Adventures on Salisbury Plain

 

 

Every August, an abandoned village on Salisbury Plain opens up to the general public. 

Imber was populated until the middle of World War II when the inhabitants were evacuated by the Government. According to the Imber Church website, military activity began on the plain in 1897 and from 1927 onwards the War Office began buying up farmland, completing that process in 1932. The land was then leased back to the farmers until WWII. 

The Army permit access to the village on a small number of occasions during the year. Since 2009, there has been a bus service, provided by London Routemasters and a supporting cast of other vehicle types linking the village with Warminster. Prior to the bus service, access was only possible by private car.

What began as a small scale operation, needing 4 buses has mushroomed into an operation needing 28 vehicles in 2019. The 2021 event has been a little smaller in scale, with 25 vehicles in operation on a route from Warminster to Imber, and onwards to surrounding villages. 

I've only been once - to the 2016 event with Senior Management and met up with a bus I'd conducted up in Lancashire - RML 2734 which is part of the Ensignbus fleet but was then owned (or rather hired) by Classic Bus North West. 

The writer with RML 2734 at Chitterne. Peter Newman from Ensignbus is driving.

Much of this has happily bypassed the model fleet operating community and the event doesn't feature. Which is strange - as my model fleet runs the shuttle services for Glastonbury Festival and there are a few vehicles hired in to cover that commitment. Obviously, the last two years have seen an absence of that work.  

This was work started when I operated my former fleet, Blue Bus. We also used to run the Isle of Wight Festival shuttles just before Glastonbury, but there are logistical challenges in transplanting a fleet of buses, plus drivers, plus engineering support onto an Island as you need to work around the ferry timings. An Isle of Wight operator will have some of that to contend with, but it is easier for them to resource such an operation. So, this wasn't continued with.

Armed with some basic information, Southwestbus decided to run a basic service - between Warminster and Imber over the August Bank Holiday weekend. This was a bigger commitment than just the one day - the timetable has been provided for the Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the Monday. 

There are three vehicle workings, but as Warminster is over an hour from our main operational base we scheduled a 4th bus to be kept at Warminster in case of vehicle issues. Also, having the extra vehicle available would allow us to deal with capacity issues that could arise. 

Vehicles have been provided from our Routemaster fleet, which isn't as busy as before CV19, so there is some spare capacity with crews and vehicles to take a small scale (pardon the pun) operation. 

We will return next year over a longer route needing more vehicles....... 

 

 

As they say in well known films, to be continued.........................