Buses, trams and commercial vehicles: general interest

In the mid-1950s there were rumours that the Northern line was to be upgraded from manual operation to an automated line.

Scottish Motor Traction, or SMT, was originally founded in Edinburgh in 1905.

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

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

Strathclyde Buses can trace its roots back to the tram services provided by Glasgow Corporation, which started running buses in 1924 as a more cost-effective way of reaching the new, large council housing schemes on the outskirts of the city.

Disruption, delays, travel chaos, fierce debate and financial woe have been regular newspaper headlines since Edinburgh announced plans to bring back trams.

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

In July 1901, the Leicester Tramways Company was taken over by Leicester Corporation.

John Law has been visiting Oxfordshire and photographing the county's buses and coaches since 1973.

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.

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

Coventry's buses had first entered service in 1914, supplementing the tram network.

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.

Long before Stagecoach, Arriva or First Bus, Ayrshire Independents fought it out with Western SMT on the local and long-distance routes within the county.

The first trams to be operated in West Bromwich belonged to the South Staffordshire Tramways Company, which began operating double-deck steam trams from Handsworth to Wednesbury in 1883, eventually extending the route to Dudley.

Based in Renfrewshire, Clydeside Scottish was a member of the Scottish Bus Group and was created from the northern part of Western SMT's area.

Lavington & Devizes Motor Services (L&DMS) was not a typical West Country rural independent bus operator.

This is the story of Walsall's trolleybus system, from its opening in 1931 through to its eventual closure in October 1970.

The Dundee & District Tramways Company began operating a service using a horse tram on 30 August 1877.

The West Bromwich Corporation Act of 1913 gave the Corporation the powers to operate motor buses, the first of which were four Albion single-deckers that lasted for less than seven weeks before the chassis were commandeered for war work in October 1914.

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.

This is the story of Belfast's trolleybus system, told through an eclectic collection of over 200 photographs, from its opening in 1938 to its closure in 1968.

This book records the vehicles and services operated by Maidstone Borough Council from its creation with the local government reorganisation in 1974, through coordination with Maidstone & District in 1981, to the rapid growth following bus deregulation in 1986 and to its demise in 1992.

The advent of the charabanc to the working classes - especially those slaving in the cotton mills in the North - seemed to evoke a special kind of freedom that not many had ever experienced before.

In this pictorial journey, Barry Marsden takes us through the history of trams and trolleybuses in Chesterfield, from the inauguration of a horse tram service by the Chesterfield and District Tramways Company in the 1880s to the last run by the Chesterfield Corporation trolleybuses in 1938.

Wessex Coaches of Bristol was certainly a company with two faces.

Maidstone Corporation fi rst began operating trams on 14 July 1904, in conjunction with the municipal electricity supply.

Fife Scottish was established in the 1960s as part of the Scottish Bus Group, a state-owned company which operated bus services throughout Scotland.

In the 1960s, many of the bus services in Scotland's Western Isles, from Lewis and Harris in the north down to Islay in the south, were operated by MacBrayne's, the company which also operated the ferry services between the islands and the mainland.

The Bristol Omnibus Company can trace its origins to 1875, when Sir George White formed the Bristol Tramways Company.

The Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company began to operate motor buses in the Birmingham and Black Country area in 1912, radiating their services out as far as Leicester.

Kirkcaldy Corporation Tramways began to operate an electric tram service in Kirkcaldy in 1903, connecting with the Wemyss and District Tramways Company service to Leven, further up the Fife coast, which began in 1906.

Living in a 1966 Albion Chieftain lorry, converted to a home, Traveller Dave has spent much of the past two decades in Europe, working on farms and travelling around, all the time taking photographs of the other interesting traveller homes he has seen.

From 1929 until 1979, a succession of buses and trucks trundled out of the AEC works in Southall, Middlesex.

The British bus industry was ill-prepared for the Second World War.

2014 marks the ninetieth anniversary of Safeguard, which has been in business from the mid-1920s.

How many of us grew up saying they wanted to be a bus driver?

The Leeds Tramways Company was authorised to construct tramway lines in Leeds in 1871 under the Leeds Tramways Order, with the first route opening on 16 September of that year and running from Boar Lane to the Oak Inn at Headingley.

Highland Omnibuses was founded in 1952 as part of the state-owned Scottish Bus Group that operated services throughout Scotland.

Stretching from Lundin Links on the north shore of the Firth of Forth around the coast to the southern shore of the Firth of Tay, North-East Fife is a largely rural area.

David Harvey takes us on a journey on the second longest bus route that was initiated by Birmingham Corporation.

Introduced in 1989, the Dennis Dart became one of the most successful midibuses in the UK.

Introduced in 1989, the Dennis Dart became one of the most successful midibuses in the UK.

Although there had been experiments with the use of a new form of transport - the 'trackless tram' (better known as the trolleybus) - during the first decade of the 20th century, it was in June 1911 that Bradford and Leeds became the country's pioneering operators of trolleybuses.

Although there had been experiments with the use of a new form of transport - the 'trackless tram' (better known as the trolleybus) - during the first decade of the 20th century, it was in June 1911 that Bradford and Leeds became the country's pioneering operators of trolleybuses.

Few transportation maps can boast the pedigree that London's iconic 'Tube' map can.

Few transportation maps can boast the pedigree that London's iconic 'Tube' map can.

The history of East Yorkshire is well documented, going back to 1919 when Ernest John Lee purchased a fourteen-seat Ford Model T bus for a service between Elloughton and Hull.