South Wales Transport, as a National Bus Company, served a large and diverse area of South West Wales, from Port Talbot in the east, throughout the industrial Swansea Valley and City, and out across rural West Wales to the remote Pembrokeshire coast. It had grown following National Bus Company’s acquisition of BET/THC bus companies in South Wales. With the resulting overlapping areas of services, NBC reorganised its operations and from January 1971 South Wales Transport took control of Uni...

Crewe has long been a destination for the rail enthusiast keen to see lots of interest and continuous operation. In the era when Rail Blue dominated, it drew huge numbers with the guarantee of loco-hauled trains, close-ups of the large diesel depot and the potential to explore beyond the station to see heavy freight activity. If you were to visit on the occasion of a works open day, then the bonus of a look inside the extensive workshop facility where a large number of locomotives were und...

Between 1972 and 1986 the roads of England and Wales were served by the country’s own National Bus Company, carrying a corporate livery introduced to bring the thirty-six or so companies together and help the public see it owned its bus services. At the time, it was the largest bus company in the world, and there was much interest in its vehicle fleets, along with the changes to operating areas and fleet amalgamations.In the 1970s, most towns had a bus station and garage, and the c...

The erstwhile National Bus Company was the largest bus company in the world and like any large organisation, it required auxiliary vehicles to support its core activities. Formed of around thirty-six local constituent companies and the ‘NATIONAL’ Central Activities Group, each company had its own Service Vehicle fleet to support its operations, varying from Heavy Vehicle Recovery to Driver Training and every other facet to keep the fleet operational. Well photographed and documented were t...

As part of the National Bus Company, Hants & Dorset Motor Service once served a large diverse area, stretching from the remote chalk uplands of North Hampshire, across Salisbury Plain through rural East Dorset to the coastal resorts of Swanage, Poole and Bournemouth, and the heavily populated areas of Southampton and Winchester. Its Poppy Red buses were a common sight on the roads of central southern England through the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1972 with the introduction of its corporate ...

Crewe needs little introduction. Even in a country built on railways, with many other railway centres, Crewe is a railway town that is unequalled: five major routes, several motive power depots, an extensive station, large marshalling yards and at one time the largest locomotive works in the world. The British Rail corporate era was the end of a golden age for the enthusiast; around Crewe the railway remained much as it had been in steam days, the station layout was unmodernised, two large...

In the 1970s the state-owned National Bus Company operated services across England and Wales, and one of the largest of its thirty-six constituent bus companies was the huge Crosville Motor Services. Though Crosville enjoyed similarities to other former BET companies within the NBC, initially with its fleet of Bristol/ECW buses and coaches, many other facets of this company made it interesting. It had a vast operating area, growing in the corporate era of the early 1970s to stretch from th...

After the 1969 nationalisation, bus and coach companies had generally continued with their traditional liveries and, in 1971, it was decided the time had come to apply a corporate image to state-owned bus operations. The livery scheme would be a simplification of the colours previously used. The livery of a bus would be one colour all over, later relieved by a central 3-inch white line, and vehicles designated as dual purpose or ‘Local Coach’ would use the base colour on the lower half and...

Across the country at numerous locations the government operated another railway, hidden from the public, behind high wire fences. These were the railways serving the Ministry of Defence. A fascinating collection of sites, with differing gauges, origins and functions. At its peak in the 1950 and 1960s the nation was covered with rail-served military locations, varying from a siding right up to huge storage locations, with self-contained internal networks. Each military service had its indi...

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s the state-owned National Bus Company, with its familiar corporate livery, was a common sight across much of England and Wales. The huge variety of the various buses is well documented, but alongside there was a much less well known facet of operations – that of the humble service vehicle. Often in the same corporate livery, this part of the fleet contained the ‘oddments’, such as towing and recovery vehicles, training vehicles, tree cutting vehicles and...

With the ability to monitor a vast range of physiological parameters, combined with wireless technology, wireless sensor networks and the Internet of Things, wearable sensors are revolutionising the field of digital health monitoring. In addition to applications in health monitoring, such technology is being used to monitor the state of our living environment and even the quality of our foods and the wellbeing of livestock. Written for scientists, engineers and practitioners by an internat...

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often worked to distort the public discourse on important policy issues. Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on stem-cell research, the constitutional controversies regarding faith-based initiatives, the...