Director PHILIP KIRK provides our first quarterly update on additions to the industry’s collection of historical material, highlighting some fascinating documents from South Wales Transport that explain its purchase of ex-London DMSs
Since the creation of The Bus Archive a year ago, material has been coming in from enthusiasts and the bus and coach industry.
Added to the founding collections, we now have over 30,000 archive items listed in the search section of our website at www.busarchive.org.uk.
Several people have donated material from small London coach operators. Volvo Bus has contributed records from its Leyland antecedents as well as its own material, and National Express West Midlands has added important papers from the Coventry municipal operation.
A notable addition is from First Cymru whose managing director, Andrew Sherrington, thought that vintage material from its precursor organisation, South Wales Transport, might be of historic interest. And how right he was; in many ways it is typical of a mixed collection from the industry, with a variety of legal agreements (some of which contain valuable detailed information on fleet and properties), staff magazines, annual reports and maps and plans, along with photographs.
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