Learning to drive a bus, 1969

Image: © Alan Murray-Rust Taken: 28 Aug 1969

John William Street at the junction of St Peter's Gate. In 1969, there were still plenty of buildings showing the grime from the era of the factory chimney. The bus was one of the first motor buses purchased by Huddersfield Corporation for its own services. As a result of an agreement with the LMS Railway in the 1930s, bus services in Huddersfield in which the Corporation had an interest were split into two groups with separate financial structures. Those which derived from the tram network were wholly owned by the Corporation, and were operated exclusively with trolleybuses until the 1950s. Routes in which the railways had a share were owned by the Huddersfield Joint Omnibus Committee. Housing expansion after in the 1950s resulted in the need to create routes for which it would not be economic to construct the overhead for the trolleybuses, and only needed a small number of buses. The first two, of which this was one, were purchased second hand. When this view was taken it had been permanently relegated to the job of driver training. This is one of a series of views featuring buses in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=2114547&displayclass=slide

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0