Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Saturday 14 March 2015

Hooptedoodle #167 - More Buses for the Non-Collection

The original scope for this ad hoc collection was that they had to be real buses, with some relevance to my childhood years on Merseyside. In the wider interests of personal nostalgia, the range has increased a little, I guess, but I am still fighting off any suspicion that I may have become a bus enthusiast.

Here are three more - two which arrived this morning and one which I received a while ago, but never got around to photographing.

Another Crosville, this one a little later than the previous photos, but still 1960s -
Route H16, Elizabeth Rd, Huyton to Liverpool Pier Head. This picture is
dedicated to the bold Mr Front, whose dad used to drive Crosvilles out of their
West Kirby depot.

Eastern Scottish service bus from Edinburgh to my present home village, 1970s
period. Route 124 survives to this day, but the buses, of course, don't look like proper
buses. In those days, on the rare occasions I journeyed to North Berwick I'd have
used the train.

This is a real nostalgia feast for me. Edinburgh Corporation service 16, Oxgangs
to Silverknowes; for many years, I travelled to work on this route every day
- South Morningside School to St Andrew Square. I remember that at one time
I read the whole of Loraine Petre's book about the 1813 campaign on my bus
journeys. Tricky unfolding the maps on the bus, I recall.

16 comments:

  1. I love your non-collection of busses!

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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    1. Hi Stokes - it's kind of sad, but they are fun!

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    2. http://6oxgangsavenueedinburgh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/buses-good-bad-indifferent-and.html

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    3. Well Peter, can't sit idly chatting all evening...

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  2. As a non driver I used Edinburgh buses & SMT throughout my youth and early 20s. I always had a book on the go ,even read by street light at night.
    Nos 4 ,44,9,10 &27 were my routes.The Green bus to Balerno was exotic ,a trip to terra incognito and most exciting!Thanks for posting nostalgia drenched pics.
    Alan

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    1. My pleasure - my only bad memories of bus travel are when I used to get the bus home from Edinburgh Uni to Liverpool for the holidays (cheaper than train) - overnight trip that lasted forever, and it seemed like I was the only person in the world that didn't smoke. Used to take about 2 days to recover, and if I don't have latent passive lung cancer I shall never understand why. That route used SMT coaches, and involved very strange stops - e.g. 1 hour stop in Penrith at 2am - nothing open, no toilets...

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    2. Mention of Balerno reminds me that an Edinburgh friend moved to Balerno, and when he phoned his mum (in Bristol) to tell her she was very upset and had to call the doctor for a fainting attack. She thought he said Palermo - how we larfed. For furreners, I must explain that Balerno is in Midlothian, while Palermo is - well, it's in Sicily, isn't it?

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  3. When I lived in those places I had to b****y walk! Kept me fit though, I guess.

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    1. I guess so - it would be difficult reading, too. We must organise some nostalgia shots of old shoes we used to own!

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  4. I took a trip on the number 35 from the Corn Exchange to Leith just yesterday but the bus looked slightly more modern. I'm thinking I may start not collecting buses too...

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    Replies
    1. You been in Edinburgh? - you still here...?

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    2. Tony - yes for a while on Saturday. Daughter now lives in Glenfarg so even further away from you, one day though! Back home in the morning.

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  5. Tony, this is great! And, reading above, I now find that you are an Edinburgh Uni graduate too! I posted on my blog tonight about buses and small worlds, but before I found out you had been to EU. When were you there? I was at Edinburgh from 1980-84.

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    1. I am much older than you, but then I seem to be older than most people now. This must have happened while I wasn't paying attention.

      I was at EU in the late 60s - graduated with a degree in pure maths and was dopey enough to become an actuarial trainee. Obviously accountancy would have been too exciting.

      I lived in Marchmont for a while and then Morningside for donkeys' years, and I've been in North Berwick since 2000. If you can bear it, please email me via the address on my blog profile.

      Regards - Tony

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  6. I grew up in Craiglockhart and stayed there until my mid 20s.
    Do you remember the Toytub in Stockbridge and Donrey (? re spelling) in Morningside?

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    1. Craiglockhart - fine, upstanding area! - excellent. Yes - Mr Alexander at the Toytub was my first (and ultimately most influential) supplier of figures - he introduced me to Les Higgins products, for one thing. Donray was a major supplier of big toys like dolls' prams and all that, and there was big howl of disappointment when the Thatcher years resulted in its being converted into yet another branch of the Halifax BS (remember them? - there's nostalgia - a period when savings companies actually tried to make contact with their customers).

      I used to take my sons (from my first family) for walks up Craiglockhart Hill, and along the Union Canal towpath out towards Kingsknowe. I must go and have a look around there again - a lot of personal ghosts!

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