A Wet and Windy Day, But a Ride on a Merc!

Today was the Exmouth Vintage Bus Running Day, by the Devon General Society, at Exmouth Bus Station.

Stagecoach kindly let the society have the bus station between 10:00 and 17:00 for running a variety of services on vintage vehicles.

There was a great turn out of people - probably, at a guess, in their hundreds, all enjoying the great, free bus trips on offer.

Despite it thrashing it down with rain for the whole day, it was all worth it for a ride on M245 UTM, a Marshall-bodied Mercedes 709, which replaced Ford Transits, and is in the grey-green-purple "Exeter Minibus" livery. But why was that bus so special?

Well, for many, many people who catch (or used to catch) services 5, 5E, 17, 17A, 22, or 24, they'd know all about the buses that used to be on there before Optare Solos: Mercedes 709D's. They were loud and bumpy, and those gears really crunched, but they got around. And that nostalgic, classic noise as it goes into reverse, along with that ever-so distinctive gear change, really did provide a trip back to just a few years ago when many enjoyed the old Mercs on Brixham and Paignton town services.

Here she is below:

Also whilst there, some bus maps from 1993 up to 2011 by Devon County Council provided a good look back into how services have changed: when the 12B used to go from Bovey Tracey to Brixham; the 22 was every minutes; the 7 was every 20 minutes; there were night buses into Torquay and Newton Abbot; and it was the 100 that came into Brixham, not the 12.

The good old days?