IoW’s Beer Buses & Walks
Participants in this year’s Isle of Wight Buses Beer and Walks weekend on 13/14 October included a newly restored Eastern Counties Bristol VRT and an Ikarus-bodied DAF dressed as a city bus in Budapest. ECW-bodied Eastern Counties VRT/SL3 VR260 (RAH 260W), new in 1980 and previously in the Seaford & District heritage collection, has been returned to original National Bus Company poppy red and white with grey wheels.
Ikarus-bodied DAF SB220, a step-entrance model new to Wall’s of Manchester in 1997, has been painted in Budapest blue, grey and green livery, with its registration applied to the upper side panels in the style of a Hungarian fleetnumber.
Nostalgia in Manchester
Manchester Museum of Transport’s 1970s weekend on 20/21 October was an opportunity also to operate vehicles built in the two preceding decades and in liveries they wore before Selnec PTE swept everything into orange and white uniformity.
Vehicles from the 1950s and 1960s operated well into the 1970s and among the contrasts that the museum was able to show was that between Lancashire United 27 (122 JTD), a 1959 Guy Arab IV with rear-entrance Northern Counties body, and Selnec EX30 (TXJ 507K), an early p…