Dewsbury Bus Museum

The West Riding Omnibus Museum Trust

Open Day - Sunday 13th November 2011 - report and pictures

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This event was even more superb, thanks to all the help we received from our friends:

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This was our most successful Open Day ever!  In spite of the last-minute failure of two of the advertised buses, three replacements were very kindly provided by their owners. We operated every journey in our timetable, and even had to provide duplicates on the "Charlotte's Special" and one of the shuttle journeys. A total of 446 adult visitors came along (plus about 50 children!), some from far-flung places like Southport, Widnes, Essex, Bolton, Dover, Newcastle and the Isle of Wight! Our buses clocked up a total of 1,268 passenger journeys!

Scroll down this page to see some photographs of the day, and a couple of YouTube videos.

We are very grateful to all the organisations listed above. Arriva provided a modern low-floor bus, Metro allowed us to operate into Dewsbury Bus Station, Kirklees Council allowed us to use the car park of the nearby Special Education Centre for buses to park, and the others bought advertising space in our Souvenir Programme. We are also grateful to all the bus owners (and one lorry owner), to the army of Bus Museum volunteers who worked tirelessly from about 7.30 am until well after 6.00 pm, but most of all we would like to thank all the hundreds of visitors who braved the fog and drizzle to visit the museum and ride on the eight buses that were operating. We are already working on plans for the next Open Day on Sunday 11th March 2012......

To the rescue!

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Heroes of the day: Left, Leeds AEC Regent 3916 UB. Centre: Great Yarmouth AEC Swift WEX 685M. Right: Ex-West Riding Tiger C38 CWT.
These buses only planned to come along as static exhibits, but their owners kindly put them to work, the AEC buses operated journeys on the shuttle service, while the coach followed "Tod 9" (NWW 89E) to Charlotte's Ice Cream Parlour.

The Charlotte's Special

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Photo copyright: Charlotte's

Photo copyright: John Salmon

Charlotte's Ice Cream Parlour in Whitley is the highest point inside the Dewsbury boundary, commanding spectacular views across the Calder Valley to Mirfield and beyond, as seen in the picture on the left. So 87 people piled onto Todmorden 9 and the Whitehead's coach, only to find that low cloud up there had reduced visibility to the extent that the buses could barely be seen across the road! But the ice cream was delicious, the coffee was hot and welcoming and the staff were superb serving our vast crowd in record time!

Videos and photographs

To play these YouTube videos, make sure your speakers are turned up, then click the centre of the picture.

The first video, by John Salmon, shows our Leyland Panther, LHL 164F, picking up a crowd on its first day carrying passengers in five years. (2 mins: 29 secs)

The second video, by Tommy Handley, shows most of the buses operating, shots taken inside the Museum building and a few passing Arriva service buses. (13 mins: 59 secs)

To see collections of photographs on other sites, please click the underlined links below:

(To watch the videos on the YouTube site, click the logos at the bottom of the frame).

Wakefield and Beyond Transport Photos  - Tommy Handley (Mollsmyre)  - John Berry on Flicker  -

Our own buses

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Photo copyright: Paul Salmon

Left: Our oldest bus in service, TWY 8, a South Yorkshire Albion Valiant, built in 1950 and rebodied in 1958 - a very popular bus with our visitors.
Centre: "Ethel", (EHL 344), our Leyland Tiger PS2 from 1952 takes a break between journeys at Havelock Street.
Right: PJX 35, our Halifax Leyland Leopard from 1962, resting in Havelock Street, having decided not to play by springing a radiator leak an hour before the event was due to start.

Some of the static exhibits

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  Left: HVH 472D, R11 WAL and PJX 35 Centre: OWT 776M and D278 FAS Right: UJX 920M and C38 CWT

The museum building

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Look closely and you will notice that only one of these photographs contains real buses! The left and centre ones are meticulously-constructed scale models of the Dewsbury Bus Museum building, made by Paul Salmon and displayed at the event. The one on the right shows "Ethel" (EHL 344) parked up after the show next to our Leyland PD2 (BHL 682) which was new in 1948. Restoration of this bus is progressing well, and it might even carry passengers again next year, for the first time since 1967. (All three photographs are copyright Paul Salmon).

And finally.....

The Dewsbury Bus Museum Guide Book was launched the day before the Open Day, and we have sold nearly 15% of the stock already! Containing 74 colour pages this book features all our buses, the history of the museum and more! To order your copy for £7.99 (+£1.50 p&p), please click HERE.

If you have uploaded any photographs or videos of the event to the Internet, we would be pleased to add a link on this page. Please contact us.

The street collection at the event (the green collecting tins) raised a total of £169.37. Thank you to all who contributed.

Next year's Open Days will be on Sundays 11th March and 18th November, and we will be topping the bill at the Heath Common Running Day on 27th May 2012. See you there?