Title: British Buses & Coaches in the 1960s, A Panoramic View Author: Jim Blake Publisher: Pen & Sword Transport ISBN: 978-1-47386-781-9 Specification: 285mm x 220mm, 192pp, hardback Price: £25
It would be wrong to recommend a book simply because of the personal memory that sprang from one of its pages as I began flipping through its content of around 300 of Jim Blake’s black and white photographs taken between 1962 and 1969, but it helps explain the appeal of nostalgic collections like this.
It was the registration that caught my eye, transporting me back more than 53 years to when I last encountered it. BBV 931 was an AEC Regal III with preselector gearbox, new in December 1947 to Ribblesdale Coaches in Blackburn. Its original halfcab Trans United body was replaced in 1958 by a 35-seat Yeates Europa that made it look more like a Bedford or Commer.
That was how it appeared when Jim Blake photographed it at Waterloo Road coach park in London in 1965 when it was operating for Everson Coaches from Wix, in Essex.
And it was how I knew it three years later when it had migrated to a short-lived Glasgow area operator called C&W Coaches which was contracted to transport my school to weekly ru…
