alan.millar@keypublishing.com
Title: Hebble Motor Services Limited Halifax & Bradford
Author: Stuart Emmett
Publisher: Stenlake Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-840339-37-6
Specification: 272mm x 210mm,168pp,softback
Price: £39.95
Hebble was one of the smallest and particularly unusual bus companies to come into state ownership on the eve of the creation of the National Bus Company in 1969, which helps explain why NBC soon sold some of its local bus operations and absorbed it into its regional coach business. Hebble is the name of a tributary of the River Calder, and the company was a pre-World War One venture by the Holdsworth family which was well established as a provider of various forms of goods transport. It grew rapidly around Halifax and Bradford during the 1920s, establishing new services, acquiring the operations of at least one other business and challenging the towns’ expanding municipal operations. The London Midland & Scottish and London & North Eastern railways acquired it in 1929 and tried unsuccessfully to sell it on to West Yorkshire Road Car and Yorkshire Woollen District. Instead, in 1932, the railways sold 50% of the equity to the British Electric Traction (BET) group. A deal was a…
