Here from the leafy suburbs - a photo on Flickriver

The North Western Road Car Company Limited is fading from the memory now, but from the 1920s to the 1970s it was one of the biggest and most famous bus companies in the North of England. Its bus services served a huge swathe of territory from Northwich in the West to the Peak District fringes of Sheffield in the East, and from Rochdale in the North to Matlock in the South.

Its end was brought about because many of its services, and almost all it most profitable ones, were in the south of Greater Manchester and SELNEC wanted to control these - and was willing to buy the part of North Western that was in its area. What was left after that simply wasn't viable, so North Western's owner the National Bus Company split the remainder up between neighbours Trent and Crosville.

The service between Stockport and Wilmslow was probably borderline in terms of profitability even then - in the 1970s, Wilmslow was already a prosperous, leafy town with Range Rovers and Volvos on gravel drives. Even so, former North Western 300 has a decent load in Stockport's Mersey Square, especially considering that it's the morning judging by the shadows and too early for many shoppers to be going home.

Within a few years, bus 300 was beating a very different semi-rural path - its new owners Greater Manchester Transport sent it to Ramsbottom to operate services around Summerseat, and it finished at Bury from where it went for scrap. Fortunately one of these handsome little buses, number 299, survives in private preservation in original North Western red. But you can still see North Western buses - at the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester, where we have several buses from this company restored and on display.

If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport and its collection of vintage buses, go to motgm.uk.

© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.

Taken in: UK / England / Stockport (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1974

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