Cornwall Bus Preservation Society

Well we are into May already and it's just over two weeks since we held our annual Running Day at Penzance in glorious sunshine. After a lot of hard work by CBPSCornwall Bus Preservation Society - formed by a group of bus and coach enthusiasts who are involved in maintaining, restoring and preserving a number of buses which saw operational service in Cornwall that have been bought, donated or even loaned to members of the group members and many others who just wanted to help out, everything came together on the day and I think a good day was had by all. Well done and thank you to all vehicle owners for making the effort and especially to those who travelled hundreds of miles to join us when fuel prices are at their highest. With more vehicles entered this year, we were able to accommodate extra routes which seemed to go down well with the large number of enthusiasts who greeted us at the bus station after the 'road run' through the town that started the day off. 

We had our Bristol LHBristol Commercial Vehicles Light Horizontal engined 716(MUO 328F) there after passing her MOT test along with Bristol VRBristol VR was Bristol's rear-engined bus chassis, designed as a competitor to the Leyland Atlantean and Daimler Fleetline. 1003(VDV 141S), OlympianLeyland Olympian was a double-decker bus built by British Leyland/Leyland Bus in the United Kingdom from 1980 to 1993. 34754(A754 VAF) and our Vario 52529(S529 RWP). Unfortunately, Colin's Bristol FLF 1969(468 FTT) could not get an MOT in time so he very kindly sent his OlympianModels of double decker bus built by Leyland and Volvo: * Leyland Olympian * Volvo Olympian * Volvo Olympian (low-floor), also known as Volvo B9TL 1814(A686 KDV) in Devon General livery, the last chassis to leave the Bristol works before closure. Also Bristol VR 1200(LFJ 844W) and Olympian 9009/34969(G909 TWS) were unable to attend but the chaps from Bristol did bring their Volvo CitybusLivery used on Plymouth City Buses 5708(D708 GHY). Everything else was as mentioned previously including on static display Colin's fully restored 1927 Guy FBB 1268(YF 714) in Great Western Railways livery. Well done Colin for continuing to get it there after the starting handle 'bit back' and broke his arm! Without the passenger numbers to hand I can only say that I believe we carried many more passengers than last year and if you happened to miss it this year because you were in London for the Marathon, you missed a good day and our buses would have saved your aching legs! If anyone who travelled with us on the Running Day is in possession of any good photographs of the vehicles in service and would like to share them with us, please contact us by email.

Our next objective is to get Bristol VR 1003(VDV 141S) through her MOT before the middle of the month. Work is ongoing on our Bristol VR 1141(AFJ 706T) and we hope to have her back on the road soon. I will probably update again before the end of the month. N.B. Don't forget Bristol Harbourside & Running Day on Sunday 22 May 2011.