Origin of the Cardiff Transport Preservation Group and progress so far.
The group was formed in 1992 in order to purchase, restore, maintain and preserve for the benefit of the public, vehicles, artifacts, archive material and other items which pertain to and reflect the transport heritage of, the City of Cardiff and surrounding areas. To this end the Group has acquired a number of buses formerly operated by City of Cardiff Transport and other local operators. All vehicles are owned by the group or it's members.
A Lottery Grant of £4,525 was awarded from the Heritage Lottery Fund, through the "Awards for all Wales" scheme towards the cost of producing a series of display panels depicting the history of Municipal Transport in Cardiff, printing costs of a series of drawings of Cardiff trams, trolleybuses and buses, and the publication of a book detailing the history of Bruce Coachworks Ltd., of Cardiff.
2004 saw an increase in the number of vehicles now owned by group members, these include two Bristol LHL saloons originally operated by London Transport, but subsequently both spending a number of years in South Wales, one with Rhymney Valley District Council and the other with Ffoshelig Coaches, New Church Dyfed. Also joining the collection, ex Western Welsh ECW bodied Leyland Tiger PS1 new in 1947, this vehicle required a major re-build, and as a result, was dispatched to the Scottish Vintage Bus Museum during May 2005, where progress has not been as quick as anticipated but hopefully will be completed during 2009/10 some way beyond the original time scale. Look out for updates on this fine Western Welsh half-cab saloon during the coming months.
2005 was generally a good year for the group with more events attended and profits from our sales stands up on last year, April 2005 saw acquisitions in the form of, ex Cardiff Fleetline 497 JKG497F which was previously owned by two group members, also ex Cardiff Metrorider 174 was acquired from John's of Merthyr and ex Red & White Bristol Lodekka L358 TAX235 from the former owner of Globelle Coaches, West Bromwich. This vehicle, L358 was rallied for the first time only days after it's acquisition by the group and appeared at the Swansea Festival of Transport, Llanover Village Fete and The Bristol (Brislington) event as well as completing an evening road run during August, with our stay at the Wenvoe site now over and we once again were looking for a permanent home for our vehicles, though luckily we found temporary accommodation at the yard of Watts Coaches, Bonvilston near Cardiff. We re-located most of our growing collection of vehicles to Watts at the end of 2006 and during our 2 year stay we added a Leyland Titan PD2, Leyland Atlantean, Guy Arab LUF, Leyland PD3 and a Leyland Tiger Cub all with Welsh operator heritage. During 2007 Cardiff Bus kindly donated 3 more vehicles, a Volvo B55, a Mk1 Lynx and Metro-rider 143 to replace 174 which was found to be uneconomic to repair. We also organised a number of very successful vintage vehicle rallies locally, a Barry and at Merthyr Tydfil and these we intend to build on year by year. (details of our vehicle stock can be viewed elsewhere on this website) click here
2009 has seen us move once more, this time to the long sought after Bus Depot Barry, which was formally "The home of the Bustler" a marketing name adopted by National Welsh at deregulation for its' fleet of minibuses of which we own the first C101HKG. The Garage was built in the late 1930s by Western Welsh who in their hay-day operated a fleet of around 700 vehicles across the width of South Wales. We hope that this depot will become not only a storage and restoration centre for our group vehicles and those of other private owners of preserved buses, but also in time a transport museum serving our area of South Wales. 2009 has many challenges ahead and we need to work hard continue the momentum we have started, to this end we are now organising our first open day at The Bus Depot Barry which we will combined with our annual Barry Festival of Transport on Sunday 14 June 2009.
Cardiff Transport Preservation Group-ctpg.co.uk