Thoughts from Southwestbus

The following is 'in the queue' for an MBF Journal having been sent in last year in order to provide some material. It details the building process for a plastic kit from getting the box to having a completed model.  Enjoy!  Back in 2018, Peco Models brought two plastic bus kits back to the market after a long absence. The former Tower Models Leyland National and Leyland Olympian models came out in a different range of liveries and are still available from a number of different stockists, for less than £10. Older members of the MBF will no doubt recall the Tower models and will have built up numerous examples of them. As one of the younger members of the MBF, I would have been 6/7 when these kits were commonly available and my building skills at that age wouldn't have been sufficiently good to have completed a model, so these passed me by.  My late Father acquired one of the National kits in 1993, with the intention of modelling a Southern National bus at his depot. L...

Now that some 'long term' financial issues have been resolved (with personal MS Money files) southwestbus will shortly be beginning the shopping for new buses and coaches. The coaches are part of a long term strategy to reinvest in the coach fleet and ensure decent equipment for some of our customers. So, 10 Irizar i6's on Scania chassis will shortly be on their way to cider country. Alongside this, we are also going to get two more 'corporate' spec coaches for two important customers sole use.  There's also some more ADL Enviro 400 MMC's and a pair of Optare Solo SRs expected during the summer.  More next time, I was mindful of needing to put something up given a month has passed. Must try harder to put posts up here.

For the last 14 months, or so, we've been having to contend with the effects of a worldwide pandemic. This has manifested itself in the real bus/coach industry in differing ways.  Coaches have been utterly decimated by a collapse of private hire work, tour work and all the 'in between' jobs that come a coach operator's way alongside traditional school contract work. All the while, the outgoings remain the same. Coaches are expensive items of equipment and usually are on finance, so that bill is paid whether or not the vehicle moves.  I have seen these effects as a coach driver and for the last 14 months, my work has been in the home to school category, after a 6 month hiatus from mid March 2020 when the schools closed.  That was complicated by a house move to Yorkshire, so it allowed me time to reflect on what I want from life, added with the benefit of loads of free time, but no funds with which to do things.   The bus industry has also had it's issues during t...

  Now that I've explained a little about me, I thought we would explore my interests in model buses and fleet operation. When I was 9, in 1992 my birthday present was one of the EFE 'grey box' AEC RT buses. Dad bought it from a model shop, no doubt with money he didn't have. Being obsessed with buses I had very few toy ones until I entered the world of work delivering newspapers. Even then purchases weren't as numerous as later on in life.  I didn't have a games console, or a model train set, or a racing track so in my early teens I started my first model bus 'fleet'. Blue Bus began in November 1997 using a Corgi Juniors Mercedes 'minibus' which resembled a 608 but wasn't in practice. But as a representation of a commercially available at the time bus it did the job. This Mercedes operated an interlinked network of traditional out and back 'Market day' type shopping services based on my native home of Yeovil. I assumed just t...

This blog is our second, or third attempt at opening a little window into what goes on in my 'model bus' fleet. I hope everyone reading finds it of interest. As someone perennially hard up, the heady world of model railways isn't for me - purchase prices for trains run to three figures, and as I never appear to have funds such things aren't an option for me.  I thought I'd open the blog with a post about me, what I've done in my career and my interests in model buses and in fleet operation given how specialist the field is.  I come from Yeovil in Somerset, and was born with diesel in my veins as my late father was a taxi proprietor and mother was the controller. He had just the one vehicle and traded as Camelot Cabs until the bank refused a loan for further vehicles, so he was left with some lucrative Dorset school runs and no vehicles. Luck appears to have been in short supply for Dad, and depressingly my life seems similar as I head, or am dragged kicking and ...