Each page has a different colour scheme which is supposed to be reminiscent of some bus or coach company from the era, and this one is meant to represent Western and Southern National. As a result of this arrangement, some of the pages are hard to read, and some will scramble your brain. Hopefully you'll manage.

This website is dedicated to the memory of the Classic Buses website founder, Dick Gilbert, who set up the site back in 1996. He was born in South London on October 28th, 1947, and his interest in the topic of the site began around 1959/60 after his family moved to Eastbourne in Sussex, the buses and coaches that were around would all be considered classics nowadays. It was an interesting period, when there were still pre-war and wartime utility machines about (although mostly on the point of retirement), and a large number of half-cab vehicles that had been built immediately after the war. At the same time, new products like the Leyland Atlantean, AEC Regent V, and a host of then modern coach designs (Plaxton Panorama, Harrington Cavalier, Weymann Fanfare etc.) were appearing. It was a transitional period when vehicles from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s could all be seen in use at the same time.

Having been born in south London, London Transport was the first operator that he lived with, then his family moved to Sussex and he grew up with Southdown, Maidstone and District, East Kent, and the municipal fleets of Eastbourne and Brighton, as well as the large number of excursion coaches that used to visit the south coast every summer.

In the early 1960s he used to make trips to London to visit Victoria Coach Station, or see the last of the London Transport trolleybuses, or the last halfcab single deckers (TDs). Unfortunately, although he saw what he went to see, most of the photographs he took are not particularly brilliant, or have been lost. However there are some black and white pictures taken at Victoria Coach Station, London, and in Sussex between 1960 and 1962 which are barely reasonable, and some of them appear around this site. Here's one:

This was taken at The Crumbles, Eastbourne, in the summer of 1962, where Claude Lane was running the narrow gauge Eastbourne Tramway (now moved to Seaton, Devon). He had used this ex Lincolnshire Road Car Leyland KPZ01 Cub as a lorry in the past, and it was left to rot outside his depot. New in May 1937 it was FW 8855, originally fleet number LC502, one of 30 delivered that year with Brush B20F bodies. It is possible that someone might rescue it these days, if it was still about.

Being employed in the airfreight industry for many years, he managed to visit many overseas locations and wrote several pages on various locations around the world, including a 1970 trip overland to Tehran he and a friend made in a ten year old Volkswagen camper van. After a serious illness Mr. Gilbert passed away in Sussex on Wednesday, May 31st 2023, leaving behind many years of classic bus research which can be seen at the various links listed on this page. Without his help, patience and generosity my Irish and Manx sites would never have gone online, and by way of thanks for his help, I agreed with his family in 2023 to continue to run the site in the years ahead.

It's all for fun, so relax and have a wistful rummage through the scrapbook. If you weren't around in the 1960s (and they say that, if you were, you won't remember it) then these pages will provide an insight into the variety of some of the glamorous machines that could be seen on British and Irish streets at the time.

Please call back from time to time, as changes are taking place here all the time, and let me know if you spot a mistake somewhere - I do try to keep things pretty accurate. I know that there are some real boffins out there, and I need you to tell me when something is inaccurate, or if you have additional data or photographs. Suggestions for additional pages, news updates and rally reports are always appreciated too, these can be emailed to me here. So welcome to the site, browse around and make yourself at home.

Dick Gilbert in Independence Square, Kyiv, Ukraine in 1996, around the time he originally set up the Classic Buses website.

Recent updates

**STAR PICTURE**

Every once in a while a real gem of a photograph turns up, and the above is certainly one of those. It was sent to me by Spencer Wood, who happened to notice that the incomplete building in the background is one he and his team worked on in 2020 and again in 2024. The bus is parked in High Street, Shanklin, Isle of Wight. Spencer asked if I could estimate the year it was taken. After a trawl throught the dusty depths of Google, I discovered it was a Milnes-Daimler open top double decker. It was one of seven such buses owned by the impressively titled Isle of Wight Express Motor Syndicate between 1905 and 1907. Operating on a circular route linking Ryde and Newport via Sandown and Shanklin, the solid tyres of these buses and the poor road surfaces put a premature end to the venture, and it was fourteen years before any further bus services operated on the island. Further information can be seen here, including a photograph of DL 78 and one of its colleagues, both with full loads on board. What is unknown is what the large storage baskets on the front of the top deck were used for. Spencer also told me that the bay windows in that building appear to be being fitted at the time of the photograph, and that he replaced them in 2020. So they could have been in situ for up to 115 years!!. Thanks to Spencer for an interesting picture.

?? MYSTERY PICTURE ??

This ex London Transport RTL class bus was photographed in 1968 or 1969 at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co. Wicklow by Michael Dryhurst, where it was serving as a support vehicle to the film industry. 1,631 of this type entered service with London Transport between November 1948 and November 1954, with a mix of Weymann and Park Royal bodywork. Many of them were sold off for further service to Sri Lanka and a variety of U K operators, with around 100 passing to dealers. It is assumed that NNI 559 is one of these dealer stock vehicles, but it is unknown which one. A further sighting (by me) of this bus (or possibly another one) was in the Skerries area in north Dublin around 1974, on a building site, painted green. I seem to recall it being NNI 759, hence the suggestion that there were two of them in Ireland.

So after 55 years, can anyone suggest an identity for this bus? Or both, if there were two? Email me if you can help.

LAST MYSTERY

The PD2 in Sri Lanka was identified as one of a batch of eight buses bought new in 1947, thanks to Simon Lang.

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