Fares Please! 2024
Last weekend we held our second Fares Please! transport event. Once again the focus was inevitably on buses, though Lisbon 730 was on display outside the tram depot.
Below: A 1948 Albion Valiant (right) from yesteryear Vintage Vehicle Hire sits alongside stable-mate 1950 Albion Valiant (left) from Gardiners Coach Repairs outside the bus depot at Foulbridge, the hub of operations during the event.
Below: This1950 AEC Regent III (exhibited by David Slater), was supplied to Newcastle Corporation Transport, complete with a Northern Coachbuilders (Newcastle) body, taking the fleet number 341. The vibrancy of the livery compares well with the very similar Lisbon tramways livery on 730 in the background.
Below: This1953 Leyland Titan PD2/12 owned by Mark Hayes was supplied to, and operated by, Rawtenstall Corporation Transport. It currently wears the livery of Scout Motor Services Ltd. of Preston. This vehicle will be holidaying with us at Beamish for the summer, so do take the opportunity to come and enjoy another marque and model of double decker in our fleet – it will join the two Daimlers as well as Sunderland Crossley No.13 in the pool..
Below: We’ve met the 1934 Leyland Lion before (exhibited by Keith Severn) on the left of this view, when we visited the Museum of Transport earlier in the year. On the right is a returnee to Beamish, a 1958 Dennis Loline Mk1 No.99 from the Teesside 500 Group.
Below: Another view of the superb Leyland Lion.
Below: Another local vehicle, in the shape of 1947 Bristol L5G DB216 and presented in the livery of Durham District Services by David Slater.
Below: A view that is often quite tricky to photograph, with the pavements being busy in this location!
Below: The Leyland Titan is seen again, lining up to appear in the photo parade on Saturday evening.
Below: A queue, led by Sunderland 13, lines up to be posed for photographs on High Street. This bus should continue to operate at the museum for the forseeable future as we explore further operating loans from owner, the North East Bus Preservation Trust.
Below: This 1948 Bristol L6A with Beadle C31F body, was new to Western National for use on the Royal Blue express services in the south and west of England. This bus was another from yesteryear vintage vehicle hire fleet.
Below: The two Economic Albions and our own Leyland Cub head up the street view of the participants.
Below: Doncaster 22, a 1953 AEC Regal, based at the Santoft Transport Centre near Doncaster.
Below: This is the view they were queing to create! We use the opportunity to gather images for publicity use both post-event, and for future events if this one is repeated.
Other vehicles that appeared included:
1959 AEC Regent operated by Lockeys and now owned by Graeme Scarlet, who also brought a 1963 AEC Routemaster to the event.
1964 Daimler CCG5 Darlington Corporation No.7 from the Aycliffe & District Bus Preservation Society
1968 North Western Bristol Paul Williams
1966 Leyland Atlantean ex Tyne & Wear PTE and wearing its 1977 Queen’s Silver Jubilee livery. From the North East Bus Preservation Trust
In addition to these, the museum’s own fleet of buses were in action and on display throughout the event.
We had good numbers over the weekend, and it is an event that is fairly resilient to poor weather too – the sheer number of buses meaning there are seldom queues and nobody has to wait long for a bus! We operated Crosville 716 in general service for part of the day, to enable enthusiasts to ride this bus as it is not usually available outside of its core purpose. We’ve plenty of contacts and ideas for future years, so it is likely this event will return again in the future…
A brilliant event & something you should do
now every year.the constant flow of vintage buses going round the circuit was a sight to behold.
Well done to everybody for putting this show on the road.
Hi Paul;
while speaking to one of the Beamish team this weekend, they brought up their irritation over so many 40s-50s buses running through the 1900s town – not only as it broke immersion of course, that’s something I’d usually expect – but they noted the damage it was bringing to the road surface, which was reportedly never designed to take such heavy vehicles on such a regular basis.
I was wondering what the truth of this is, and how the museum are planning to rectify it? It is pretty obvious that the surfaces are declining, and if heavier buses are here to stay I’d worry what this could mean for that lovely cobbled street.
Surely if the trams returned to doing more circuits this would rectify the problem?
Hi Jordan
I don’t really want to use the blog as a forum for people to vent, via contributors, their frustrations. It would be better that they spoke directly to me or one of my colleagues. However, the medium-term plan is for the 1950s buses to operate over a revised route that takes them through the 1950s town area and onto a section of road not currently in use for visitor access. This will take some effort and expense to achieve, so in the meantime we will phase these changes so that we can budget for the necessary work.
The street has settled in areas because the tramway is sat on concrete ring beams for the most part, and the setts either side of these have been settling – some years ago we had to lift areas to restore the road camber, and in time, this work will be carried out again. That dates back to the days before we operated the 1950s buses along High Street so it cannot entirely be attributed to the weight of the buses.
The trams have scaled back in number (in terms of number of trams in use on any given day) because we needed to accomodate the 1950s bus route (min of one vehicle, but often two), largely within the existing staff rota. I realise all museums and heritage operators say this – but resources are limited, and costs are only going up – so please rest assured that we are aware of all of these things, but they must sit in a hierarchy of priorities and wait for the necessary funding and time to impliment them.
With best wishes,
Paul
Restoration finished over 18 months ago and has covered a little over 200 km since
Hi Paul;
while speaking to one of the Beamish team this weekend, they brought up their irritation over so many 40s-50s buses running through the 1900s town – not only as it broke immersion of course, that’s something I’d usually expect – but they noted the damage it was bringing to the road surface, which was reportedly never designed to take such heavy vehicles on such a regular basis.
I was wondering what the truth of this is, and how the museum are planning to rectify it? It is pretty obvious that the surfaces are declining, and if heavier buses are here to stay I’d worry what this could mean for that lovely cobbled street.
Surely if the trams returned to doing more circuits this would rectify the problem?
Apologies for the double comment Paul – thanks for the detailed reply. Please know I’m not a volunteer myself and it was only via overhearing a conversation at the museum between volunteers recently that the question came to mind. I was merely curious as to the truth of it!
All of the practicalities and logistics are one of the things I find most fascinating about an operation the size of Beamish, so it’s really interesting to hear how these things are being worked out.
Personally I’m not really one to believe a museum’s transport operations ‘have’ to be 100% period accurate, whatever works always made sense to me. To hear such passionate discussions on the matter between staff was quite surprising – I suppose a positive sign of how much Beamish’s team care about the place!
Hi Paul
An unrelated question to the post but i was wondering, given the recent tarmac surface to the access road at the side of the entrance building includes a speed bump and that the road at home farm also has speed bumps, is there anothee access route should any tram loans arrive on a low loader in the future or would they still be able to arrive over these roads?
PS great to see an additiin to the bus fleet yesterday!