Recalling the last decade of glorious coach operation

摘要

A single picture of Silcox of Pembroke Dock coach - a Plaxton-bodied AEC Reliance -justifies the word 'British' in the title of Jim Blake's fifth album of pictures taken on his extensive travels from his home in north London in the 1960s. All the other operators - mainly independents, but also British European Airways and state-owned Thames Valley -are English, although some of their vehicles came from Scotland and Wales. Besides London and south-east England, his journeys ranged west to Gloucestershire and north through the Midlands and East Anglia to Lancashire and Yorkshire. Like Jim Young's survey of East Anglia, this is a return to a lost lifestyle, with coaches carrying big crowds to Wembley stadium, operating multiple duplication on express services and providing excursions and tours. It embraces operators covered in two of the other books reviewed this month, notably Ledgard, Barton Transport and the home-built bodies of Belle Coaches in Lowestoft.