THE M & D AND EAST KENT BUS CLUB

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CLUB PUBLICATIONS by Derek Jones

Although the club's monthly news-sheet remains its most enduring publication and the one with which members are most familiar, other publications covering a wide range of bus-related subjects have been produced during the past fifty years.

For much of the first quarter-century of the Club's existence, the most economic method of achieving the relatively small print runs involved was through use of stencil duplicators, requiring much greater care in typewriting the text than is demanded by current technology. "Offset litho", a process more akin to that used (in simplified form) in modern photocopying machines, generally superseded duplication from around 1984, and more recently the Club has been able to make greater use of outside printers (primarily Kithead) for most of its output.

For many members the current fleet lists of Maidstone & District, East Kent and their modern successors are the most important aspect of Club literature, but only the Club's most senior members will recall from personal experience that the earliest fleet lists were produced in separate instalments covering "saloons" (or single-deck buses), coaches and double-deck vehicles. It was not until 1959 that the lists were combined into single items for East Kent (P.1) and Maidstone & District (P.2), thus launching the now familiar "P" prefix which has been used for our publications ever since. Service vehicles were originally listed separately in P.3 (East Kent) and P.4 (M&D), then in 1971 this information was absorbed into the main fleet lists. Throughout this time, the Maidstone Corporation fleet was covered by a separate single-sheet list which required updating only occasionally, its last incarnation (in 1968) being christened P.25.

In 1973 the Club's first illustrated fleet list booklet, to a new A6 cover size, brought together the East Kent, M&D and Maidstone Corporation fleets for the first time, and laid the foundations for an ongoing series - retitled Enthusiast's Guide from its eleventh edition in 1987, and reflecting the various changes in company structures and names - with the most recent, twenty-first, edition produced in 2002.

Although occasionally described in the news-sheet, before 1973 details of allocation changes were normally circulated separately to members with a specific interest in the subject, but this became a regular news-sheet feature in October 1973. After a pilot combined edition in 1972, separate EK and M&D allocation lists appeared as P.13 and P.14 between 1973 and 1977, then these were re-combined using the now-vacated P.1 label at the end of 1978; the list was updated at intervals until 1993, when the format of the Enthusiast's Guide was revised to include this information. A "snapshot" summary of vehicles at each depot had previously been included in each issue of the Fleet List Booklet/Enthusiast's Guide since the sixth (1979) edition. A supplementary item (P.35) featuring East Kent allocation lists for sample dates between 1930 and 1991 was produced in the latter year to mark the company's 75th anniversary, and this was subsequently reprinted with 1996 data added.

The rather more specialised subject of route workings received detailed attention from 1969, when first editions were produced for each of East Kent (P.11) and M&D (P.12). The content was initially limited to a description of the depots and vehicle types applicable to each route, but became more sophisticated in later editions from 1972 onwards. A similar publication for Maidstone Borough Council (P.27) was added to the range between 1974 and 1983. In 1977 full details of individual vehicle workings became available, and these were published until 1985. After deregulation such detail became commercially sensitive and the new P.10 publication from 1986 onwards covered all major operators depot by depot, including the types used on each route but without individual workings.

The whereabouts of vehicles sold from the main local fleets became the subject of P.61 (Current Disposal Vehicles) from 1984, and this has now reached its ninth edition. Preserved vehicles have recently been considered in greater detail, in P.21 from 1999.

The contents of destination blinds for each depot of the major operators were the subject of a one-off publication in 1986 (also numbered P.21). Other subjects covered in smaller publications (mainly during the 1960s) have included vehicle registration marks, chassis and body numbers, unladen weights, M&D demonstration vehicles, the Hastings Tramways fleet, the renumbering of the M&D fleet in 1968, and the abandonment of trolleybus services by Maidstone Corporation.

Undoubtedly the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by the Club have been the fleet histories of East Kent (F.1, in 1971 and 1978) and of Maidstone & District (F.2, in 1977 and 1995). The first East Kent edition was published jointly with the PSV Circle and the Omnibus Society, but the second edition and both of those covering M&D were wholly published by the Club. Each included contributions by many individuals with specialised knowledge of aspects of each company's history, including officials and staff from both companies. None of the volumes, however, would have seen the light of day without the intensive and dedicated work over many years of the Club's Editor, Nicholas King.

On a slightly smaller scale, though still important documents in their own right, the Club's Maidstone Corporation fleet history (F.3, published in 1974), and a 40-page booklet entitled "75 Years of Municipal Transport in Maidstone" (M.75, published in 1979 with a greater illustrative content than the 1974 volume) each provided a valuable account of the history of Kent's last municipal operator, at a time when it was adapting to a new administrative structure brought about by the 1974 reorganisation of local government.

A major project undertaken each year from 1990 to 1993 was the production of an illustrated Review of the Year, which in the latter two editions reached more than 100 pages each. Providing a detailed account of developments in each of the major fleets, as well as collectively for the independents, the 1992 review coincided with the final months of Boro'line Maidstone, and thus provided an invaluable and concise account of the events surrounding Boro'line's demise, and of the subsequent absorption of most of its fleet into those of M&D and Kentish Bus. As with other substantial publications, compilation of each year's Review had depended on the efforts of a few individuals, as well as relying on sufficient sales to recoup the substantial financial investment, and other priorities meant that the 1993 edition proved to be the last.

Though never the Club's main raison d'être, independent operators have always received coverage to varying degrees, often supported by a small group of members with the enthusiasm to record and exchange their observations for the benefit of others. Early fleet lists, produced by the Club's founder Don Vincent, featured London area coach operators such as Lewis of Greenwich and Venture of Hendon, the second of these some distance away from the Club's own area, together with operators who were not strictly "independent" such as Timpson's (who maintained a garage at Ramsgate until 1968), and Skinner of St Leonards (controlled by M&D from 1953 but retaining its own identity until the late 1960s). Lists covering other fleets were circulated privately by individual members on several occasions, with a separate news-letter on the subject being produced early in 1968, but support did not then reach the level required to sustain it as a regular publication.

In 1974 the last two traditional independent bus operators in the Club's area, Dengate of Rye and Drew of Waltham, ceased operations, leaving that sector of the industry to concentrate for the next few years almost entirely on coach operation, but it was at that time that Club coverage of such fleets became more systematic. A pilot list covering Maidstone area coach operators appeared in 1973, itself becoming out-of-date as a result of the sale of the fleet of Cox (Streamline Coaches), Maidstone to M&D just a few months later. A complete set of twelve such lists (P.41 to P.52 inclusive) was produced during 1975 for various parts of the area, and these were grouped into four larger areas (numbered P.53 to P.56) for the 1976 season, and repeated annually from 1978 to 1981. In 1982 the label P.41 was re-adopted for a combined volume covering the whole Club area, and after conversion to A5 booklet format from 1987, P.41 has now become an established feature.

From 1980 independent operators began to provide an increasing proportion of local bus and commuter coach services, and the Club's decision to properly cover such operators five years earlier meant that the groundwork had already been done before interest in the smaller companies grew as the 1980s progressed. A further new publication, P.42, containing timetables of independent operator's bus and coach services, was produced for the first time in 1983, and gradually grew from 13 to 104 sides in the eleventh and last edition published in 1994. The subsequent sale or cessation of several of the businesses referred to in that 1994 edition illustrate the extent to which the whole structure of the industry has changed yet further in the intervening eight years.

From 1966 the first of an occasional series of fleet histories of independent companies appeared, with publications (then numbered from X.1 upwards) covering Dengate, based at Beckley until 1967 and Davis, Sevenoaks, both then still trading. Others including Newman, Hythe appeared later, and these three were updated and reprinted as F.11/12/13 in 1973; the Dengate item (F.12) was further reprinted to complete the story after the stage services and eight vehicles were acquired by M&D in 1974. In addition to the main fleet histories F.1/2/3 described earlier, other historical items have included the "East Kent in..." series.

A combined fleet summary, allocation list, route list and typical vehicle working schedule for East Kent in 1955 (P.31 in 1974, reissued as M.1 in 1997) was followed by similar items for 1959 (P.32, in 1985) and 1937 (P.33, in 1987). Regrettably nothing similar has yet appeared for M&D, due mainly to the dearth of fleet allocation and route working information to a comparable standard, although research continues and it remains the hope that members may offer to develop the potential of such a series.

However, other avenues of research have most recently produced publication M.2, covering Beadle products delivered to all three major operators up to the closure of the Dartford factory in 1957, and publication M.3, covering all Bristol half-cab vehicles delivered to M&D and its subsidiaries. This and the second edition of P.21 covering preserved vehicles have piloted the latest stage in the evolution of club publications with the inclusion of full-colour illustrations on the covers, following a trend introduced with the fourteenth edition of the Enthusiast's Guide in 1991, and more recently the lamination of colour covers to avoid scuffing.

The Club has now been in existence for more than half of the lifetime of the two companies which gave it its name. Throughout that time, its printed publications have recorded contemporary events, initially for the benefit of current members, but also in a form which will be of inestimable value to future historians. Equally, research into the early years of M&D and East Kent continues, and the combination of current and historical record is certain to provide plenty of material for future Club output (whether in printed or electronic form).

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