Royal Blue Run Comes to South Wales

The South Wales valleys were treated to the sights and sounds of old coaching days as the Royal Blue Run travelled from Treherbert to Cheltenham crossing the Valleys via old routes. Photos below were taken in Ystrad Mynach.

Mike June 23rd, 2019

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Progress on WW1518

Work continues apace to have WW1518 back at its original depot in time for WW90 in September, as can be seen a lot of progress has been made recently.

Mike June 20th, 2019

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Barry Festival of Transport 2019

The Barry Festival of Transport attracted several hundred interesting vehicles to Barry Island on Sunday. Around 180 classic cars and around 240 performance and rally club cars came to the seaside resort. These were supplemented by a lot more visiting heritage and new buses than in previous years.

Mike Taylor, the organising chairman of the heritage bus group at The Bus Bepot, Barry said  “visitor numbers seemed to be quite strong despite the mid-morning rain shower, the sun came out and all the heritage open top buses ran during the day with quite a lot of families enjoying the event.  We were busy managing the free trip buses even with a 10 minute frequency, we had queues of over 100 people at times.” 

Commenting on the event Mike said  “We certainly attracted new people to Barry even if this time not so many when on the beach. I want to thank all the volunteers and Vale of Glamorgan Council as at times it was really busy. On the car side one of the striking differences this year are the groups of performance car enthusiasts attracting a lot of younger people, in contract to the many classic cars from the 1960s 70s and 80s.  On the heritage bus side we are pleased the 1957 Red & White bus arrived as it marks the start of our Call for Donations to restore an 81 year old 1938 Red & White coach.  Amongst the other visitors there were ones we had not seen before this, I know we had three double deckers from Birmingham and ones representing London, Bath, Swansea and Bristol joining our Barry collection running free trips. The New Zealand single decker was on show and for the first time ever in Wales was a bus from Hungary.”

Mike June 20th, 2019

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Barry Festival of Transport Sunday 9th June

We will be running a regular park and ride service on Sunday from the dock offices in Barry to the Depot and then from the Depot to Barry Island working between 10am and 4:45pm.
We have over 500 vehicles attending, a mix of classic cars, buses and commercials.

Mike June 5th, 2019

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This weekend on Sunday 9th June there will be a Depot open day and large vehicle display on Barry Island, we will be running free bus services from 10am until 4:45pm between Barry Island and the Bus Depot and a park and ride service from the Dock offices to the Bus Depot. Weather permitting we will also be running our open toppers on a town tour every 30 minutes.

Caerphilly No.1 joins the fleet

Mike April 28th, 2019

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1518 in Red

The top coat has been added onto WW1518 and it looks fantastic in original colours, work moves back to the interior now with new flooring & laminate to be added before glazing takes place.

Mike March 13th, 2019

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WW1518 PROGRESS

Work on our Western Welsh Leopard has restarted and things are moving quickly, 1518 was new to Barry Depot and in later years was converted to a tow bus the rear quarter being removed in the process. As can be seen a new section has been added, this was removed from a scrap exOxford AEC Reliance and has returned the Leopard to full length. We hope to see some paint on 1518 in the next few weeks.

Mike February 26th, 2019

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Swansea Museum 24th Feb

The CTPG visited Swansea Bus Museum on Sunday 24th Feb, we took our National Welsh Olympian as the restoration of Swansea’s SWT Olympian had recently been completed. The photos below show the two preserved South Wales Olympians together almost identical to look at but with very different running gear, one being Gardner/Hydracyclic and the other Cummins/Voith which are quite separable audibly.

Mike February 26th, 2019

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Work has restarted on the restoration of WW1518 our Leyland Leopard ex tow bus now restored to full length, we hope to see some paint on her in the near future.