B.A.T.S. & BRIGHTON MEMORIES, a personal view

IT IS PERHAPS DURING ones formative years that things make such an impact upon ones development and for me it was the buses that burned on the visual senses from an early age. The Brighton area in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a time of great changes and transformation as all three principal bus operators changed their liveries. Certainly there cannot be too many places in the United Kingdom where you see local bus operators from three different operator groups and each with a distinctive livery. Audibly the sounds of the major engine manufacturers were also represented with the sounds of Leylands, Bristols, Gardners and (earlier) A.E.C.s. So much variety and yet the actual time span is quite brief and as such was but a period of transformation rather than stability. Perhaps it is only Tyne & Wear in the north east that could in any way rival these varying factors but here we are talking about the Sussex coast and the long warm summer days that helped to strengthen such a nostalgic viewpoint.

In more general terms we are also talking about a period that saw changes that also occured on a national scale as the change from front engine half-cab to rear engine front entrance buses occured with ever-increasing venom. So too did the general opinion of the view of the bus driver from being a well-respected profession to todays `average-pay job opportunity`. Sub-consciously the image of the driver from god-like status that you could not directly communicate with became someone you met on equal eye level and conversed with then to someone you looked down upon in more recent years as hoards of small van-derived minibuses entered the scene. But those days were still a long off.

What could there be to make a better impression than watching and hearing a blue and white Leyland PD2, followed by a red and cream Bristol RESL crawling up Queen`s Park Road ? Perhaps there are those that would baulk at remembering the Corporation buses in blue and white livery after that operator decided to `go it alone`. Maybe some of you prefer to remember the red and cream livery but for me it was the blue and white livery that made such an impression because it added another spectrum to already colourful bus scene locally.

Then just around the corner were the decreasing numbers of red and cream buses in favour of green and cream to be considered. And it poses a question: had Brighton Corporation not adopted the blue livery when they did would they have adopted that livery had the livery change question come around two or three years later? Certainly, as BH&D buses began to return from repaint into green and cream Southdown livery such an excercise for the Corporation may well have seemed pointless. It is fascinating to consider what might have or have not been had certain national changes occured a few years earlier or later. And nationally was an apt watchword for two of the operators, Southdown and Brighton, Hove & District found themselves under common ownership in the guise of subsidiary companies of the National Bus Company.

Effectively what occured was that Southdown `took over` BH&D, in other words 79.5% of the B.A.T.S. mileage and revenue pool was now in one basket and therefore the latter company became an operating division of the former., eventually losing its colours to its new parent company identity. However the victory was temporary. It may have seemed like sacreledge that such a well respected and nationally recognised livery as that of Southdown should therefore become a memory in a few short years but by the late 1970s the pleasing apple green and primrose would vanish, replaced by a leaf green and white with white lettering and a double-N logo. So short was the time span that we are recounting is reflected in the fact that the change from red to green was only partially executed when the corporate image saw a repaint programme that affected both the red and green fleets and so it was possible to see three different colour schemes within one bus company. Add to that the question of fleetname and differing styles and the possibilities must have seemed endless.................