Celebrating 100 Years of Buses in Southampton
The year 2019 marks
100 years of continuous bus operation in the city of Southampton. The first route, No.2, began operation on
Thursday 31st July 1919.. To
celebrate this, 100 years later, on the evening of Wednesday 31st
July 2019, the members of the Southampton & District Transport Heritage
Trust (S&DTHT) marked the occasion with a re-creation of that route for
members and friends using three former Southampton Corporation vehicles. These were Guy Arab III - 64 (FTR 511), AEC
Regent V - 367 (BTR 367B) and Leyland Atlantean - 133 (TTR 167H). As you can imagine the course of the route
has changed over the intervening 100 years, but the best was done to re-create
the original journey and a description of the history of the route written by
member, John Ashbridge is included in this DVD case. The independent transport
videos cameras were invited to record the evening’s activities for all
to see. We put a camera in the cab of
the Guy Arab whilst our cameraman filmed from the rear upstairs window of the
Atlantean as we traced the route from Pound Tree Road in the city centre to the
Aldermoor turning circle.
The second
section of this celebratory programme features the events in the city centre on
Saturday 14th September during the ‘Southampton Transport
Anniversaries Weekend’. This event was
also arranged by the S&DTHT and was centred on Castle Way in the historic
area of the city. It was one of the
events contributing to the ‘Southampton Heritage Open Day’ organised by the
Southampton Heritage Foundation. Here we took a ride on open-top Guy Arab 64
(FTR 511) on Service A to visit the Steamship Shieldhall that was moored
at Southampton Docks. Our next journey
out from Castle Way was onboard 335 (335 AOW), a Leyland Titan PD2A, on Service
B to Bitterne, where passengers had a chance to visit the Bitterne Local
History Centre. We travel on the
lower deck of this lovely vehicle and experience the sights and sounds that
passengers would have had back in the 1960s.
On returning to Castle Way we see the preserved buses in action at St
Michaels Square, Bugle Street and travelling along Town Quay.
The third part of this Southampton bus
celebration is a special commemorative tour on the same day using three of the
remaining preserved Southampton Guy Arabs.
We film the tour for you from the platform of Guy Arab 71 (LOW 217) with
222 (GTR 484) following and open-top 64 (FTR 511) bringing up the rear. This fascinating trip really shows these
wonderful buses in action. We travel
along the roads they did in the past and pass the modern-day buses that are
operated in Southampton by GoSouthCoast
(Bluestar) and FirstBus.
We conclude our
journey at Castle Way, as all three Guy Arabs line up for a photograph! We would like to extend our thanks to the
Southampton & District Transport Heritage Trust for organising these events
and for their assistance in allowing us to film it for you. We are sure you will enjoy watching this DVD
programme.
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Filmed
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2019 |
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Duration
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64 mins
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Price
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Within UK - £16 |
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Rest of world -
£18 |
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Format
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DVD -R |
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Picture Aspect 16:9 |
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Order
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D360 |