WITH their distinctive red and cream livery, they once were a familiar sight in Keighley and across West and North Yorkshire.
The West Yorkshire Road Car Company’s buses and coaches were last seen on our roads 30 years ago.
What had been one of the country’s most successful and innovative operators was taken out of service and sold off as the Government of the day sought to deregulate the bus industry and open it up to competition.
On August 12, 1989, the company that began in November 1906 as the Harrogate Road Car Company with one Clarkson steam bus, completed its final journey.
Then a journalist with Keighley News sister title the Telegraph & Argus, Alan Whitaker volunteered to work on Saturday, his day off, to be on that bus – the 10.45pm from Bradford Interchange to Baildon and the 11.12pm return.
The packed double-decker that made that journey is among dozens featured in a new book marking the 30th anniversary of the demise of the company.
The paperback, West Yorkshire Thirty Years Gone, is filled with colour photographs of buses and coaches in urban and rural settings throughout the company’s operating area, which stretched from the east coast to the Yorkshire Dales and included route networks in the Bradford, Keighley, Ilkley, Skipton, Harrogate, Leeds, York and Scarborough areas.
The last run was an emotional occasion. “The bus was fully loaded – mainly by enthusiasts – and ‘normal’ passengers who boarded were astonished to find themselves in the middle of a party,” writes Alan. “For the most part, it was a party of defiance as West Yorkshire staff, past and present, expressed anger at what had happened to their company.”
Three drivers shared the honour of operating the last service – Brian Middleton, the company’s oldest driver Les Arnold and Leo Shackleton. Ivor Williams came out of retirement to resume his role as conductor. Off-duty conductor Gillian Carr also went along.
Observations as to the politics behind the company’s demise are kept brief in the book. Alan’s intention, as he says, was “never to assess or comment on what led to the company being carved up and sold off, whether the reasons were valid or otherwise, or who benefitted most from what happened.”
He adds: “Nor was the book ever intended as a history of the company. That story has already been well covered by people with much more knowledge than I have.
“However I felt that something should be done to commemorate the 30th anniversary of that last West Yorkshire bus to Baildon so I decided to compile a selection of images to give a flavour of the company’s operations in the 30 years prior to its demise.”
He adds: “Quite apart from the buses, many of the street scenes that would have been familiar to those of us who were around during that period have long since vanished so the book is rich in nostalgia.”
Also of note are the adverts on the sides of the buses, evoking memories of days gone by: there’s Mivvi ice cream lollies, an ad stretching along the side of a prototype double-decker built by Eastern Coach Works, which ran from 1949 to 1966, the only one of its kind operated by the West Yorkshire Road Car Company.
An advert you would never see on public transport today, for Silk Cut cigarettes, graces the side of a Bristol K6B lowbridge, one of 57 “handsome vehicles” delivered to West Yorkshire between 1948 and 1950, giving “years of sterling service to the company” before being withdrawn in 1969.
The last-ever service to Baildon bears the number 61, the old route number before the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive demanded that all operators in the country adopt three-digit numbers.
And there is a shot of no less than three double-deckers approaching Fox Corner in Shipley in April 1974, led by bus FS6B number 1788, bearing an advert for the delights of Skegness.
Although better known for his railway books, Alan says his first love was the West Yorkshire Road Car Company’s vehicles on which – as a child in the 1950s – he travelled on service number 57, from his home in Thornton to Keighley via Cullingworth to visit his grandparents. Then, between 1960 and 1964, he used West Yorkshire buses almost daily to travel the three miles from his home to school.
Alan adds: “I would not have been able to cover the later years without the help of other West Yorkshire bus enthusiasts, especially Trevor Leach, of Keighley, who wrote the introduction, and Neil Halliday, of Shipley.”
* West Yorkshire Thirty Years Gone is published by Willowherb Publishing and costs £16.95. Visit willowherbpublishing.co.uk.
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