Thursday, March 17, 1972, was an important day for bus driver Barry Taylor of Cleator Moor, as he drove the very first Leyland National ‘super bus’ out of Workington Bus Station on its inaugural journey to Whitehaven via Lowca.
“It certainly was a rare moment stepping on-board to drive a strange vehicle with all the dignitaries, and members of the press analysing and photographing your every move and action,” Barry said, fifty years later. “Having said all that, it was one of those times in my life that I look back on with pride and pleasure.”
Asked for her impressions, the first public service passenger on the bus, Mrs Jessie Boyd of Distington, who boarded at Workington with her two children, said: “It seems okay.”
The bus in question, which had just been handed over to Cumberland Motor Services, was the ERM35K, the first of over 7,700 assembled at a purpose-built factory at Lillyhall.
“It was a product so radically superior to anything else on the market, produced in a modern mechanised showpiece factory,” said David Quainton, former plant director at Leyland Bus, Workington, which he refers to as Leyland’s ‘Jewel in the Crown.’
On Thursday, ahead of a major free event on Whitehaven’s historic harbourfront to mark 50 years of the Leyland National, Workington Transport Heritage Trust will recreate that historic first journey, with an almost identical, preserved bus from the former Cumberland fleet.
Passengers aboard the bus will include Ken Hargreaves, former production superintendent at Leyland National Ltd, who was responsible for the testing and development of assembly lines and prototypes, David Quainton and other people with experience of this revolutionary vehicle.
Leyland National 50 has been made possible with the cooperation of local organisations including Whitehaven Town Council, Copeland Borough Council, Whitehaven Harbour Commission, The Beacon Museum, Lakes College, Britain’s Energy Coast, Eddie Stobart and Stagecoach.
