Copyright David Whitaker

Provincial (Gosport & Fareham Omnibus Co)
1938
AEC Regent I
Weymann H56R

On 31st December 1962, a heavy snowfall occurred in the Portsmouth area, an unusual happening, and the snowy conditions lingered on until the March of 1963. The immediate consequence in Portsmouth was that Portsmouth’s trolleybuses bounced on the snow-packed uneven and unsalted roads to the extent that the poles came off the wires, with motor buses having to take over for a day or so!
On the other side of Portsmouth Harbour, having come to grief in a ditch, the first photo shows Provincial 48 (JML 784) about to be recovered from a ditch in Brookers Lane (outskirts of Gosport), unusually by a Royal Navy crane, on 2nd January. A Royal Naval Air Station was only a few miles away at Lee-on-Solent. The second photo shows the bus ‘in full swing’ and about to land on ‘all fours’ again.
No.48 started life as a demonstrator, prior to being taken into ‘Provincial’ stock on 01.05.39, being numbered 48 in October 1939.
The accident was not fatal to the vehicle, for it lasted in service until 27.08.64, a creditable 25 years with Provincial in total.

Photos by kind permission of David Whitaker. Copy by Chris Hebbron, with vehicle’s history taken with his permission from Ray Tull’s ‘Provincial’ website www.regent8.co.uk

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19/05/12 – 15:38

There’s an active "interest" group ‘The Provincial Society’. They have a website as follows: www.provincialsociety.org

Pete Davies