The Poolie Bunker

Ever ride on one …?

Can remember the red double deckers, but not the blue ones.

Yes I did but they were always painted red. When did the colour change happen? I guess I was too young to notice this. Was it following the amalgamation?

The Hartlepool Corporation bus fleet, consisting of four (Nos. H1-H4) ex-London Transport Bristol’s liveried in blue and cream, was garaged at the Bee Line depot in York Road, West Hartlepool, with any vehicle shortages being met from Bee Line’s own fleet.

Used to try and guess the next bus number. All had reg. plates that bore the number of the bus.
LEF 59H etc

EF denoting reg. from Hartlepool

I lived on the headland and got on one occasionally to the bus station which I vaguely remember was at the top of Church Street. Change to a red one to get to the baths at Seaton.

1956
1-4 TUP856-859 AEC Regent V MD3RV258-61 Roe H35/28R

My fav. bus was this type, you could sit in the front seat facing forwards and watch the driver.

Interesting stuff but there is no mention of when the vehicles were painted red and cream as opposed to blue and cream.

All the buses you could wish for:

https://victoryguy.smugmug.com/Hartlepo ... -Transport

1st April 1967 changed from blue, Hartlepool buses, West Hartlepool had maroon, to red and white.

Amalgamation was 1967 so i think i can remember them not just from photos.
I am a bit cautious about making such statements as i once said i remembered the Elepgant rock that fell down in the 1890s.

Bluestreak, you will have seen the elephant rock on photos and postcards I think.
So you can be forgiven!

Anyone remember when the outdoor baths on the Headland closed.
I remember Seaton baths, when did they close?

I remember them.

When Mill House opened early 70’s

Yes and i think my dad talked about it when i was young so it was "in my head".
1953 storm damage for Headland and 1976 for Seaton but Mill House opened in 1972.

From what I remember in the early 60sThe blue ones were Hartlepool buses and were garaged at the bus depot under the rail bridge between Hartlepool and West Hartlepool. My favourite was the red double decker with twin stairs in the middle in the very late 50s

That number 4 will go
Grange Road
York Road
Raby Road
Chatham Road
Jesmond Road
Hart Lane
then at the top it will turn into one of the following. 3, 4, 17

1 Middlegate -Port Clarence
2 Middlegate – West Park
3 Church Street – Kilmarnock Road
4 Hart Lane – Church Street – Thornhill Gardens – Kilmarnock Road
5 Church Street – Truro Drive
6 Hart Station or Clavering Estate – Truro Drive or Maxwell Road
7 Middlegate or Church Street – Wynyard Road
8 Church Street – Owton Manor Road
11 Church Street – Throston Grange
12 Clavering Estate – Seaton Carew
13 Brus Arms or Chatham Road – Seaton Carew
14/15 Church Street – Marlowe Road
16 Church Street – West Park or Dalton Piercy
17 Church Street – Hart Lane
18 Church Street – Throston Grange

That’s right, but Seaton Baths were used for schools as staff moved over to Mill House, so I expect it was run on a skeleton basis till school pools were completed.

The number 13 bus was a bit like Thunderbird 3, you knew it existed but you hardly ever seen it.

Thanks for this Essex & Snowy - one of my earliest memories is boarding a middle entrance bus to Ward Jackson Park but I always thought that it must have been a trolleybus as I can't recall ever seeing another middle entrance bus after that. However, I see from another post that the trolleybuses were withdrawn just after WW2 - I may be old but I'm not THAT old so it must have been a mid-entrance motorbus.

The bus I showed was a Leyland but West Hartlepool only bought one….. all the other centre entrance double deckers were Daimlers.
I remember going on one a three year old after falling in Ward Jackson Park pond and going home on the comfy wet seats with my dad, both of us soaked…the only other time was when I was five and the bus having two staircases…weird.

Surely heading up past the park you’d have been better with a TMS bus

The depot you mention on the boundary was Greenlands depot belonging to West Hartlepool, the four ‘Old’ Hartlepool blue buses were operated by Bee Line on behalf of the Council and based and maintained at their depot in Oxford Road and joining the new comb8ned Hartlepool fleet after the amalgamation on 1st of April 1967 and lasted another four years painted red and cream.

All the old Hartlepool buses you will ever need…

https://www.sct61.org.uk/index/operator/wp

The corporation took the route that went from the Park gates down Grange Road to the bottom of Church Street near where we lived.

I remember going to get the bus to school down town in 1969 from the bus stop near Tynebrooke and was surprised to see a double deck bus coming the other way, but mostly cream with Truro Drive on the front ..but when it got closer it had Leicester City Transport on the side…?
When I turned round my bus was a No 6 going to West View pulled up and it was also an identical Leicester bus…?
Turns out the Council had a shortage of vehicles and hired in four from Leicester for a few weeks….baffling on that morning though.

When I was a nipper I used to take the number 6 every morning from Dyke house, Raby Road, to Oxford Road to go to to Brinkburn. The thing I remember most about the old rhubarb and custard buses was the gear stick. It was brilliant. Tiny, steel, fit in the palm of the drivers hand and was right up by the steering wheel.

Semi automatic on a Bristol RE , drove one once a long time ago but not as a bus driver.

best invention ever for a bus driver. made a good bus out of a bad one like AEC Regent 5,s. Much better than the pre selectors and todays automatics. God knows how united drivers drove crash box bristols all day. once around the block from huddersdield bus station was enough for me even if i mastered the box ok in a lodekka.

yes. a really nice change from the west hartlepool daimlers that i hated with those non revving gardner engines. never though years later i,d be driving similar vehicles and hated the things even more then when they regularly jumped out of gear catching your shins with the pedal.

Remember getting the blue buses from Church Street to St Hilda's hospital - as a kid I thought that the Headland buses were always better than the West buses. No idea why.

the manufacturers name on the rad. told you why.

Stagecoach are repainting the buses a dark blue. However on a dull winters day you can hardly see them.

It’s depressing…cut out all the daft liveries and paint em red, blue or green.

You do realise that by criticising the sacred Gardner’s you’ll be on a purists hit list…

well the bosses anyway who liked there fuel consumption. at least i have one very knowlegable person on my side geoffrey hilditch ex gm at halidax and leicester who wrote a number of transport books and had many fall outs with the patricroft mob. hate them so much i thought of changing my surname to something better.

Bought a couple of his books online, very interesting and entertaining.

his history of halifax passenger transport 1897 to 1963 has the pieces about his problems with gardner engines in operation.

How’s that…..I acquired it.

need to take that down when stagecoach employ dinghy divers in the town as they,ll be driving through you garden if they see that. at least you have rat boy to move em on if they think its a timing point.

I can remember a female clippy, she wasa right harridan.

My Auntie was a clippy, it might have been her. My uncle was a driver, that's how they met each other, both working on the buses. This would have been early to mid 50's.

we used to have a few like that. barnsley was the best place for them as the majority seemed to look real crackers eespecially in the 1980,s with the national express rapide hostesses.