The days have long
since gone when the major bus operator along the North Wales coast was Crosville Motor Services. In Chester, home to Crosville’s head office,
the streets were also graced with the Massey bodied Guy Arabs of Chester Corporation buses from the late
1940s to the 1970s mingling with the Bristol/ECW vehicles of Crosville. All that has now changed, fast forward to
2014 and we see the main operator along the North Wales coast is Arriva Cymru (formally Crosville Wales) and in Chester we have Stagecoach (Merseyside & South Lancs)
along with Arriva Cymru and Arriva North West. Local serves operated by Arriva in Chester are branded as Chester City Bus. There are
also a number of independent operators that provide services in Chester filling
the gaps where the big groups don’t operate.
On this programme we see buses operating from Helms of Eastham,
Arrowebrook Coaches, Aintree Coachline, Vale Travel, D. Jones & Son from
Wrexham and the now defunct G.H.A. Coaches.
Our filming begins in
May 2014 at Llandudno, on the same weekend as the famous ‘Llandudno Transport
Festival’, where we see the latest ADL400 double deckers operating with Arriva Cymru alongside single deckers
from the fleet. Locations include Mostyn Broadway, The Parade and Mostyn
Street. We then move along the coast to
Colywn Bay and film Arriva vehicles
on Abergele Road and Conway Road. We see
a number of MPD Dennis Darts, now removed from the fleet due to recent DDA
legislation. Our next location is Rhyl. Filming takes place in the bus station and
along the High Street. Here we see
low-height Wrightbus bodied VDL DB300 double deckers with ‘Cymru Coastliner’ branding recognising the famous route started by
Crosville in the mid 1960s. Our next stop is the bus station in Prestatyn
where we catch up with more buses from the Arriva
Cymru fleet. Now we have a look at
Chester, starting with some archive video from the camera of Malcolm King shot
in 1990. We see Daimler Fleetlines and
Dennis Dominators from the erstwhile Chester
Corporation fleet, as well as a Bristol VRT and Leyland Olympians from the Crosville and Crosville Wales fleets.
Moving to the contemporary era we begin our filming in 2014 along
Northgate Street and Foregate Street – just see how things have changed! A visit in May 2015 calls at the Bus Exchange
and Northgate Street, and later on that year our cameras visit Foregate Street,
Pepper Street and return to the Bus Exchange where we see an open top Alexander
ALX400 DAF DB250, 3990 (S243 JUA), branded as ‘Roller Coaster’ from the
Arriva depot at Rhyl on driver route
learning duties. Further filming takes
place in Northgate Street, Gorse Stacks and Frodsham Street.
Our visits during 2016 are also of great interest. We see the introduction of ‘Stagecoach Gold’ branded services with
refurbished Solos on route 5 and new ADL Enviro300 single deckers for routes 1
and 2, the Chester - Liverpool service.
Also new ADL200MMC single deckers for the rerouted Chester Park & Ride services replacing the Wrightbus Eclipse
Volvo B7RLEs introduced by Firstbus
in 2009. Locations include the Bus
Exchange, Frodsham Street, Vicar’s Lane, Love Street, Union Street and many
more. We are sure you will enjoy this
packed visit to Chester and the North Wales coast where the bus interest still
carries on!