Buses, trams and commercial vehicles: general interest

John Law has been photographing Britain's buses since the early 1970s.

From 1933 to the end of the 1960s, most of the bus services in Hertfordshire were in the hands of London Transport's country services, with standardised green buses.

In the early days of tram operations, the local borough or corporation would lay tracks that would carry the trams, while the cars would be operated by private enterprise.

The very first motor bus services in East Anglia were operated by the Great Eastern Railway Company, and although these started in Suffolk, services were soon provided within Norfolk as well.

The Bristol Tramways Company started operating buses in 1906 to feed traffic into their tram services from beyond Bristol's city boundaries.

Bus builder Optare was formed by some of its employees in 1984 after the closure of old-established coachbuilder Chas H.

Trolleybuses were first introduced in Portugal by SMC in Coimbra in February 1947 and used Saurer, Sunbeam and BUT single-deckers that were all in service by 1954.

The first bus service in Manchester was a horse bus that started running in 1824.

This book covers bus and coach operators in South East Wales between 1968 and 1979.

Large companies operated bus and coach services within the city of Aberdeen and within the surrounding countryside of Aberdeenshire and further afield.

In 1928, Edinburgh Corporation Transport was formed as the corporation increasingly began to run buses as well as trams in the city.

On 16 January 1988 bus services in the Bexley area underwent enormous changes - long-established routes were altered or absorbed into other routes and Sidcup Garage closed, while Bexleyheath Garage re-opened.

As Britain entered the 1990s, the character of East London was changing rapidly.

The legendary East Yorkshire Motor Services has been providing bus services in East Yorkshire since 1926.

The Enviro400 was introduced in 2005 and has become a popular model among bus operators around the UK, as well as in Hong Kong.

David Devoy was first introduced to many of the independent Lanarkshire bus fleets back in the 1960s when he saw many of them on football hires to Glasgow, and on a school trip to visit a railway signal box in Motherwell which produced a street full of Hutchison's blue AEC service buses.

The boundaries of the current county of Lancashire were established in 1974 when the Furness district was lost to the newly formed Cumbria.

Walter Alexander first began running a motor bus service from Falkirk to Grangemouth in 1913 and services have continued in the area ever since, under the auspices of Scottish Motor Traction, Walter Alexander & Co.

McGill's Bus Services is a bus operator based in west central Scotland, with its headquarters situated in Greenock, Inverclyde.

Since the late 1920s Yorkshire has played a major role in the sale of second-hand buses and coaches, as well as their ultimate end-of-life destruction.

The Leyland National was conceived as a joint venture between British Leyland and the National Bus Company to replace all the rear-engined single-deckers in the British Leyland Group - the AEC Swift, Leyland Panther, Daimler Roadliner, single-deck Daimler Fleetline, and Bristol RE.

Southdown Motor Services, a subsidiary of the British Electric Traction Company, once dominated the county of Sussex, with a history dating back to 1915.

Unlike other parts of the world, Britain was slow to start operating bendy buses and, despite the first ones appearing in service in Sheffield in 1978, it was not until 1985 that the next examples made their appearance, again in Sheffield.

From its formation in 1919 in Wigan, Lancashire, Northern Counties Motor & Engineering Company Limited grew to become one of Britain's most prominent bus builders.

Robert Appleton's superb images stretch back to 1970, featuring the buses of the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company Ltd and the Eastern National Omnibus Company Ltd.

Designated as a new town some fifty years ago, Milton Keynes was designed for the car owner, but public transport has provided a vital link for many.

Western SMT was formed in 1932, when the Scottish General Transport Company (which operated buses in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire) merged with Midland Bus Services, which operated from the south-west of Glasgow as far as Ayr, Stranraer and Dumfries.

Local bus and tram services in Glasgow were traditionally operated by the Corporation Transport Department, which had a monopoly in the city limits from 1930 onwards.

Aberdeen Corporation Transport and its successors, Grampian Transport and FirstBus/First Aberdeen, can trace their history back to 1898 when they commenced tram operation within the city of Aberdeen.

Edinburgh did not adopt electric traction until the early 1920s when the Corporation took over from the Edinburgh & District Tramway Co.

As capital of Scotland, Edinburgh has always boasted a bus service to be proud of.

Inspired by the AEC Routemaster, the New Bus for London, later renamed the 'New Routemaster', was the first bus specifically built for use in London since 1968, when the last Routemaster machines were constructed.

The provincial bus operations of Britain underwent great upheavals following legislation enacted in 1969.

It is not possible to save and restore all lorries that have come to the end of their working life.

Between 1982 and 2015, Showbus, Britain's largest bus rally, was, with the exception of 2013, held at two sites.

Strathtay Scottish was a product of the state-owned Scottish Bus Group's attempts to prepare for deregulation and possible privatisation in the mid-1980s.

On 26 October 1986 Britain's bus services were deregulated.

Even though it is nearly forty years since the last vehicles left the Southall factory, the products of the Associated Equipment Company, more commonly known as AEC, are still synonymous with quality and reliability.

The bus scene around Southampton and its surrounding towns in the 1970s and early 1980s was one of change.

The Routemaster is the iconic London bus, recognised around the world.

Strathclyde Traction covers the former Strathclyde Region Council area of the west of Scotland, stretching from the southern end of the Western Highlands to the Southern Uplands, which was formed by merging the city of Glasgow with the counties of Ayr, Bute, Dumbarton, Lanark, Renfrew, Stirling and parts of Argyll.

The London to Brighton run, held each year by the Historic Commercial Vehicle Society, is a key date in the diary of any vintage vehicle enthusiast or member of the preservation community.

Southdown Motor Services was a well-known and respected bus and coach operator formed in 1915 and based in the south of England.

On 26 October 1986, bus services were deregulated throughout the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland and London.

AEC Lorries explores the story of lorry use in the last fifty years, showing the diverse use of the vehicles and their configurations for many different types of work, with a focus on one of the great British manufacturers - AEC.

After the 1969 nationalisation, bus and coach companies had generally continued with their traditional liveries and, in 1971, it was decided the time had come to apply a corporate image to state-owned bus operations.

Launched in 1988, the Dennis Dart saloon became one of the most successful single-deck buses in the UK.

Starting at London City's eastern terminus, Aldgate, this book begins with the red central bus routes radiating out to Essex, featured together with the Green Line coach services.

Brighton is famous for many things, and coaching is certainly one of them.

The low-floor bus was first introduced to the streets of London in 1994 with a fleet of sixty single-decks entering services with London Buses Limited, passing quickly to the new privatised operators.