Now and then…

29/04/2025 Maxson Goh Industry Heritage
News stories are free to read. Click here for full access to all the features, articles and archive from only £8.99.

Ray Ward has been looking through his archives and found some images which give a reminder of how things once were, comparing them with recent times

This week’s specially-extended Industry Heritage takes a slightly different format. Enthusiastic photographer and regular CBW contributor Ray Ward has an extensive photographic library, and has chosen a selection of his favourite images, showing vehicles long gone alongside their more modern counterparts. In some cases, the locations are still very easily identifiable, and the images are dated by the nostalgia of their vehicles, shop signs and people’s clothes. In others, the location has changed significantly in the intervening years. We’ll let the pictures do the talking.

 

For our first image, we head to the city of Winchester, where the bus station was rebuilt in 2017, the date at which the modern-era shots were taken. The bus depot, located just behind the vehicle in the earlier shot from 1984, was demolished and the flow has been changed, meaning that buses now enter and leave from the opposite ends, passing through in the opposite direction. Seen in 1984 is a Hampshire Bus vehicle, an early Duple Dominant, on service X34 which ran from Oxford via Newbury and Winchester to Southampton. Ray recalls that three different operators ran the route.
Meanwhile, in 2017, Ray’s camera was focused on the then still relatively new Enviro200 single-deckers in the attractive King’s City livery adopted by Stagecoach for local services in Winchester. RAY WARD

 

Another of Ray’s favourite locations is Ayr. Snapped some 40 years apart outside Rabbie’s Bar in the town’s Burns Statue Square, Ray says that he has photos going back to 1976 at this same spot, featuring lots of liveries and types of vehicles, but adds that he doesn’t lament the passing of the Seddons as pictured in his 1984 shot. The typically Scottish Alexander Y-bodied vehicle in Western Scottish colours is on route 203 to Kincaidston, and contrasts with the Stagecoach BYD ADL Enviro200EV heading to the same destination on route 3 four decades later. RAY WARD
[…]

Are you enjoying this feature? Why not subscribe to continue reading?
Subscribe for 6 issues/weeks from only £6Or login if you are already a subscriber

By subscribing you will benefit from:
• Operator & Supplier Profiles
• Face-to-Face Interviews
• Lastest News
• Test Drives and Reviews
• Legal Updates
• Route Focus
• Industry Insider Opinions
• Passenger Perspective
• Vehicle Launches
• and much more!

SUBSCRIBE
LOGIN