Metros and the Noddy Train were among the weird and wonderful ways to travel by bus
IF you lived in Cheltenham in October 1985 you may have fond memories, or otherwise, of the then newly introduced Metro buses.
These 16 seaters replaced much bigger single and double deckers on the Springbank and Charlton Kings routes.
“We started the Metro as an experiment to see what effect a small capacity, high frequency bus service would have on the travelling public” Mr Andrew Dyer, manager of Cheltenham District buses told the Echo.
The experiment was deemed a success, passenger traffic on the initial two routes increased by 50 per cent and soon Metros were introduced on other routes.
On the plus side they offered a more frequent service and were nippier, but on the minus side some passengers found the steep entry steps a problem and, as Mr Dyer pointed out “There’s not a lot of space for prams and shopping trolleys”.
But even on a Metro there was more room than there was on the first motorised public transport service in the county, which started in February 1831 when Sir Charles Dance introduced a fleet of four Gurney steam carriages that plied between Cheltenham and Gloucester on the turnpike road, now the B4063.
This puffing innovation was in competition with a horse drawn service that operated on the same route, a reminder of which can be seen to this day outside the former Pheasant pub in the shape of a stone drinking trough.
Gurney’s steam engine was a technological breakthrough, but only for a few months.
The service was withdrawn in June of the same year in which it was introduced, by which time it had covered 3,640 miles and been used by 4,000 paying passengers.
Incidentally, another of the Cornish inventor Sir Goldsworthy Gurney’s inventions was the Gurney coke stove. One of these wonderful cast iron heaters can be seen to this day in Tewkesbury Abbey.
Road going steam transport wasn’t really given the chance to succeed.
Steam carriages had to pay a premium to travel along turnpike roads, there were heavy fines if they exceeded four miles per hour and the public was put off by rumours (probably spread by the competing horse drawn service operators) about the horrors of what happened if you were on a steam carriage when the boiler blew up.
While in service the huffing, puffing road going coaches must have been quite a spectacle, as were Cheltenham’s Noddy Trains, introduced in 1997.
Officially named the Spa Shuttle, the nickname was coined by Cheltenham’s MP of the day Nigel Jones.
Three, free, passenger services operated on routes around the town hauled by gas powered locomotives titled Holst, Neptune and Jenner.
The trains were bought from an Italian manufacturer named Dotto for £400,000 and like Marmite people in Cheltenham either loved or hated them.
After 18 months, endless controversy and an unfortunate accident in which an elderly woman was injured, the Noddy trains were withdrawn and sold for £217,000 to a theme park in Germany.
You might think this is one of the worst deals of all time brokered by Cheltenham Borough Council.
Not a bit of it. In 1920 a municipal bandstand was bought for Imperial Gardens at a cost of £1,850 (that’s £53,000 in today’s terms).
In 1948 it was sold to Bognor Regis, where it’s still in use by the way, for £175 (that’s £4,500 in today’s terms).
When The Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company began operating passenger services in Gloucester in 1913, all the PR stops were pulled out.
A procession of charabancs, taxis and cars owned by the company snaked through the city centre with a brass band at the vanguard playing stirring tunes.
The leading vehicle was bedecked with a banner that read “Advance Gloucester - we have come to stay”.
All this fuss ushered in the new company, the vehicles of which were painted in a livery of blue.
Consequently the firm was known
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locally for long after as the Blue Taxi (in the same grammatically odd way that Cheltenham’s bestknown coach operator was colloquially known as the Black and White.
In May 1927 Rural England Motor Coaches Ltd. of London offered a daily road service between Gloucester and the capital, via Cheltenham, Oxford, Abingdon, Henley, Maidenhead and Slough.
Tickets could be obtained from the firm’s office at 24, Westgate Street and the price of a return between Gloucester and London was 15 shillings, which is £32 in today’s terms, a tad more than it would cost to take the same journey today.