Photograph by ‘unknown’ if you took this photo please go to the copyright page.

Tynemouth and District
1957
Leyland Titan PD2/12
Willowbrook H35/28R

I think many of the job lot of anonymous photos I purchased must have come from the same source as the same locations crop up on a regular basis. Once again we are at the Whitley Bay Bandstand Terminus of the service 8 to North Shields Ferry Landing. Its been mentioned before about the amount of freedom Northern General Transport allowed its subsidiaries, and here we have a typical example. This is a 1957 H35/28R Willowbrook bodied Leyland PD2/12, one of 5 bought by Tynemouth and District, they were AFT 49/53 fleet numbers 219/23. About this time Northern ordered quite a number of PD2’s, 12 were rear door Park Royal’s originally for Sunderland District but diverted to Northern for use on longer routes shared with United, the remainder were Orion bodied, but as far as I’m aware these were the only Willowbrook bodied versions. The photo would be no earlier than about 1960 as by now the bus has been repainted and the top is red, where as it would have been cream when first delivered. They had the same O600 engine as the later PD3’s and were much lighter and far livelier, but they did bounce quite a lot, especially when running light. However, they had one big advantage over the PD3, a prayer book was not necessary as they were a lot less reluctant to stop when asked to do so.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Ronnie Hoye

30/01/13 – 15:10

Nice view, Ronnie. Thanks for sharing. I agree entirely with your comments about the management style of the old Northern General. It continues today with the Go Ahead Group where, for example, it seems to be at the depot manager’s discretion whether the "We’re part of the Go Ahead Group" appears in the window or not. The opposite end of the scale when comparing with – certainly one of if not both – of the big groups based in Scotland!

Pete Davies