Title: Super Prestige – Chester
Author: Michael Yelton
Publisher: Venture Publications
ISBN: 978-1-90530-4974
Specification: 240mm x 165mm, 106pp, softback
Price: £20
One lesser known fact about Chester City Transport is that it was the only British municipal that operated services in two home nations.
That is because Chester, on a western extremity of Cheshire, lies just east of England’s border with Wales, and part of the dormitory village of Saltney, which the corporation’s buses began serving in 1932, is over the border in Flintshire. While Chester absorbed similar communities in Cheshire, politicians recognised that England’s annexation of this small piece of Wales would have ignited passions best left dormant. It was easier for Chester’s buses to continue to cross the historic border.
The fudging of that big decision may help explain why, as Michael Yelton points out in this thoroughly researched history of the years until October 1986, the city’s councillors often put off major decisions on transport matters — like the future of the city’s trams — to the department’s long-term detriment.
By 1922, the electric tramway was 19 years old and worn out. The most sensible options were either to mo…
