THE M & D AND EAST KENT BUS CLUB
CLUB TOURS
-
A brief
history by
Derek Jones
Over
the past fifty years many tours and trips have been organised by small groups of
members, often making use of scheduled public services, but on occasions by
hiring vehicles on a private basis. There
have also been visits to the Club area by other enthusiast groups, and a number
of tours and excursions arranged by the operators themselves (ranging from rally
visits to the very successful AEC Regent farewell tour operated by East Kent in
1981). This account, however,
relates to tours advertised through the Club News-sheet to, and arranged for,
Club members.
The
original "Club outings", as they were then described, took the form of
excursions to specific locations or events. An early example was a visit to
Earl's Court on 27th September 1958 for the Commercial Motor Show exhibition.
The particular attraction that year was that both an M&D Atlantean (DL43)
and an East Kent Regent V (PFN 843), were on public view for the first time,
several months before either type entered service; M&D Reliance/Harrington
CO390 was also exhibited. Other
such events over the years have included the British Coach Rally and HCVC/HCVS
runs at Brighton, the local finals of the Bus Driver of the Year competition,
and various garage open days.
The
more familiar full-day tours, encompassing several locations, have their origins
in the activities of the Club's Medway Group, founded in 1956 by Brian Baldry
(one of the first members to become what would now be known as an Area Organiser).
On Sunday, 19th October 1958, TKM-series AEC Reliance/ Harrington
"Wayfarer" coach CO345, the first coach ever to be hired by the Club,
took thirty-seven members and friends from Gillingham to visit depots at
Maidstone, Tenterden, Rye, Hastings, Silverhill and Bexhill, returning northward
via Hawkhurst. Two further events
early in 1959 established the popularity of depot tours, with that to north-west
Kent on Sunday 18th January 1959 being so well supported that it was repeated
three weeks later. East Kent was featured for the first time on Sunday 10th May
1959, again with a vehicle starting from Gillingham.
Some
idea of the support generated by these early ventures can be gauged from the
fact that in that first year a total of 363 passengers were carried on twelve
different vehicles. Without the
restrictions imposed by modern tachograph regulations, or the speed afforded by
dual carriageways and motorways, the hired vehicles were often standard buses,
although higher specification vehicles (including coach-seated M&D
Atlanteans DH524/5) were used when the occasion demanded.
Club
membership was growing rapidly at this time, and although Brighton and London
had already been reached during visits to trade events, new members started to
expand the scope of tours to destinations outside the Club's immediate area.
Alan Osborne developed tours to and within Essex from November 1961
(these and other activities eventually leading to the formation of the
Eastern National Enthusiasts Group, which became a separate club from 1st
January 1964, and is the forerunner to today's Essex Bus Enthusiasts Group).
After
a two-year absence on National Service (during which Len Randall deputised as
tours organiser), Brian Baldry reassumed the role of Medway Group leader and
tours organiser for 1962 and 1963. However, support for tours from within that
area had reduced from its earlier peak and towards the end of the 1964 season
the Medway Group ceased to organise Club tours in its own right.
From 1965 and for the next ten years, Paul Hollingsbee and others shared
the workload of organising tours in addition to other Club duties.
Former
Chatham & District/M&D Bristol K5G, GKE 68 had been used on a few tours
in 1963. Although described in
contemporary news-sheets as a Club vehicle, this was in fact in private
ownership. It was not until the
Club's Vehicle Preservation Group acquired CJG 959 and HKE 867 in 1966/7 that
use of preserved vehicles became more frequent. In 1968 both buses were used
quite intensively – the PD1A even doing a 16-hour day trip to Bournemouth on
18th August that year, which must have tested the stamina of vehicle, drivers
and participants alike! However,
experience was to prove that either preserved vehicle could be out of commission
for extended periods, and only one would be useable while more extensive
restoration work was carried out on the other.
By
the mid-1970s it became evident that elderly vehicles designed for bus service
work would no longer be suitable for longer-distance trips, and alternatives
would have to be investigated. Between
1977 and 1984, three former M&D vehicles were purchased by the Club for use
on tours, under the title "The Maid of Kent". AEC Reliance/Willowbrook 3762 (32 YKK), AEC
Reliance/Harrington 4166 (FKL 129D) and Leyland Leopard/Duple 4620 (RKM 620G)
each took its turn to provide transport to a wide variety of destinations.
The
first appointment to the formal position of Tours Officer was Roger Banks in
1975, and he in turn was succeeded by Eric Baldock (1978 & 1992-94), Julian
Brown (1979-83), Mike Sasse (1984-91) and David Cobb (1995 to date), assisted at
various times by a small number of other members. As with all Club activities, the organisation behind its
tours programme has always depended on the efforts of a few individuals, and it
is testament to their hard work that only briefly (in 1995) has it been
necessary to suspend that programme due to the post of Tours Officer being
vacant.
Over
the years Club tours have marked significant developments in the bus industry
locally, including the closure of the two trolleybus systems at Hastings (1959)
and Maidstone (1967), the former also resulting in the introduction of M&D's
first Leyland Atlanteans. Withdrawal from service of the last examples of
significant vehicle types has been commemorated in appropriate fashion,
including East Kent open-top Guys between 1968 and 1974, M&D all-Leyland
PD2/12s in 1970 and AEC Regent Vs in 1971.
More modern single-deckers displaced from the M&D fleet were visited
in their adopted homes, including Panthers in Hampshire from 1973, and
Fleetlines in the north-east of England in 1978.
Depot
tours became an established feature during the 1960s, with most of East Kent
territory being covered in a single day, though the geographical spread of
M&D's area before 1983 meant that at least two tours were usually needed to
cover that company fully. For both,
there was a much greater number of garages to choose from than exist today, with
each company having several smaller outposts (the last surviving examples from
the pre-NBC era, at Edenbridge and New Romney, having closed fairly recently) as
well as a few of the larger main depots (or in the case of Thanet, part of it)
which survive today. Several visits
predicted to be the last to a particular venue (before an expected closure)
proved not to be, including to Station Road, Ashford in 1976, some nineteen
years before the site closed for the last time!
Even outside the Club's own area, with the industry as fast-changing as
it has been in recent years, visits have sometimes proved timely in the light of
later events. In 1998 Tillingbourne at Cranleigh and Arriva at Crawley were
visited (see News-Sheet 554), and the following year Stagecoach at Eastbourne
(see News-Sheet 564). All have since ceased to operate from those depots (or at
all in the case of Tillingbourne).
The
first of several visits over the years to M&D's Postley Works in Maidstone
occurred on 31st December 1958. This
was repeated on 1st January 1961 (and annually around each New Year from 1963 to
1966), with a small party being given a conducted tour of the works on each
occasion. East Kent's central works
at Canterbury was first visited formally by the Club on a similar basis in May
1964.
Maidstone
Corporation Transport (then still at Tonbridge Road, with the move to Armstrong
Road some ten years in the future) first allowed Club members to visit on 23rd
August 1959. After 1969 the close proximity of the Corporation's new Armstrong
Road premises to M&D's Postley Works prompted the possibility of visiting
both on the same day, although this was not achieved in practice until 1974.
During the 1970s the aim was to visit the Canterbury and Maidstone sites
in alternate years, but as the works sites were decommissioned in the 1980s
visits were no longer a practical proposition; the last such visit (to
Canterbury) took place on 2nd June 1982.
In
more recent times, the traditional Saturday depot visits have become less
frequent, due partly to the much reduced number of vehicles to be seen in most
depots on a Saturday, but also as a result of increased security and concerns
about Health and Safety legal requirements.
Although
the Club's own vehicles were used on many tours between 1966 and 1984, vehicles
hired from elsewhere have always provided extra variety and interest, not least
those preserved by the companies themselves, including Hastings trolleybus DY
4965, M&D Commer/Harrington executive coach NKN 650 ("The Knightrider"),
Hastings & District Daimler CVD6/Willowbrook CHL 772 (as well as open-top
AEC Regal/Beadles with both M&D and H&D), East Kent Guy Arab IV/Park
Royal MFN 888, and Maidstone Corporation Leyland PD2A/Massey 26 YKO. Most recently, after a period in the service vehicle fleet of
Hastings & District and South Coast Buses, East Kent AEC Regent V/Park Royal
MFN 946F which has been kept in Stagecoach ownership has maintained the
tradition, while the other vehicles mentioned have passed to new owners for
continued preservation.
Independent
operators have not been ignored either, from the hire of WKP 870 of Margo,
Bexleyheath (a Beadle-Commer "Rochester" integral coach) to visit the
annual coach rally at Brighton on 19th April 1959, to the modern coaches of
today. Highlights over the years
include former East Kent Dennis Lancet/Park Royal EFN 592 (then owned by
Thomsett, Deal) visiting the depots of its original operator on 19th August
1973, and Kemp, Chillenden's unique AEC Sabre/Eastern Coach Works SAB 784 (ex-CBU
636J) travelling to Brighton and Worthing on 19th May 1990.
Two
innovations in the late 1970s greatly expanded the geographical coverage of Club
tours. An experimental two-day tour
to Hampshire (using M&D AEC Reliance/Harrington C7, 107 PKP) had taken place
on 16th/17th April 1966, visiting Portsmouth, Southampton and Bournemouth. It was another twelve years before, in July 1978, the first
"Maid of Kent", 3762, made an overnight journey to the Newcastle area,
allowing members the chance to spend a weekend surveying the fleets of Northern
General (who then still operated their own Routemaster fleet and the ex-M&D
single-deck Fleetlines referred to earlier) and Tyne & Wear PTE, and (during
the return journey on the Sunday) the recently-acquired Booth & Fisher depot
of South Yorkshire PTE, which was then home to four ex-M&D Reliance saloons.
A passenger complement of thirty on that weekend was sufficiently
encouraging to allow the idea to be repeated annually on Bank Holiday weekends
between 1979 and 1982, with visits to destinations from Cornwall to Yorkshire.
This allowed the tour to be extended to three days but removed the need
for overnight travel. A visit to north Wales in 1983 was cancelled due to lack
of support, although a small group of members still undertook the trip
privately. Finally, in 1984 the
further reaches of East Anglia were explored by fourteen members during a
two-day tour over a normal weekend, and this proved to be the last such tour to
date.
The
second new idea, using both road and rail travel, allowed greater distances to
be covered in a single day. The
first road-rail tour, to South Wales in 1979, saw members experiencing the
delights of InterCity 125s on the railway, Tiger Cubs and Leyland-Nationals in
the rare NBC-standard blue livery of Jones of Aberbeeg, and even rarer Longwell
Green-bodied Regent V's in Pontypridd. A
total of 57 members (plus two joining the main party in Wales itself) took part
that year, confirming the potential of the idea; the writer also notes from the
news-sheet report of the time that the normal day return rail fare from London
to Cardiff was then only £11.50, and the party benefitted from a further group
discount! For the next few years
efforts were concentrated on the weekend tours, but between 1984 and 1994 the
more northern parts of England provided many suitable attractions for road-rail
tours, and Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Durham, and
Yorkshire were all visited, some of these more than once.
As
the motorway network has expanded, day trips involving road travel alone can
reach further than was previously possible, and tours are now able to combine
the comfort of modern coach travel with the attractions of preserved vehicles at
the destination. Although there is still plenty of variety in the modern PSV
scene to attract tour participants, there is growing interest in historic
transport collections, and museums ranging from the somewhat nomadic Dover
collection to more established sites at Canvey Island, Long Hanborough and
Wythall have all been visited on recent Club tours.
Members
with access to back-number news-sheets can read for themselves the accounts
written by participants in many of the tours arranged by the Club since 1973; in
retrospect it is regrettable that the first fifteen years of such events are
recorded only by brief descriptions in each year's Annual Report.
Two common themes run through the history of Club tours – that they have had to adapt to many changes in the industry, and that they need members' support to succeed. Since 1995, under David Cobb's stewardship, the tour programme has continued to offer valuable opportunities for members to sample destinations and vehicles they might not otherwise experience. That tours also offer an enjoyable day out with fellow members, whatever the destination, is an extra bonus.
For details of recent tours see the tours pages