When Stroud's buses were green (and even red)
Thamesdown Transport
Operator & its Fleetlines
Swindon yesterday (16 February 2008) bade farewell to a little of its transport heritage. 40 years since the introduction of the Daimler Fleetline, the last two buses bowed out of service. To commemorate, Thamesdown Transport held a running day using the last two examples, plus its own preserved Fleetline.
This page gives a flavour of Swindon's bus operations and especially its much-loved Fleetline double decks.
Thamesdown Transport
It's perhaps surprising that in the entire Bristol Omnibus Company territory there should be just one municipal operator. The cities of Bristol and Gloucester had entered into joint arrangements that ceded bus operations to BOC. Cheltenham and Bath local services were first the responsibility of local operators and latterly Bristol Omnibus itself.
 |
That left just Swindon, whose municipal tramway department developed into motor buses. The post war development of Swindon ensured a rapid expansion of its bus network, to cover the industrial areas and numerous housing estates that emerged from the early 1950s.
That development continues today but there came a major recognition in the 1974 boundary changes that created the Borough of Thamesdown that developments in the former Highworth Rural District were part of Swindon in all but name. Thus, the Borough of Thamesdown was created.
Areas such as Stratton St Margaret and Upper & Lower Stratton on Swindon's north west periphery became part of the borough. Bristol Omnibus continued to serve these settlements with what it called its 'Swindon Circulars' plus country services leaving the immediate urban area. The Swindon Circulars were unusual in operating alternately every 40 minutes clockwise and anti-clockwise. Successor Stagecoach remains the dominant operator in that part of Swindon even today.
 |
In 1997, a further round of local government reorganisation created the Swindon unitary authority. Only its locally owned transport undertaking retains the old Thamesdown name.
Double decks remained for many years the staple vehicle type for Swindon's and Thamesdown's network. Thamesdown purchased Dennis Dominators double decks when the Fleetline was no longer available but in the last 15 years, the routes run by double decks have progressively reduced to the point where the only double deck activity is on school contracts.
Swindon's Fleetlines
The last two were former Bournemouth Yellow Buses vehicles, part of a set of about eight from that other southern Fleetline stronghold. They were used solely for school contracts.
 |
Swindon and Daimler had a long history together. Swindon Corporation Transport as was operated a number of half-cab Daimler CVG6s with bodywork by Weymann, Northern Counties or Roe. When in 1968 Swindon took its first rear engine buses, it was natural to pick the Daimler Fleetline.
 |
Swindon continued the purchase of Daimler Fleetlines till 1981, when Leyland withdrew the type. Bodies were initially by Northern Counties, then Metro-Cammell but from 1976 Thamesdown standardised on a design by Eastern Coachworks. The Fleetline/ECW combination was highly unusual in England (though less so in Scotland) and it not only produced some attractive looking buses, the body style was similar to Bristol Omnibus' Bristol VRTs, also in service in Swindon at the time.
 |
Indeed, it was possible to see both in parallel on the former quarter-hourly joint service between Swindon and Covingham Park. The ECW bodied Fleetlines were highbridges and alongside BOC's lowbridge VRTs Thamesdown vehicles did stand out as a little unusual. The Fleetlines needed no front radiator grille, something that looked odd when compared to VRTs of the time.
Yet, Thamesdown examples had the rounded dome front and rear that can easily be traced back in time to ECW designs of the 1940s.
17 February 2008