Leeds legend's memorable motorbuses

摘要

For most Buses readers under 70, the Samuel Ledgard company -like London's trolleybuses - is an almost mystical fleet known to them more by reputation than first-hand memory. One they would like to have experienced. Its blue buses, the majority bought secondhand over its final 15 years, added variety to the roads around Leeds, Bradford and Otley before the company sold out to the state-owned West Yorkshire Road Car Company in October 1967. It makes a fitting subject for the first in a planned series of Britain's Buses picture albums from the publisher of Buses, an operator that Stuart Emmett describes as one of 'special interest and undoubted charm'. Following the founder's demise in April 1952, his executors had death duties to pay and helped keep the business afloat by turning away from the purchase of new vehicles. Out of 183 acquired from then, all but 13 were secondhand. That brought great variety, with Daimlers, Leylands, Albions and AECs among the intake, but its choices were far from random and were often carefully considered.