Mike Rhodes

The embryonic Daimler Motor Co. Ltd and the Lancashire Steam Motor Co. (Leyland Motors Ltd from 1907) were both formed in 1896 and produced early examples of motor vehicles in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Daimler established a number of works in the district of Radford in Coventry, where a range of high-end cars and buses were assembled.Leyland had stolen a march on Daimler by bringing the revolutionary Atlantean to the market in late 1958. It would be August 1960 before Daimler’s equivalent, the Fleetline, was introduced. The Fleetline possessed many of the attributes of the Atlantean but one gave it an advantage over its competitor. A drop-centre rear axle was fitted as standard which eliminated the need for low-height bodywork. Also, apart from a few early models, the bus was mainly powered by the ever-reliable Gardner six-cylinder engine.The two builders went toe-to-toe during the 1960s and early 1970s as the only other realistic equivalent option was the Bristol VRT. Jaguar Cars, who had acquired the company from BSA in 1960, was keen to divest itself of the Bus Building Division and this resulted in a merger with Leyland Motors. Production of the Fleetline was transferred to Leyland’s Farington site during 1973. However, it wasn’t until 1976 that the Daimler name was dropped in favour of the Leyland Fleetline brand name, which continued to be available until 1981.Over 8,700 Fleetlines were produced under the Daimler name, including a significant number of single-deck types. Here Mike Rhodes charts the fortunes of the Fleetline until the Daimler name was dropped.

The earliest recorded operators of buses in Preston were pioneers who provided services from nearby surrounding villages in the 1910s. The local town services were initially provided by the Corporation’s tramway system with buses only being introduced in 1922. From 1919, Ribble Motor Services gradually became the dominant operator connecting the town to the rest of Lancashire and beyond. Other significant operators were J. Fishwick & Sons, Scout Motors and Viking Motors.The various out-of-town operators established their own bus stations in the town centre while the Corporation bus services used on-street stands. This situation prevailed until 1969 when a new central bus station was opened in the centre and all bus services were transferred accordingly.This book also details special services such as football and works buses and holiday traffic, which used to snake along the Arterial Road (Blackpool Road) in the postwar boom years carrying holidaymakers to the Fylde coast in their tens-of-thousands. The once-every-twenty-years Preston Guild and its impact on local services over the years is not without mention.Mike Rhodes documents the bus operators who have served Preston with many rare and unpublished photographs and informative captions.

The Leyland Atlantean was in production from 1958 until 1986 and around 15,300 buses of the type were built over this period. Whilst over 3,500 were exported abroad, the remainder gave sterling service to over a hundred different operators in the UK. These ranged from the transport authorities of Glasgow and Liverpool, both of which accumulated large numbers of the type, to the small independent operators which bought them in penny numbers. The progression of this revolutionary bus, which placed the engine at the rear of the vehicle, went through an exhaustive development programme throughout the 1950s. The first production models were bodied by Alexander’s, Metro-Cammell and Weymanns. In total eighteen different body builders were used by the mixture of operators with three builders completing just one bus each. Towards the end of the 1960s the bus was substantially re-engineered and was redesignated as the AN68 (with progressive variations), the first of which came off the production line in May 1972 and it proved to be even more reliable than the earlier versions. The last of the type were taken out of service in the 2010s but examples still survive in open-top form and can be seen around the UK.Lavishly illustrated with a fascinating selection of previously unpublished images, Mike Rhodes documents the career and evolution of this groundbreaking bus.

Manchester is steeped in railway history going back almost 200 years to the opening of Liverpool Road station in September 1830. The line from Liverpool was widely regarded as the first ever inter-city railway in the world. The railway network around the city greatly expanded in the second half of the nineteenth century with new lines opening to the surrounding Lancashire towns and beyond. At one time the city also supported an extensive dock railway system based around the Manchester Ship Canal and Salford Docks.Manchester’s current rail network sees lines radiating out from all points of the compass and with 262 km of route mileage it boasts the largest provincial railway network outside of London. A number of groundbreaking schemes have been implemented in recent years which have radically changed the pattern of service operations across the city. These have included the Hazel Grove Chord, the Windsor Link, the Airport Extension and the Ordsall Chord. Manchester also had the largest new tram system in the UK in 2023 with nine lines operated by a uniform fleet of 147 Bombardier-built trams.This book is packed with information about the workings of the city’s railways going back as far as the final years of the steam age.