Worthing Bus Gathering and Running Day

The road outside the rally site is ideally suited to pictures of buses passing on the various bus serivces - as long as you can dodge the lamp-posts! RML898, one of the original 24 allocated to Finchley for the 104 in 1961, speeds past.

Brighton & Hove VR, new to Southdown of course, has recently changed hands and still carries the Brighton & Hove livery in which it last saw service, right down to the fleetnames, external and internal posters.

The Northern Irish fleet of Citybus operated a number of Alexander (Belfast) bodied Bristol RELLs of which 2534 is one such example, now happily preserved. What did I say about lamp-posts?

The Brighton Corporation fleet was represented by PD2 23ACD. Its MCW body was converted for one man operation, Brighton being the first undertaking to use double deck buses in this way.

Solent Blue Line use this convertible open top VRT on the Southampton Docks Tour. The bus was new to Southern Vectis, the Isle of Wight operator. Both companies are now part of the Go Ahead Group.

Yet another Routemaster - RM1955 arrives back from Hove.

Former Southdown 465 was rescued from Ireland a few years ago and is now restored to National Bus Company dual-purpose livery. The Northern Counties body design was unique to Southdown and is carried on a Leyland Leopard chassis.

Did you think you'd get away without a Queen Mary - no of course you didn't! 410 sets off for Ferring and the Henty Arms Beer Festival. Yes - we operate our services to places people want to go!

Brighton Hove & District 91 appeared last year. The cream and black livery certainly suits even it it never carried it in service in Sussex.

Guy Arabs are relatively rare beasts but Southdown 547, a MkIV version with Park Royal body, continues to delight.

The second London & Country Leyland National was B-series (no pod) SNB449 (YPL449T).

Stratford Blue's area is now part of Stagecoach but Leyland Leopard 62 (HAC628D) reminds us of the hey-day of that fondly remembered operator.

The old order in Swindon is called to mind with ECW bodied Daimler Fleetline 175 (KMW175P), an open top conversion.

Stagecoach's VRT, 15760 (JOU160P) was new to Bristol Omnibus but passed to Stagecoach with the Cheltenham & Gloucester operation. These days it lives in Chichester and has been repainted in Stagecoach stripes. Here it stands outside the Henty Arms in Ferring on the last trip back to Shoreham-by-Sea. Just for good measure, it was used on a Worthing Town service on Monday 31 July before it was returned to Chichester in the afternoon.

Speaking personlly, I would rather do a day's duty with this wonderful vehicle than any of the modern fleet. Well, I can dream can't I?!

See you next year!

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