PAST & PRESENT
The buses in what now is a city donned a radically different colour 55 years ago and have used shades of it ever since. One thing that has changed is that they are no longer built locally by Leyland.
Preston Corporation effected a huge image change in 1966 when it changed the livery of its buses (it had run them since 1922) from crimson and cream to blue and ivory. It went on to increase the amount of ivory.
Those colours remained a constant, in different formats, through a succession of changes of ownership and name: to Preston (Borough of) Transport Department with local government reform in 1974, then Preston Borough Transport as an arm’s length company in 1986, though it traded outwardly from then on as Preston Bus. It was sold to its employees in 1993 and was the only surviving employee-owned ex-municipal company when Stagecoach acquired it in January 2009.
That followed a sustained period of competition between the two operators and it looked like Preston Bus would disappear.
However, the Competition Commission thought otherwise, ordering Stagecoach to sell it, maintaining it at arm’s length from the rest of its Merseyside & South Lancashire business while a buyer was found.…
