Morecambe Vintage Bus Day to celebrate the public transport of yesteryear

Thursday, 16 May 2024 16:53

By Greg Lambert @greglam72

The Vintage Bus Day returns to Morecambe on May 19

An annual day celebrating the buses of the past is returning to the home of Morecambe Football Club.

The Ribble Vehicle Preservation Trust will again run its popular Vintage Bus Day at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium this Sunday (May 19).

A selection of vintage buses, many from the old local Ribble Company, will be on display, and a free service will run from Carnforth railway station, Happy Mount Park and Heysham Village to Morecambe Football Club and Promenade every 10/15 minutes from about 9.30am to 5pm.

In addition, there will be the popular Bare Circular service, with pickups from Bare Lane Station (Mayfield Drive stop), stalls selling memorabilia and three mystery tours (approximately 40 minutes) on vintage coaches.

All services are free and any donations given will go towards the upkeep and maintenance of the vehicles. There will also be stories of yesteryear, by film and sound archives.

The Ribble Vehicle Preservation Trust is a bus preservation group which was set up 50 years ago. It is a registered charity which houses its collection at its own premises in West Lancashire. Its collection spans the period from 1931 to 2004 and totals over 30 vehicles. About a dozen are restored and available for service.

Ribble Motor Services were the local bus company, set up in 1919 and expanding rapidly during the 1920s and 1930s.

By the 1950s it was one of the largest bus companies in the UK with over 1300 buses and at its height of operations in 1956 it was reported to have carried 216,648,878 passengers that year.

Operations were from Carlisle in the north to Liverpool and Manchester in the south, and from Blackpool in the west to Skipton in the east. Morecambe and Lancaster were home to two of its depots, at South Road, now 'Little ASDA', and Skerton, now Chelsea Mews, respectively.

As part of the build up to deregulation and privatisation in the mid-1980s, Ribble was split up and eventually the services in central Lancashire and north to Carlisle became part of Stagecoach with south Lancashire and Liverpool becoming Arriva and Transdev operation in East Lancashire.

For more information on the Vintage Bus Day see the Facebook page HERE.