A Classic Day Out

[Tomliner]

Visited the Scottish Vintage Bus Museum on Saturday for their open weekend and had a great day.Included in the very reasonable admission carge(especially for old gits!) were frequent return rides to Dunfermline about 4 miles away,on classic vehicles.Also a round trip over the Forth road bridge,about 14 or 15 miles,or a modest fare.
Here are a few piccies what I took!


We went into Dunfermline on this 1929 Leyland Tiger


And came back on this 1937 Leyland Titan which was a low bridge vehicle,note the sunken walkway upstairs.The seats are for four pasengers per row.

This Fordson Thames was a bit of a hybrid.It ran in Malta where this body was fitted in 1961








The 1929 Leyland Tiger again.









This is the car in which we went to the museum.It is a 1960 MGA,owned by a friend of mine.What a way to travel!


Finally a couple of shots heading back towards Edinburgh over the Forth road bridge.
ErcT

[Garry Russell]

Cheers Eric

We used to have some buses in the same blue as your first pics with the 'speed stripe' and flash in vivid sky blue.........beautiful when they sparkled on a bright sunny day

I actually went on a local bus last week for the first time since 1973 and what a poor ride compared to the old hand built classic buses........too much getting thrown about nowadays

[FlyTexas]

Great pics, Eric! Thanks very much for sharing them.

Brian

[Felixx62]

Nice pics and many thanks for posting.Used to like travelling on the "routemaster" type bus when i was a kid. I think our local bus company down here was "Bristol Omnibus". Always liked to sit on the upper deck for a better view. Only problem upstairs was one had to endure the pollution from all the smokers sat up there lol.....Smoking on public transport,thankfully a distant memory now.........
Frank.

[Tomliner]

I'm probably teaching long term local folk how to suck eggs but the predominance of maroon and white buses are those of the old Edinburgh Corporation Transport and the newer ones are Lothian Buses which I presume replaced the old ECT long before we moved here.Incidently the maroon and white scheme is known as madder and white(sounds like a firm of dubious solicitors)EricT

[TSR2]

Brilliant Eric!!! I bet our Fraser would have been there too, either that or he'll be gutted he missed it. Lovely to see the Ulsterbus Leyland Leopard. I used to get these to school. The Leopard had loads of grunt and a lovely chunky pheumatic gear lever. I really like the latest addition to the LRT fleet, the new scheme is much better than the current one. Alexanders had a large plant in Northern Ireland at Mallusk, but it seems that Wrights seem to be winning most of the bus contracts these days, a least they are a British firm too. I think Wrights bought out Plaxtons (or one of the other big coachbuilders.)

[Tomliner]

Hi Ben.I wondered if the Ulsterbus picture would bring a response from you.Will pm you after this. EricT

[SkippyBing]

Favourite bus journey ever. Actually thinking about it most of the others have involved taking two hours to go 30 miles in Cornwall so no real challenge. Anyway top deck of, what I think was, a Routemaster in Hong Kong back in '91, no AC so all the windows were wide open (could the UK ones do that?) the driver was 'enthusiastic' and as we made our way back from Aberdeen to Victoria over the hill at some point I ended up with a branch sitting on my lap after we'd clipped some trees. On the plus side the insects sitting on it survived the ordeal!
The main thing I remember about all the buses out there was the advertising on them which included a load of Duracell buses with bronze coloured foil all round the front to make them look like big batteries.

[airboatr]

Hi Eric

Thanks for posting those kind sir..What a nice collection of busses.

[Filonian]

What a superb collection. Nice to hear that some are still "working" for a living.


Graham