Description

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Wessex Coaches of Bristol was certainly a company with two faces. The first was that of a very large concern operating day trips to the seaside, carrying out private hire work and operating many local contracts for schools, companies and local institutions. Bristolians still fondly remember the smart red and grey/green Bedford Duples which were a common site for a period of 26 years over the whole of the West Country with depots at Clifton, Kingswood and Chard (Somerset). The other face was that of an anonymous fleet of mainly second-hand Daimler and AEC double deck contract buses carrying workers to power station and motorway construction sites at Hinkley Point, Berkeley, Sizewell, Wylfa (Anglesey), Hartlepool and Heysham etc. on behalf of blue chip companies. Besides the Bedfords there were many interesting older vehicles still in the fleet in the 1960s and very many unseen photographs of these have been obtained from the family archives and other sources to illustrate the story.

About the Author

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John tells the story as a former employee not only of the companies that were merged to form Wessex in 1947 but also the histories of the companies that were taken over after that date and the very many forerunners concerned. He is able to call upon his first hand memories of the period and those of former Directors and family members, senior employees and drivers as well as some of his then contacts within other companies and is able to form a very interesting picture of what the industry was really like at that time.