Victoria Coach Station
In 2017
London’s iconic Victoria Coach Station celebrated 85 years of continuous
operation. Since the early 1970s your
cameraman from independent transport videos has paid a number of
visits to record the coaches, and sometimes buses, that have operated to and
from this noble structure. So on this
DVD programme we have collated a record of what happens on a daily basis in and
around Victoria Coach Station for you to enjoy.
We begin in March 2017 on the Sunday of the weekend when the 85-year
birthday of the station was celebrated.
We see a number of preserved coaches that would have operated to and
from Victoria Coach Station in the past.
The coaches and their colourful liveries are from the former fleets of
Royal Blue, Southdown, Lincolnshire, East Kent, Wilts & Dorset and the
Scottish Bus Group to name but a few and remind us of the colourful liveries
they carried. AEC, Bristol, Leyland are
just some of the types that will bring back the memories, as we see them parked
in the coach station as the modern Caetano ‘Levante’, two and three-axle
coaches on either Volvo or Scania chassis in their white livery pass by. We observe the ‘mass-departures’ from inside
the coach station as the current National Express coaches leave for all points
of the United Kingdom as well as the European fleets of Flixbus and Eurolines
depart for mainland Europe. We also film
the action along Elizabeth Street, where one of the exits from the coach
station is situated.
Our cameras
returned to the coach station in June 2019 to film most of the day’s activities
in and around the coach station. Our
locations being Buckingham Palace Road, Semley Place, Ebury Street and
Elizabeth Street. There is much action
to enjoy as we see the new Caetano ‘Levante 3’ coaches, which are now entering
service with the operators for National Express alongside the massive Scania
tri-axle double-deck coaches, also bodied by Caetano as their ‘Invictus’. Also making an impressive sight are the
Plaxton Elite bodied Volvo B13R coaches operated by Park’s of Hamilton, at 15
metres long they look enormous! The
12.6m Volvo B9R version with similar bodywork also cuts an impressive
dash! On leaving Victoria Coach Station
in 2019 we now journey back into the past.
From our extensive photographic archive we have selected a number of
images taken at the coach station in 1971, 1972, 1983 and 1984. In the 1971 photographs there are no signs of
white National Express coaches to be seen!
All the traditional liveries are on show for all to see, together which
a vast variety of vehicle types. Even
during our visits in 1972 and the early 1980s there is still a lot of ‘colour’
and variety of vehicle types on offer.
We conclude with a brief video taken in September 1992 filmed in and
around the coach station. Just see how
much has or has not changed in the 48 years featured in this programme! Enjoy!