Some Treasured Christmas Presents

Belatedly, then, Happy New Year!

Well, with the festivities of Christmas over and the decorations (almost) all down, time to catch up.

I’ve been a bit remiss on Blog Writing, mostly due to work (I had some really interesting bookings for walks and coach tours over the festive period).

I do want to talk about some of the presents I was lucky enough to receive, though.

I love presents. I know that Christmas has a reputation for saddling people with unwanted gifts but I treasure the stuff I get!

For one thing, I have yet another new lens to lug around with me on the Occasions When I Set Out To Take Photographs (as oppose to when I take photos merely incidentally). I do enjoy photography but I get very little chance to practice it as much as I would like.

Then there were the The Books. I’m an avid reader and the house is stacked full (too full) of the things. Three of this Christmas’ library were related to transport in the Midlands, a subject which has always occupied more of my time than perhaps is good for me!

I’m actually going to do mini-reviews of the three, not because I think that that many of my Blog followers are into the finer points of Midland transport history but because they all convey so much more than that: the photos and texts give a fascinating record of the past of the area, often including material which is either different from that published elsewhere or which presents it in a different, more entertaining fashion.

City to the Black Country: A Nostalgic Journey by Bus and Tram by David Harvey was the first. David Harvey now has a welter of local transport-related books to his name and they are always enjoyable. This one looks at the tram and later bus connections from Birmingham out to Wednesday and to Dudley, via both Smethwick and via West Bromwich.

The routes concerned both have long pedigrees and they provide as varied a ride now as they ever did. Pictures of trams (even Birmingham’s oft-forgotten cable trams) are interspersed with the newest generation of Wright Gemini buses.

The captions give a great deal of background information and are plainly written by someone who isn’t regurgitating stuff but who understands it and is enthused by it.

A shame it’s all in black and white but that can’t really be avoided in most cases, given the subject matter!

The other books are both in colour and are both penned by another “great” in the local transport world, Malcolm Keeley.

West Midlands PTE Buses and Trolleybuses reminds us that the creation of an integrated transport authority for the West Midlands is actually a far from new idea, dating from 1969. The book, with some lovely colour illustration, most of which I’d never seen before and including some splendid vanished street-scenes, covers the period from the PTE’s creation in 1969 until deregulation of bus operation in 1986.

It is easy to forget today, when the powers that be keep striving to “integrate” transport, that we achieved that pretty much more than three decades ago. A single organisation running all the buses and controlling rail operations, with a single Travelcard to cover everything, bulk buying locally built buses, building bus stations and transport interchanges and ushering in a renaissance in local rail travel. We had it all and it was largely thrown away in the interests of “ competition”. It made me feel distinctly nostalgic.

The Colours of the West Midlands was the second of Malcolm’s books in the Jelf stocking on Christmas morning. “Colours” is descriptive, too, a quality, large, hardback book filled with yet more never-before seen pictures of pre-PTE buses. And what a colourful period it was, too!

Midland Red, quite rightly, is dealt with first, its bright red (obviously!) buses seeming to cover the length and breadth of the Midlands. And having one of their D9s on the front cover just guaranteed that I would like it! However, the book has a distinct Birmingham City Transport bias, with their fleet of cream and very-deep blue buses looking distinctly pristine. This impression is only enhanced by the pages that follow of the other municipal bus fleets in the area. West Bromwich, Walsall and Wolverhampton successively show increasing signs of scruffiness in their various buses. Not that they weren’t of interest. Far from it.

The whole of the book is absorbing. And if those of you reading this who find what I've waxed lyrical about distinctly geeky, then I promise you the backgrounds and settings of many of the pictures are truly absorbing, reminding us how much our towns and cities have changes, not always for the worse, either.

In conclusion, one picture really stopped me in my tracks. It’s a mid-sixties shot on page 29 of The Colours of the West Midlands and ostensibly shows a Birmingham Daimler CVG6 at the Hamstead terminus of the 15/16 service. But there, right by the classic huge Birmingham bus stop is 372 Hamstead Road. This was the home of my honorary Auntie Kath and Uncle Bob (actually friends of my parents) with whom we used to spend weekends when I was small. It was at he front of that house as a toddler that I spent hours watching the buses turning around and – my family believe – developed the fascination in the subject I've had ever since.

The picture was utter joy to me and brought back some of the happiest memories I have.

If you’ve persevered this far…….thanks for reading!