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Favourite municipal/PTE livery?

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prod_pep

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Strathclyde Red wins at a canter for me. It looked stunning on buses and trains alike; I was so disappointed when the trains started to go crimson and cream as it simply never compared. I was lucky enough to see that First Gemini in the flesh a couple of times and it looked fabulous.

I'm just about old enough to remember the final years of Merseyside PTE's Verona green and cream but I never cared for it. A bland and fairly ugly livery and nowadays it is almost ubiquitous in local preservation. The green wheel rims looked rather tacky as well. The Wirral's blue and cream was far superior.

The Merseybus maroon and cream which succeeded 'Verona' is my favourite bus livery of all time and the two-tone green they trialled for a time was also very nice in my opinion. I also really like the cream and dark red MTL colour scheme of the 1990s: simple but effective.
 

RELL6L

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London Country green and yellow pre-NBC.
Rhymney Valley yellow and brown.
Most of the PTE liveries were good
Doncaster red and purple pre-SYPTE colours
Traditional City of Oxford colours
Several more I will think of no doubt
Anything but NBC green and red!
Ignore most of this - didn’t read the subject properly!
 
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Busaholic

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Birkenhead Corporation
Maidstone Corporation
I know your favourite colour then! Take it you're not referring to Maidstone's livery of the 1980s, when I worked there: not a hint of blue let alone a double decker!
 

Bristol LH

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I agree with Tyne and Wear PTE.

I also have soft spots for 1980s Burnley and Pendle (fond memories of seeing them in Skipton, where they seemed quite exotic to my North East and Yorkshire eyes).


also liked Cleveland Transit of the same era, bright and crisp.
Burnley and Pendle's scheme also gets my vote
 

Strathclyder

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Strathclyde Red wins at a canter for me. It looked stunning on buses and trains alike; I was so disappointed when the trains started to go crimson and cream as it simply never compared. I was lucky enough to see that First Gemini in the flesh a couple of times and it looked fabulous.
The SPT Crimson/Cream (or Carmine/Cream as I always knew it) worked best on the heavy rail suburban stock (the 156s, the 4 303s so treated, 318s pre-refurb & the 320/3s all looked particularly fetching), while I agree that the preceding Red/Black (or Orange/Black as I've always referred to it) worked on near enough everything it was applied to (buses, trains and Subway stock). Like I said in my opening post, it was quintessentially Glaswegian in it's boldness, brashness and distinctiveness.
 

Typhoon

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Birkenhead Corporation
Maidstone Corporation
Maidstone - do you mean the light blue and cream livery (?dark blue lining?), traditional layout? London Country borrowed some Leyland PD2s from Maidstone with that layout when they had a shortage - mid/ late 60s, early 70s? Operated from Dartford I believe, on local services. They looked smart, unlike the London Country many of which looked shabby by then. It may have been when Maidstone had started to introduce OMO, so they had a surplus of driver+conductor vehicles.
 

Robertj21a

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Maidstone - do you mean the light blue and cream livery (?dark blue lining?), traditional layout? London Country borrowed some Leyland PD2s from Maidstone with that layout when they had a shortage - mid/ late 60s, early 70s? Operated from Dartford I believe, on local services. They looked smart, unlike the London Country many of which looked shabby by then. It may have been when Maidstone had started to introduce OMO, so they had a surplus of driver+conductor vehicles.
Maidstone can be the blue and cream or the earlier brown and cream livery - both looked smart imho.
 

GusB

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I always thought it looked vile with that expanse of black.
I have to agree that I'm not overly keen on that. It would have looked better if the lower panels were kept white with the red skirt and to have black window surrounds instead. Wasn't Plymouth's livery red and cream prior to this?

As for my own favourites, I've always liked the post-privatisation Grampian livery whose style was briefly rolled out across other GRT Holdings companies before the advent of First and Barbie (link to image from William Walker's excellent collection):

I also rather liked the Tayside two-tone blue and cream (image from David Devoy's extensive collection):
 

175mph

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I have to agree that I'm not overly keen on that. It would have looked better if the lower panels were kept white with the red skirt and to have black window surrounds instead. Wasn't Plymouth's livery red and cream prior to this?

As for my own favourites, I've always liked the post-privatisation Grampian livery whose style was briefly rolled out across other GRT Holdings companies before the advent of First and Barbie (link to image from William Walker's excellent collection):

I also rather liked the Tayside two-tone blue and cream (image from David Devoy's extensive collection):
That Tayside livery makes me feel hungry for rice pudding as it reminds me of packaging for a brand of rice pudding. :D
 

Busaholic

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Maidstone - do you mean the light blue and cream livery (?dark blue lining?), traditional layout? London Country borrowed some Leyland PD2s from Maidstone with that layout when they had a shortage - mid/ late 60s, early 70s? Operated from Dartford I believe, on local services. They looked smart, unlike the London Country many of which looked shabby by then. It may have been when Maidstone had started to introduce OMO, so they had a surplus of driver+conductor vehicles.
They did indeed operate from Dartford. I remember seeing one on the 499 Joyce Green Hospital service, and I believe they could be seen on the spasmodic journeys on the 480 that Northfleet didn't cover. Lovely Massey bodywork that Maidstone favoured for a long time: so much better looking than anything that ever came out of that other Wigan factory!
 

Statto

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That is true - it's subjective. I have to say that I didn't feel the love for the green and cream combos of Merseyside, West Yorkshire or Cleveland Transit. Also, whilst the GMPTE with the brown was an improvement on the Selnec/GMT livery, I probably preferred the final GM livery of orange and white before it was broken up.

Although before my time, Rhymney Valley with its mustard yellow and brown really couldn't have been more 70s if they'd painted a kipper tie and sideburns on the livery!

I wasn't too fussy on the GM orange/white livery i did prefer the added brown/black GM Buses changed from brown to black.

West Midlands Travel or Travel West Midlands blue, silver, red livery was quite nice too.

It's sad how many liveries have been lost due to corporate livery, Arriva did have some best liveries, before they became Arriva, First Group buses had some good liveries too before they went corporate.

The Newcastle inspired Tyne and Wear PTE scheme as worn by the PTE, United and Northern vehicles (credit to photographer); a smart, clean evolution of Newcastle Corpy (or it was when newly painted)


I did like the Busways version which added a 3rd colour for the trim depending on what division they were based at, Newcastle maroon, South Shields blue, Sunderland green.
 
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Aictos

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I like Lothian Buses personally, maybe it's because I only use them once or twice a year.
 

baza585

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For me, Birmingham and WMPTE (more or less the same livery). Classic and practical
 

Typhoon

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For me, Birmingham and WMPTE (more or less the same livery). Classic and practical
Yes. I believe the Birmingham was a rather darker shade of blue, which I think suited the rear entrance vehicles used on the 11 and cross city routes when I moved to the city as did the thick stripes between decks that accentuated the vehicles' architecture. Also the khaki roof, which I once read was introduced as camouflage during WWII but was still in use on OMOs into the seventies, provided a slight contrast to the cream. There was a rumour that it was kept because of bird droppings - where it was to disguise their presence or the type of paint repelled the stuff I don't know (or it could just have been an invention).

To me, that so many contributors have been able to name decent municipal liveries demonstrates the pride that was shown in a town or city operating its own transport network; when the livery was designed around the vehicle; also that many of the best are those where the majority of the work force would be described as blue collar at a time when such people - and towns - were looked down on. This may be looking through rose-tinted spectacles, I never worked for any such transport department.

Afterthought: not all municipal liveries were brilliant. I thought Walsall was dull, and Wolverhampton hideous!
 
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