Sightseeing Buses in Britain
About this ebook
Bus companies started to offer tours of these towns and cities, often using open-top buses. This idea was not new. London Transport had an existing Round London Sightseeing Tour which had been started in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. In 1972 open-top buses were hired in as an experiment, this proving successful and services were expanded rapidly.
In Scotland, Edinburgh Corporation Transport had a long tradition of sightseeing tours. Elsewhere, sightseeing tours took off in such locations as Bath, York, Oxford and Cambridge. As tourists came all year round it became viable to operate separate vehicles and even invest in new buses. New developments included Hop-on-Hop-off tours and tours with taped commentaries in a variety of languages. New specialist companies began to emerge. Guide Friday started up in a small way at Stratford-upon-Avon and spread nationwide. They were replaced by the City Sightseeing brand started by Ensignbus which operates internationally.
Malcolm Batten offers a fascinating photographic tour of the sightseeing buses of Britain.
About the author
Born in 1952, Malcolm Batten has lived in East London all his life, and has always had an interest in the local transport scene and the history of Newham. After a boyhood of trainspotting, he started taking photographs in 1969. Since then he has recorded the local buses and railways, in an area which has seen enormous change.
