The Mysteries Of Middlesbrough (1)

A Historic Mixture

(Or maybe AN historic mixture). Mrs fbb has a good chum, Kath, whose husband Bob worked for ICI. They lived at Guisborough ...

... and, back in his early married days, fbb was able to explore a little whilst Bob was at work and "the girls" did whatever the ladies do as an alternative to riding around on buses. Combined with a family holiday in Saltburn, your exploratory author has been able to pay fleeting visits to Stockton, Hartlepool, Redcar, New Marske, Loftus and Middlesbrough itself.

Although things omnibological have changed radically over the years the groundwork was in place for a broad-brush understanding of what was going on.

The ingredients have been varied. 

There was Stockton Corporation ...

... Middlesbrough Corporation ...

... and the wondrously named Teesside Railless Traction Board ...

... which initially ran trolleybuses to the burgeoning housing estates to the east of Middlesbrough.

From 1915 the North Ormesby, South Bank, Normanby and Grangetown Railless Traction Co. was started by Bolckow Vaughan iron company (later Dorman Long) with the aim of serving the communities that formed its company name.

In December 1918, the company was sold, ⅓ to Middlesbrough Corporation and ⅔ to Eston Urban District Council. They formed the Tees-side Railless Traction Board.

Eventually the core trolley routes were as shown below in GREEN. (click on the map for an enlargement)

Trolleybuses were replaced by motor buses in 1971. This trolleybus on a tour ...

... is seen passing part of Dorman Long's works.

Meanwhile in 1968 these three operators merged to form Teesside Municipal Transport and adopted a rather dull blue livery throughout.

The rather sleepy joint municipality shocked the bus watchers world when they rebranded, re-liveried and renamed themselves Cleveland Transit. Shock Horror!

The logo was as unconventional as the name.

The new-broom philosophy also brought some dramatic service developments, one of which was an express service operated by coach-style vehicles ...

... from "The Borough" to New Marske, an estate near Redcar, deep in United territory. The route number X94 has popped unannounced into fbb's febrile mind - but that could just be a total failure of the memory banks! Anyway, your enthusiastic blogger took a round trip to New Marske to ride back to 'Boro' on a coach; only to find an ordinary decker had been substituted.

The views were better, of course, from the top deck - even through the shed tears of disappointment.

In 1986 the brand became plain Transit ...

... and in 1994 Uncle Brian's stripes appeared with the Stagecoach take-over.

North of the Tees, two municipalities ran their own public transport.

Both Hartlepool ...

... and West Hartlepool ...

... had their own operations and were often at daggers drawn as they sought to provide services between the two communities and beyond. They became one in 1967 and just under thirty years later were sucked into Stagecoach world.

Again, fbb remembers a raucous ride on a service 1 Bristol RE from Port Clarence (north end of the Transporter Bridge), to Middlegate ...

... the "town centre" of the original Hartlepool - now served by route 7.

The service 1 passed the glorious bucolic delights of Seal Sands ...

... where be not dragons, but occasionally seals!

Which leaves the suburban and country buses, originally part of the giant United Automobile Services empire.

United was founded in Lowestoft in 1912, with two routes, one in Suffolk and one over 200 miles away between Bishop Auckland and Durham. During the 1920s, the company expanded into Norfolk and south Lincolnshire, and in Northumberland, County Durham and North Yorkshire. In 1929 control passed to the Tilling Group and the London and North Eastern Railway, and in 1931 the new owners split off the East Anglian operations into a separate company, Eastern Counties Omnibus Company.

United also started East Midland Motor Services. This came about through the desire to expand. One of their managers, W.T. Underwood, was sent to Clowne (near Chesterfield) to set up a bus company in his own name. The Underwoods company later became East Midland.

With the split of the National Bus Company into smaller saleable units ...

... United in the Middlesbrough area became Tees and District ...

... which fell into the hands of Arriva.

The 93 (and X93 variants) are still one of their key services.

fbb would have liked to include the present-day X93 timetable but Arriva's very poor web site can only supply us with a heading and a map!

But the continuing blog was prompted by former colleague and chum Peter who was recently in Middlesbrough with his daughter.

 Next Mysteries of Middlesbrough blog : Weds 22nd July