From its launch in 1958, the Leyland Atlantean played a pivotal role in the British bus industry. The first double-deck bus in the UK to offer the now commonplace layout of front entrance and rear engine, the Atlantean enjoyed an uninterrupted production run of nearly thirty years, with examples put into service throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. In this book, Howard Wilde reflects on the later years, from the end of production in the mid-1980s to the present day, featuring a colourful selection of Atlanteans in different roles. The selection pays tribute to this true workhorse of the UK bus industry: a bus that will, at some time or other, have transported many members of the UK bus-using population to work, school or play.

For centuries tourists and other travellers have been travelling north to the Highlands of Scotland. This book follows the main thoroughfares north, using vintage and contemporary images to illustrate how they and the people using them have changed over time. The book starts as many visitors to Scotland have done over the years, by following the Great North Road from Edinburgh to Inverness. The reader continues north from the Highland capital by the east coast, thus joining the highly popular North Coast 500 tourist route going around the North of Scotland from east to west. The return journey south follows the spectacular west coast route all the way to Glasgow. Many of the old picture postcards and other images feature the beautiful scenery and way of life of the people of the Highlands. Illustrating the changes that came about during the twentieth-century transport revolution, this is an affectionate lavishly illustrated tribute to how travel around the Highlands has changed over time.

The Alexander ALX400 was the first low-floor bus body built in the United Kingdom, first appearing in 1997. The first ALX400s were placed on the DAF DB250LF chassis, closely followed by the Dennis Trident. 2000 saw the launch of the Volvo B7TL / ALX400 combination. The ALX400 soon became one of the more popular low-floor double-decks not only in London, but in the UK. The introduction of the Enviro 400 model in 2005 spelt the end of the ALX400, and in 2006 the model was discontinued. A large number of ALX400s were purchased by Arriva, Stagecoach and First, along with smaller orders from the Go-Ahead group. Utilising a number of superb images and informative captions, David Beddall documents the use of this bus in London.

The illustrated record of all Lola cars from 1978 to 1997. Acknowledged Lola experts Esa Illoinen and John Starkey pool their knowledge to provide full detail on all the different types of Lola of this period - single-seaters and sports racing cars. A companion volume covers the 1957-1977 models. A Lola T70 owner/racer himself, John Starkey is also the author of the much acclaimed Lola T70 (published by Veloce).

Propelled towards the end of the 1990s by accessibility imperative requiring low floor buses both in London and the rest of Britain, Dennis developed a tri axle Trident double decker for Hong Kong and then adapted the design as a two axle version for Britain. Orders came thick and fast between 1999, when the first Tridents for London entered service with Stagecoach and 2006, when the Enviro 400, a combination of its unified body builders, replaced it. In those years over two thousand of the type appeared in London, ordered by Stagecoach, First London, United, Metroline, Metrobus, London General, Blue Triangle, Connex, Armchair, and Hackney Community Transport. The body work was by Alexander ALX400, Plaxton, (Precedent) and East Lancs, to two available lengths, while badging itself progressed although Trans Bus, until this troubled organisation was suspended in 2004 by todays Alexander Dennis. Versatile and personable, the Trident in all its forms lasted two decades in London, the last examples being withdrawn from service in 2020.

From 1914 until 1969, when it was absorbed into WMPTE, Birmingham City Transport had various periods when they hired buses for evaluation. These demonstrators were tried out for a variety of reasons such as tramway feeder route development, expansion of the bus fleet to meet increasing passenger numbers, abandonment of tramcar services and expansion into the newly built municipal housing estates in the interwar and post-war periods. It tried out a wide variety of vehicles provided by both chassis and body manufacturers. This was to compare different manufacturers products, with a view to purchasing a substantial number of buses. BCT was the largest municipal operator in the UK, so this was a potentially lucrative opportunity for manufacturers. There were years when Birmingham had a large number of buses on hire in order to assess their performance, fuel economy and durability. 1923/4, 1929-1934, 1937, 1946/7,1955-1958 and 1960-1967 were the peak years for vehicle trials, of which very few were successful due to BCT's exacting requirements as well as their wish, where possible, to support local industry. A fascinating selection of buses were tested over the years.

Until production ceased in 1986, Bedford buses and coaches were a familiar sight on roads across the world. From the ubiquitous Bedford OB and the distinctive six-wheeled Bedford VAL right up to the final model, the air-suspended turbocharged Venturer, the advertising slogan 'You see them everywhere' was perfectly suited to the company. Covering the period from 1960 until the end of production, this book gives an overview of the majority of models produced during this period including the VAM, VAL and Y types. Containing a brief description of each chassis type and 180 photographs, most in colour and all with informative captions, it showcases the products of the Dunstable factory in their operating heyday.

Scania's first venture into the British double-decker bus market came in 1973, when with partner MCW, based in Birmingham, they produced the 'Metropolitan' double-decker. In 1980, after a brief hiatus, Scania re-entered the British double-decker market with a chassis for bodying by all the major UK builder. Featuring a wonderful array of previously unpublished images, this book is a fond tribute to forty years of Scania double-decker buses on Britain's roads.

During the history of Britain's electric tramcar fleets, many thousands were manufactured of which the vast majority saw out their operational life with a single owner. However, for several hundred there was to be a second - if not, in certain cases, a third - career with a new operator. Almost from the dawn of the electric era in the late 19th century tramcars were loaned or bought and sold between operators. The reasons for this were multifarious. Sometimes the aspirations of the original owners for traffic proved wildly optimistic and the fleet was downsized to reflect better the actual passenger levels. War was a further cause as operators sought to strengthen their fleets to cater for unexpectedly high level of demand or to replace trams destroyed by enemy action. For other operators, modernisation represented an opportunity to sell older cars whilst, certainly from the 1930s, a number of operators - such as Aberdeen, Leeds and Sunderland - took advantage of the demise of tramways elsewhere to supplement their fleet with trams that were being withdrawn but which still had many years of useful operational life in them. The process was to continue right through to the mid-1950s when Glasgow took advantage of the demise of the once-extensive Liverpool system to purchase a number of the streamlined bogie bogie cars that were built in the late 1930s. In this book the author provides a pictorial history - with detailed captions - to the many electric trams that were to operate with more than one tramway during the period up to the closure of the closure of the Glasgow system in 1962.

The larger bus operators, whether municipal or company owned, have traditionally trained their own new drivers. Normally older vehicles from the fleet were retained and adapted for training, adorned with 'L' plates. In earlier days they would usually just retain fleet livery. Sometimes they might receive a separate livery, to warn other road users. When the National Bus Company introduced corporate liveries of red or green for its fleets, many of their constituent companies used yellow for their training and service vehicles. Then, as recruitment became more difficult from around the 1980s, colourful liveries with invitational recruitment slogans tended to appear and this has continued since. Rather surprisingly, companies often bought in buses for training from other companies rather than converting their own, and these might be types not otherwise represented in their fleet. This book looks at a variety of training vehicles from around the country over the last fifty years, including examples that have survived into preservation.

Between the two world wars there was a golden era of industrial design when the benefits of streamlining were realised, allowing for reduced wind resistance, faster transportation and a more efficient economy. The Art Deco-influenced style was also a huge public relations exercise in the glamour-obsessed 1920s and 1930s. Its most obvious manifestations were on the railways, with beautiful streamlined locomotives in daring colour schemes on prestigious named expresses, especially in Europe and North America. They included the Fliegender Hamburger diesel train in Germany, the American Mercury trains and of course Sir Nigel Gresley's A4 Class, on which the streamlined casing and internal streamlining allowed Mallard to break the world speed record. The idea of streamlining made even more sense in the air, where the great airships were crossing the Atlantic, and aircraft like the Douglas DC3 cut through the air more easily than anything that came before. Meanwhile, on the world's roads, buses and cars lost their perpendicular looks and marques like Cord and Bugatti led the way with increasingly aerodynamic, wind-tunnel-tested profiles. Designers like Raymond Loewy, as well as designing streamlined locomotives, began to apply the same style to products for which wind resistance was irrelevant, such as buildings, refrigerators and even pencil sharpeners. This book tells the story of the streamline era - its designers, its successes and failures, its inspiration and its legacy.

Crosville is the story of the Crosville Motor Company and the Leyland Tiger buses they operated during the post-world war II period. As with many other operators nationwide, Crosville Motor Services based in Chester faced difficulties in re-establishing both stage carriage and private hire bus and coach services in the early years following the second world war. The need to support a weakened economy by exporting goods meant the supply of new vehicles was limited while existing fleets had suffered through the war years because of a lack of spares, skilled personnel to fit them, and general maintenance. At the same time, the general public needed to see not only local but long-distance travel re-established. The latter, in terms of holiday travel, was particularly important to Crosville, who in pre-war times had built up a network of services in the Merseyside and North Wales areas, with a special need to provide transport along the North Wales coast. The many resorts there were now beginning to re-establish their status as holiday centers required holidaymakers to be transported to them. In order to fulfil that need Crosville took delivery in 1949/50 of 35 single deck buses, classed as dual-purpose (bus/coach) vehicles. Government intervention had redirected these 35 Leyland Tiger PS1/1 vehicles (originally ordered by Midland General) to Crosville to assist with their vehicle shortage. They were Leyland's first post-war design, but because of nationalisation which occurred in the transport industry at the time of their delivery they would eventually become non-standard in the Crosville fleet. Crosville shows how political decisions enforced changes to the organisation of public transport and vehicle design and the book will appeal to anyone interested in vintage motor vehicles and the history of transport in the United Kingdom.