The Routemaster Bus: Why All the Fuss? 4 – Rms to Squires Gate

Home » Europe » United Kingdom » The Routemaster Bus: Why All the Fuss? 4 – Rms to Squires Gate

The Routemaster Bus: Why All the Fuss? 4 – Rms to Squires Gate

by Sam H Tulip on 21/01/09 at 6:24 am

Continuing his search for Routemaster perfection, the writer recalls a visit to Blackpool in the 1980s where, surprisingly, London’s famous buses were experienced, earning their keep in the north’s favourite resort.

Blackpool Transport Routemaster 526 at Squires Gate Airport terminus in September 1986 (photo – author)

There isn’t really a lot to see at Squires Gate these days. That is unless you’re a tramway or aviation enthusiast, and even then events are perhaps relatively mundane. Even the bus garage has gone. There are plenty of boarding houses – and sandunes. There’s a tram terminus just down the road, a fairly decent chippy and one of those out-of-the-way corner seaside convenience shops; the type that has plastic buckets and inflatable dinghies hanging outside and where you can purchase flip-flops, washing lines and, should you ever need them on a long weekend by the sea, plastic cup hooks. At this particular shop they also sell lots of magazines, rock and chocolate bars, probably nearly all out of date, and souvenir postcards – most certainly out of date. You can however get hold of a copy of the latest issue of Trams, the locally produced news journal for tram buffs. Maybe there are a lot of those in Squires Gate.

Read more in United Kingdom

« Tynemouth Priory: Resting Place of Kings

The Great British Rail Con »

Across the road, almost literally, there is also an airport. Well, it’s more like an overgrown airfield but there are regular flights to the Isle of Man, Belfast and Dublin. London and Paris too if you wish. Maybe it’s the occasional visit by a medium weight Boeing, conveying the locals to and from the Spanish Costas to top up their tan without feeling homesick that qualifies this place for the upgrade to airport status. Apparently they could handle a Jumbo or two here as well if the need arose. Personally, I wouldn’t risk it.

You could call Squires Gate the southern bit of Blackpool. It’s a sort of hinterland between Blackpool and Lytham St. Annes – and they certainly wouldn’t want it!

You can get to Squires Gate by various means (not that you’d really want to, unless you happened to be passing in a Jumbo and needed a place to land in a hurry). You can take the tram, from town, and stay on it until it turns around at the Starr Gate terminus loop. When it does that you know it’s time to get off for the walk up Squires Gate Lane. If driving, just go straight down the prom until you get to the roundabout by the tram terminus. Turn left and you’re there. Turn right and you might end up in the Irish Sea, or even worse, Lytham.

You could also go via the ‘back’ road called, unsurprisingly, Lytham Road. If Squires Gate wasn’t in the way Lytham Road would sort of go to Lytham but if you really must go to Lytham, you do have to go through Squires Gate first.

I went to Squires Gate once, in 1986 in fact – September to be precise and I went by bus. Routemaster bus. For a while, back in the mid-80s, Routemasters went to Squires Gate and they were turning up about every ten minutes or so. All day every day.

It had all started the previous year after bus services in Britain had been ‘de-regulated’ – or basically, privatised in 1985. Before then the monopoly for operating services across much of the country had fallen to the National Bus Company or, in most towns and cities, municipal organisations, Passenger Transport Executives and in the Capital, London Transport.

All that was swept away overnight in October 1985 to effectively give anyone who had a bus or two and an appropriate operator’s licence the right to offer bus services in any area or on any route they chose. It wasn’t a perfect solution to ongoing problems in the industry and many enthusiasts despaired at the prospect of seeing much loved operators and liveries disappear, along with traditions of service and many time honoured operating practices. Over the ensuing two decades more variety has been the result but the industry is continually facing many difficulties and in some cases there doesn’t ever seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

One result of ‘d-day’ however was that the London Transport Executive saw fit to instigate a gradual withdrawal of Routemaster buses from service in the Capital. In fact, the withdrawal wasn’t that gradual and over a short period of time scores of Routemasters were taken off the road and put up for sale, either for scrap or through dealers for further use elsewhere. As many operators around the country were setting themselves up for privatised services and competition, some were often on the lookout for cheap, reliable, second-hand buses. And, guess what? They found them. Dozens of them – in dealers’ yards in Essex. They were red and they were cheap. Unbelievably cheap! The only problem as far as some operators were concerned was that these cheap buses were good old (or not so old!) Routemasters. The ones they had in London. The ones that needed two people to operate them.

However, everybody knew that coming from good old London Transport they would be reliable and would have been well cared for. After all, they had that big shed down at Aldenham where every four years every Routemaster bus was taken apart and re-built with newly refurbed parts. None of your drop it over a pit and change the anti-freeze business in London. When they serviced a bus there it was the bee’s knees! You could put up with having to employ conductors again, or more likely get ‘spare’ drivers to kit up with a cash bag and calculator and stand at the back ringing bells. It would be worth it if you got hold of a pretty good bus for a few coppers, wouldn’t it?

So, throughout the late 1980s, ex-London Routemasters started turning up all over the place. In Glasgow (Kelvinside actually) where they painted them blue and orange, in Burnley, and Reading, Southend and Southampton, and even Chesterfield of all places. A Routemaster – in Chesterfield? Sacrilege! Yes, my favourite old bus company, East Midland Motor Services, by then part of the Stagecoach group, were sent RM 2063 from Scotland by the parent company and paraded it around North Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. They later painted it ochre, chocolate and cream, the oft-lamented livery of the old company, pre-1955. After all, if you must insist on running a Routemaster around parts of God’s country then at least give it a decent colour scheme.

It ended up being painted in the company’s later green livery before being sold to a dealer and on to a restaurant owner in Zimbabwe. Apparently, until recently it was still bringing a sense of order and colonial civility to the events in that troubled country as its owner continued to use it for transporting elderly customers to his emporium for free afternoon tea and scones. It still wore East Midland green as well. One can’t help wondering what the old livery would have done for business though?

An operator in Kent , rather unimaginatively called Kentishbus had the cheek to start running Routemasters in London of all places after buying up the licenses to operate them on certain privatised routes. They even had the bottle not to paint them red, turning them out in a very smart cream and maroon scheme. Sadly the project failed and Kentishbus eventually went broke. Probably should have kept them red after all.

The preservationists also got in on the act and bought Routemasters as weekend play things. After all, they were going cheap! Routemasters started showing up in back gardens, farm sheds and all sorts of back and beyond places where they would meticulously (or not in some cases) be transformed back into clones of every 1960s Routemaster bus, to be paraded at rallies and museums and shown off as if they were the seventh wonder of the public transport world.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for preservation – lots of it. But, if we are going to spend our hard earned cash keeping a little bit of Great British heritage in the drive, can’t we at least keep something that nobody else has? Something different – something more, dare I say, worthy! (By 2000 a total of 81 Routemasters had been preserved, either privately or by preservation societies and museums. A great many more have joined their ranks since December 2005.)

Meanwhile, the good people of Blackpool got a few Routemasters of their own as well. Blackpool Transport bought seven of them in 1985 and, co-inciding with the tramway centenary events, painted them in the original Blackpool Corporation Tramways livery of red and cream, with black, gold and green lining and embellishments. They certainly looked the part.

In Blackpool however, the Routemasters probably didn’t cause that much of a stir as in other places. Up there they were sort of doing things differently and sticking more to tradition anyway. Open rear-platform buses were still almost very much part of the norm. They had the trams as well of course and when you got on one of those you were greeted by a conductor. So nothing new there then either.

The old buses still doing the rounds were a good number of their Leyland Titan PD2s. Interesting beasts they were, with locally built (naturally) East Lancashire bodies and wonderfully characteristic, if not overly handsome, ‘St.Helens’ fibreglass engine bonnets.

In one form or another, the Titan had been Blackpool’s ‘standard’ double decker for decades and Leyland’s rear engined Atlantean was taking over. Not surprisingly Leyland ruled on the west Lancashire coast and Blackpool’s bus fleet had seen nothing else, save for a couple of batches of attractive AEC (yes AEC!) Swift saloons in the late 1960s which were also still scurrying about in respectable numbers. Somehow, they just seemed to belong there as well.

522 waits inside Blackpool’s Talbot Road Bus Station for another trip to Squires Gate (photo – author)

When the Routemasters turned up then, they did cause a flutter and a raised eyebrow occasionally but the attraction for Blackpool Transport was, as well as being relatively inexpensive, they didn’t need to recruit or train new conductors. In short, being traditional rear loading half-cabbers, they fitted in.

The Routemasters were put to work mostly on one route only, the 12, to Squires Gate Airport. They were seen as being useful for fast loading and journey times and became the mainstay of the Lytham Road route for a couple of years.

So, in September of 1986, yours truly landed in town with young family and mother-in-law in tow. In fact our ‘landing’ was more of an embarrassing crawl as we were piggy-backed into Blackpool courtesy of the AA, the Austin Princess having died painfully spectacularly somewhere in the Pennines. I was all for getting the hitch back to Tees-side but she that must be obeyed (of the in-law kind) had none of it – she was going on her break to take in the lights and the bingo and nobody, dead car and broken bank balance or not, was going to stop her!

So our mini autumn illuminations break in Blackpool turned out to be a rather expensive affair as an affable local repair man sought out a whole new engine. To be fair, if ever you do need a replacement engine for an Austin Princess, Blackpool is probably a good place to go. They are relatively cheaper up there – and I can recommend a good fitter!

Digressions aside, every cloud has a silver lining so, being carless for the week public transport beckoned and, just like cheap engine replacements, if ever there was a good place to do public transport, Blackpool is – or was, it; vintage trams, elderly Leyland Titans, AEC Swifts and Routemasters. All in a week.

While the rest of the clan went off doing what they do in Blackpool, yours truly took advantage of our plight to sample the sights and sounds of local transport. Off to Fleetwood on a Titan back loader. Return on the tram, a refurbed 1935 Railcoach and then the next day, Squires Gate.

As with many of Blackpool’s bus services, you took the 12 to Squires Gate from Talbot Road Bus Station, just along the street from Talbot Square and the North Pier. Amazingly the bus station is still there, a 1960s example of town centre regeneration gone slightly awry. Buses congregate in its subterranean-like atmosphere and then escape into the daylight, departing for all parts of the town and beyond.

The 12 went towards Talbot Square and then turned left to run southwards along the prom, past the Tower, the seedy pubs and the tacky gift shops and arcades to Manchester Square. It isn’t really a ‘square’, merely a road junction where the tram tracks turn off the Promenade into Lytham Road before taking another left into Rigby Road for the main tram depot. The ‘square’ is overlooked by a hideously ugly building called the ‘Manchester’ (probably not built by Mancunians mind), hence the name. Apparently it’s a pub.

Tram sandwich! Routemasters and a 1935 Railcoach do business at Manchester Square in September 1986 (photo – author)

Years ago the trams would have continued from here along Lytham Road, a wide, long, straight thoroughfare passing through much of the town’s southern hotel and boarding house district. They would have carried on and at another well known Blackpool landmark, the Royal Oak pub, joined other cars on their way from the suburb of Marton on what was affectionately termed the ‘circular’, so called because at one time they would go all the way down Squires Gate Lane to connect with the present tram route and head north back along the promenade and into town. Even the more sedate Lytham cars could join in the parade at one time and share Blackpool’s tracks for a joint service to the town.

All that ended just after World War Two however, when the airfield was a rundown RAF base and a nearby Vickers factory closed after turning out munitions for the war effort. It was all a world away, when Blackpool proudly operated vintage trams each season and was fast becoming Britain’s last major on-street tram operator.

I had read of these places, the ‘Royal Oak’, Waterloo Road, Lytham Road and Squires Gate in that wonderful book by local historian Brian Turner called Blackpool by Tram. The chance to actually see locations and destinations, familiar only in the pages of the book and bring them to life somehow was too tempting to resist and the fact that Blackpool’s Routemasters were operating on what was essentially the old Lytham Road tram route sort of gave the journey a sense of purpose. It was almost as if I was riding back through time, not simply taking a bus journey to a municipal airport terminus.

Riding on a Routemaster in Blackpool was a strange sort of experience. The previous day’s Titan trip to Fleetwood was a reminder of just what ‘real’ bus travel was all about. It is difficult to believe that all these experiences took place more then twenty years ago and that even then, back in 1985, half-cab, open rear-entrance buses were becoming increasingly rare. Routemasters aside, Blackpool’s Titans were in fact the last such vehicles to operate in normal revenue earning service for a major operator in Britain and that week’s trip to Fleetwood would be my own last such journey taken.

526 again at Talbot Road with one of Blackpool’s characteristic Titan PD2s loading for Fleetwood in the background. (photo – author)

The chance to compare classic bus journeys was relished and my Routemaster ride to Squires Gate in some ways turned out to be totally different to the previous day’s Titan adventure. Staid and solid, Leyland’s Titan buses went about their business with a subdued but purposeful progress. Blackpool’s smart East Lancashire Coachworks bodied PD2s unflinchingly growled and rumbled their way through the thoroughfares, presenting an unyielding sense of pride and reassurance. They somehow belonged in the breezy byways of the Wyre peninsular just as London’s Routemasters did on the Edgware Road. This was their home, their patch.

The interlopers from Park Royal however appeared chirpy and overconfident. They were the boy racers of the half-cab brigade and seemed as if they might outsmart anything which got in their way. They came and they conquered.

Every ten minutes they emerged from the gloom of Talbot Road’s concrete cavern and cheekily cajoled and jostled their way along the promenade, impatient and keen. Riding in my Routemaster along the Lytham Road proved just how different they were to the Titans. Speedier in acceleration with slick automatic gear changes, they were confidant and businesslike.

As on the Titan, a helpful conductor hailed prominent stops on the route as each was passed and assisted where necessary with bags and buggies. A mix of polite chat and friendly northern banter helped the process along and all was well…almost.

His colleague in the cab, no doubt more accustomed to the stately progress and heavy articulation of the Titans’ crash gearboxes obviously delighted in the novelties of his new steed. What’s more, the style of driving suggested he’d likely discovered the idiosyncrasies of his vehicle at the Nigel Mansell school of motoring! Le Mans style getaways from stops and the seemingly emergency testing of brakes at every opportunity gave the impression that our driver was enjoying his day at this particular wheel and was seeing just what he could get out of a Routemaster. Maybe we were running late. Maybe, the traffic inspectors in Blackpool really were demons and there was zero tolerance to lateness and slack timings. Whatever the reason, it made for an ‘interesting’ journey!

Along the way, an occasional local passenger, obviously more accustomed to the sedate progress of Titan trips, would be caught off guard and, when attempting to negotiate the gangway find themselves in sudden and intimate conversation with another traveller. It wasn’t a particularly smooth journey to say the least and one would sense the undercurrent of discontent and below breath utterances. Smiles and prolonged banter from the rear platform helped to ensure all was better than it seemed at times however and Squires Gate loomed surprisingly quickly.

Just enough time to gather breath then, photograph the turn round and proceedings outside the airport entrance before the opposite journey was made and another Talbot Road bound Routemaster taken.

The return journey, though fast and efficient, wasn’t quite as white knucklesome as the first but the message was the same. Get the bus back to Blackpool in record time and it means a longer break between turns – doesn’t it?. Keep to timetables and running schedules at all costs. After all, you can do it in a Routemaster. Perhaps nobody minds being late in a Titan – much more enjoyable to loiter around in anyway!

More photo stops along the Lytham Road gave the chance to compare other Routemasters returning to town every few minutes but it appeared they all had drivers equipped with the same sense of purpose. Perhaps after all, they didn’t like driving Routemasters and just wanted to get back quickly in order not to prolong the agony!

Lytham or Leyton? Wherever they were, Blackpool’s ex-London Routemaster’s just seemed to belong! Squires Gate bound 523 on the Lytham Road, September 1986. (photo – author)

As it happened, I did enjoy my brief encounter with Blackpool’s Routemasters. It was a reminder of the status quo in far away London. On the Lytham Road with eyes half shut one could easily have been doing the Kilburn High Road. Though completely the opposite in terms of speed, sounds, comfort and ambience to the Leylands, the Routemasters did fit in extremely well. If nothing else, at least the regular Glaswegians hitting Blackpool each season for Wakes Week might have felt at home on their late night rides back to the hotel, sitting on that colourful interior display of (appropriately named!) Scott designed LT tartans!

Subsequent visits to the Fylde coast have been undertaken and, after their withdrawal from service even the absence of Routemasters caused some sadness that things aren’t quite the same. They were banished to the scrap yard before the last of the Titans but during their north-western exposure they had become very much part of the scene there and I dare say were probably missed by some of the locals in Lytham Road.

As for Squires Gate, it’s recently seen a mix of ageing Olympians and new route branded Volvos, all being built just down the road in Leyland, of course. Still no Jumbos though!