Fifty-three years separate views of open-top double-deckers working for Southern Vectis on the Isle of Wight, for which the company has intensified its efforts to promote leisure travel to visiting holidaymakers
For this month’s comparison of then and now, the pictures are from the cameras of Tony Wilson, as they cover a part of the country that Iain MacGregor did not visit: the Isle of Wight and specifically its open-top double-deckers.
The island is still served by Southern Vectis, though it has changed ownership. The business already trading as Vectis gained the Southern prefix in 1929 when the Southern Railway became its joint owner. From 1931, the non-railway shareholding was held by the Tilling & BAT group which broke up in 1942. That group’s share passed then to the Tilling group, and it became state-owned from 1948, successively as part of the British Transport Commission, the Transport Holding Company and the National Bus Company (NBC).
The management team bought it from NBC in October 1986 and sold it to Go-Ahead Group in May 2005. Today it is part of the Go South Coast business.
The vehicle that Tony photographed in Ventnor in July 1971 had a particularly interesting pedigree. Althou…
