Oldham from 2019, with the exception of the Vantage services running on the Leigh Guided Busway. These changed to another operator in 2023.

A major change took place on March 24th 2024 when the second tranche of Bee Network services commenced. Oldham garage transferred to Stagecoach. Simultaneously First took on a small franchise based on Rochdale operating some local services and school buses.

This whole gallery is centred around the operations from Oldham garage which are covered in much detail. There will not be the same coverage of other areas with the exception of the operation from Dukinfield.

Details of the vehicles bought by GM Buses North and First are given in the various galleries within this group.