Taking Things for Granted - Salford City Transport

Taking Things for Granted - Salford City Transport

In my teenage years, well actually from about the age of 11, I would take the bus into Manchester to search the bookshops, record shops and record stalls, or maybe the bus out to Swinton to see my cousin Trevor. Going out to Swinton was the purview of Lancashire United buses, all resplendent in red, transmission whirring in a particular way and all the buses being totally clean. Very impressive. Going to Manchester entailed either an LUT bus (#26 usually) or the delightful yellow and green of Salford City Transport (#57 or #77), again utterly clean and impressively so. The regularity of the service, the cleanliness, the leather seats, the colours and smells of the environment were all part of the experience, and that was experienced every day for many, many years.

Lancashire United and Salford City Transport are both long gone, we took them for granted and then they were taken away, but sometimes their buses can still be seen on the road and of course they can be visited in bus museums whenever they are open. Today's pictures are a celebration of the details of a Salford City Transport bus, down to the last rivet, the last step to the upper floor, the last indicator light. The pictures are from various types of bus, as there were plenty of design changes, plus of course single and double deckers. Cameras were the Pentax K20D and K5, with a variety of lenses.