INDEPENDENT BUSES IN NORTH WALES Independent Buses in North Wales NEVILE MERCER 128 PIKES LANE GLOSSOP DERBYSHIRE SK13 8EH (01457 861508 E-MAIL [email protected] INTERNET www.venturepublications.co.uk ISBN 978 190530 4486 £17.95 Super Prestige Number 27 Neville Mercer Guy Wulfrunian LEN 101 ran for less than three years with its original owner, Bury Corporation, and less than a year for its second owner, Howell & Withers, spending the majority of its working life with its third operator, Wright of Penycae. After being rescued from the yard of fourth operator Berresford of Cheddleton it seemed destined for preservation, but this was not to be. While parked at Greater Manchester Transport’s Hyde Road depot, awaiting some remedial work, it was rammed by a GMT Leyland PD2 and the Wulfrunian’s bodywork was damaged beyond repair. The chassis survives. (Joe Burns Collection) The Prestige and Super Prestige series contains many titles covering bus operators across the UK. Front Cover Look out for these and other titles on our website P & O Lloyd of Bagillt specialised in contract works and schools services, none of them available to the general public www.mdsbooks.co.uk although some were licenced as restricted stage carriage services. The firm was famous for its immaculate fleet of or via our mail order department: double-deckers, many of them bought when new including this fine vehicle. SDM 663 was a PD3/1 Titan with a 73 seat highbridge body by Massey, complete with platform doors. It was delivered to Bagillt in March 1959. (STA) FREEPOST Rear Cover MDS Book Sales This immaculate AEC Regal III coach with a 33-seat Burlingham body was new to Gillett & Baker (GB), of Quarrington Hill in County Durham, in May 1950. After retirement it entered preservation in its native North East, still in ‘GB’ livery, and was a well-known sight at bus rallies. By 2006 it had been acquired by the proprietor of Silver Star and in 2008, after ( 01457 861508 a complete refurbishment and a repaint into Silver Star’s new green livery, it entered revenue-earning service again as a heritage tours vehicle (JT Williams) Independent Buses in North Wales Guy Wulfrunian LEN 101 ran for less than three years with its original owner, Bury Corporation, and less than a year for its second owner, Howell & Withers, spending the majority of its working life with its third operator, Wright of Penycae. After being rescued from the yard of fourth operator Berresford of Cheddleton it seemed destined for preservation, but this was not to be. While parked at Greater Manchester Transport’s Hyde Road depot, awaiting some remedial work, it was rammed by a GMT Leyland PD2 and the Wulfrunian’s bodywork was damaged beyond repair. The chassis survives. (Joe Burns Collection) The Prestige and SuperNeville Prestige series Mercer contains many titles covering bus operators across the UK. Front Cover Look out for these and other titles on our website P & O Lloyd of Bagillt specialised in contract works and schools services, none of them available to the general public This free edition is providedwww.mdsbooks.co.uk by MDS Book Sales during the coronavirus lockdown. although some were licenced as restricted stage carriage services. The firm was famous for its immaculate fleet of or via our mail order department: double-deckers, many of them bought when new including this fine vehicle. SDM 663 was a PD3/1 Titan with a 73 seat There’s no charge and it may be distributed as you wish. highbridge body by Massey, complete with platform doors. It was delivered to Bagillt in March 1959. (STA) FREEPOST Rear Cover MDS Book Sales This immaculate AEC Regal III coach with a 33-seat Burlingham body was new to Gillett & Baker (GB), of Quarrington If you’d like to make a donation to our charity of choice - The Christie, Europe’s largest Hill in County Durham, in May 1950. After retirement it entered preservation in its native North East, still in ‘GB’ livery, specialist cancer centre - there’s a link here. and was a well-known sight at bus rallies. By 2006 it had been acquired by the proprietor of Silver Star and in 2008, after ( 01457 861508 a complete refurbishment and a repaint into Silver Star’s new green livery, it entered revenue-earning service again as a heritage tours vehicle (JT Williams) © 2012 Venture Publications Ltd ISBN 978 1905 304 486 All rights reserved. Except for normal review purposes no part of this book maybe reproduced or utilised in any form by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of Venture Publications Ltd, Glossop, Derbyshire, SK13 8EH. CONTENTS Introduction 3 Acknowledgments 22 Photographic Credits 25 Part One Caernarvonshire & Anglesey 26 Part Two Denbighshire & Flintshire 80 Part Three Business & Pleasure 140 Part Four North Wales In Colour 144 By the Same author Independent Buses in Shropshire Independent Buses in Staffordshire 2 INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1959 I saw my first ‘Black Top’ Reliance/Willowbrook dual-purpose vehicle. y maternal grandparents, Joseph and Bowyers had finished and my gran’s regular driver Beatrice Street, were well known from that company, a Mr Prince, had taken up Mto everyone who attended the small employment with North Western. The Wincham primary school in Wincham, a village two miles to village outings followed him and the ‘Black Top’ the northeast of the market town of Northwich in (sadly unidentifiable) was our mount for a private- Cheshire. He was the part-time caretaker (during hire to see Caernarvon Castle and Snowdonia. The the day he worked as a labourer at the ‘Selva’ salt- ‘Box Brownie’ recorded its arrival in Caernarvon works) while she served as the solitary dinner- (as it was then spelt) and accidentally included lady and fed most of the school’s four dozen the front end of a very odd looking double-decker pupils at lunchtime. with the registration mark TF 6821. Years would As a result she knew everybody in the pass before I managed to learn the history of this village and the surrounding countryside, and in strange vehicle. the late 1940s began to organise a programme My parents, who up until then had seldom been of community coach outings. Every trip was to anywhere except Blackpool, were apparently dutifully recorded by my grandfather’s ancient impressed with North Wales. Perhaps the trip ‘Box Brownie’, and at least one photograph in had reminded them of their honeymoon in 1952 each set would show the assembled passengers which had been spent at the wonderfully romantic posing alongside the coach. From being a babe in location of the Butlin’s camp in Pwllheli. arms I was always in the photograph and this may Whatever the reason, our 1960 family holiday well have sparked my lifelong interest in the bus took us to Pwllheli, albeit to a boarding-house and coach industry. rather than to Billy Butlin’s local stalag of fun. Until 1959 (when the firm ceased to trade) By then I was seven years old and armed the vehicles would be hired from Bowyers of with a notebook and pen. And there was that Northwich and the earliest shots in her ‘outings’ odd double-decker again, apparently a Leyland, album featured that company’s two Foden carrying ‘Clynnog & Trevor’ titles, and about PVSC6s with Trans-United bodywork. Sadly, to return to Caernarvon. I noted its registration these were sold before I was born and my baby mark and that of the vehicle behind it, a Crossley pictures showed me being carried onto Bedford double-decker the likes of which had never been OB and SB types with Duple bodies. seen in Wincham. Over the next seven days I By the time that I went to the school myself took note of further ‘C&T’ vehicles, including a I had already acquired a basic knowledge of pair of Guy Arab double-deckers, and dozens of the North Western Road Car Company’s fleet coaches belonging to other operators. Among the by watching their vehicles passing through the latter was JX 9735, a fully-fronted Leyland Tiger village – there wasn’t much else to do unless of local business Caelloi Motors. I decided that I Manchester (Ringway) airport was using Runway liked North Wales. 06 which brought such exotic birds as Lockheed Family holidays in Rhyl (1961) and Llandudno Constellations and Boeing Stratocruisers to the (1963) followed, separated by a year back in skies above my family home. In 1959 the NWRCC Blackpool, and were slightly disappointing by regulars in the village included lowbridge Bristol comparison to the Pwllheli trip. There were still K5Gs and Leyland PD2/21 Titans on the two- plenty of exotic coaches to record – including hourly service 36 from Northwich to Altrincham Midland Red examples in Llandudno, the first I and Manchester, and Bristol L5G saloons on had ever seen - but all of the stage carriage services short-workings to Pickmere Lake. All of the K5Gs were operated by Crosville, a company I was and some of the L5Gs were pre-war chassis which already familiar with from its English operations had received new bodywork in the early 1950s, and had never really taken to. I summoned up the a secret confided to me in hushed tones by a courage to ask a Crosville driver if there were any conductor who clearly regarded such shenanigans other bus companies, and if so where could I find as an inferior alternative to the purchase of brand- them? He grinned, pointed westwards, and said new buses.