Richard Stubbings – författare

Using previously unpublished images, Richard Stubbings looks at how the bus scene in south east England has evolved since the 1970s.

In this series, Richard Stubbings traces the changing, ever-evolving nature of bus scenes around south-west and south-east England.This book, comprising previously unpublished photographs, offers a nostalgic tour of Wiltshire and Dorset, from the early 1970s to the present day. It charts the changes in vehicles, from those of the author’s childhood to the current scene – even revisiting many of the same locations.

In this series, Richard Stubbings traces the changing, ever-evolving nature of bus scenes around south-west and south-east England. This book, comprising previously unpublished photographs, offers a nostalgic tour of Devon and Cornwall, from the early 1970s to the present day. It charts the changes in vehicles, from those of the author’s childhood to the current scene – even revisiting many of the same locations.

In this series, Richard Stubbings traces the changing, ever-evolving nature of bus scenes around south-west and south-east England. This book, comprising previously unpublished photographs, offers a nostalgic tour of Berkshire and Hampshire, from the early 1970s to the present day. It charts the changes in vehicles, from those of the author’s childhood to the current scene – even revisiting many of the same locations.

In this series, Richard Stubbings traces the changing, ever-evolving nature of bus scenes around South West and South East England.This book, comprising previously unpublished photographs, offers a nostalgic tour of Kent and East Sussex, from the early 1970s to the present day. It charts the changes in vehicles, from those of the author’s childhood to the current scene – even revisiting many of the same locations.

The 1980s was a decade of change in the bus industry. 1980 itself saw the Market Analysis Project (MAP), which, although primarily aimed at subsidiary companies of the NBC in an attempt to recast local bus networks and identify which services would require local authority subsidy, did also involve independent operators. The Transport Act of 1985 paved the way for the deregulation of the bus industry, culminating in the dissolution of the National Bus Company and the enforced splitting up of the member companies and their eventual sale. Many independent operators continued as they always had. Some hitherto purely coach operators tried their hand as bus operators. Some well-known independent names disappeared.This book, featuring previously unpublished images, illustrates the range of independent operators, both bus and coach, during this decade of upheaval.

After the upheavals of the 1980s, with the break-up of the National Bus Company, the 1990s saw further changes. The former NBC companies were now private companies, technically ‘independents’, but because of their lineage are outside the scope of this book. The 1990s saw the emergence of the larger groupings that began to swallow up some of the traditional independent operators: A1 Service in Scotland went to Stagecoach and OK Motor Services in County Durham went to the Go-Ahead Group, while other companies disappeared altogether.The 1990s also saw the rise of the midibus, especially the ubiquitous Dennis Dart. These began to filter slowly through into the independent fleets, especially towards the end of the 1990s when new vehicles gave greater accessibility to wheelchair users and those with impaired mobility.Here, in the second in the series, this selection of previously unpublished photos illustrates the changes in independent buses in the 1990s.