West Midlands Buses Preserved - 2
This is our second
programme featuring preserved buses that served the large West Midlands
conurbation. The excellent Transport
Museum at Wythall, near Birmingham in the West Midlands is home to a large
collection of buses and coaches.
Throughout the year they put on some excellent events, usually with a theme
using their own and other preserved buses invited to participate. This DVD programme filmed in October 2019,
features one such event – the celebration of 50 years since the formation of
‘WMPTE’, the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. WMPTE brought together the Corporation bus
fleets of Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall and West Bromwich. Their individual liveries disappeared to one
that featured a modified version of the Birmingham Corporation livery of blue
and cream. It lasted from 1969 to 1986
when the bus industry in the UK was deregulated, and then became West Midlands
Travel. Coventry Corporation had joined
the combined fleet on 1st April 1974 as a result of local-government
reorganisation. To the present day the
PTE and Passenger Transport Authority (PTA) continue to control the operation
of transport in the West Midlands, but the majority of the buses are operated
by National Express West Midlands (NXWM).
Our filming begins at the
Transport Museum where we ride on 719 (NJW 719E) a 1967 Daimler Roadliner
formerly operated by Wolverhampton Corporation and travel to Alcester Road
South, Maypole where we witness all of the action on this special running day
with around 40 buses operating a special route from the museum to the Maypole
and then a shuttle between Maypole and Becketts Island on Alcester Road. This event referred to by the museum as WMPTE
50 “HAPPY HOUR” – actually ran for 3 hours!
Here we see Daimler Fleetlines, Guy Arabs, MCW Metrobuses, a Volvo
Ailsa, Bristol VRT, the Daimler Roadliner and the unique Daimler CRC6-36
double-decker in Walsall Corporation livery.
Liveries featured are Wolverhampton, Walsall, Birmingham, West Bromwich
and Coventry Corporations and of course WMPTE.
The current operator, National Express West Midlands have also painted a
number of their contemporary buses into these heritage liveries. We see Transbus Trident 4535 (Wolverhampton),
Volvo B7TL 4651 (Birmingham), Volvo B7TL 4679 (West Bromwich), Transbus Trident
4601 (Walsall) and Scania Omnicity 4780 (WMPTE). Our cameras ride on MCW ‘Tracline’ Metrobus
8110 (A110 WVP) and Metrobus 6835 (WDA 835T), which was one of five
experimental Metrobuses dating from 1978.
A further ride is on 4001 (R1 NEG) the first low-floor DAF Optare
Spectra operated by TWM as we return on the Park & Ride service. We film a
further visit to Wythall when we take a ride on West Bromwich 101 (NEA 101F), their
first Daimler Fleetline and see a number of non-West Midlands vehicles on
display.
To complete our
programme we delve into the archives to see some video shot by George Butler on
the final day of Daimler Fleetline operation in Birmingham on 1st
November 1997. We see the contemporary
scene at the time in the city with Fleetlines operating the 27 route in the
company of a number of Metrobus MkII buses painted in the heritage liveries of
the former corporation fleets! History
is repeating itself!