REVIEWS
Title: Fleet in Focus No.1: National Welsh
Author: Andrew Wiltshire
Publisher: Bernard McCall Coastal Shipping
ISBN: 978-1-902953-94-6
Specification: 155mm x 230mm, 80pp, softback
Price: £9.95
By today’s standards, this pictorial story is a bargain, with 99 quality colour photographs — most shown one to a landscape page and many including the landscapes and townscapes of south Wales — and accompanying informative captions.
It tells the story of the short life of National Welsh Omnibus Services from formation in 1978 to its demise in 1992, the first privatised National Bus Company subsidiary to fail. A company that was created by amalgamating the surviving parts of Western Welsh (including what until a few years before had been Rhondda Transport) with Red & White Services.
The chronological picture coverage provides a flavour of that inheritance, with a mix of standardised Bristol/ECW vehicles from Red & White and the more varied Leylands and AECs with assorted bodywork that BET had allowed Western Welsh and Rhondda to buy. There still were 1960s halfcab AEC, Leyland and Bristol double-deckers nearing the end of their working lives. The new company also continued Red & White’s unique alph…
