Waiting for the call - a photo on Flickriver

In Corporation days, Bury never had a bus station. For very many years, the town's bus services terminated - or paused - at bus stops loosely grouped around Kay Gardens, an attractive triangle of grass, flower beds and a monument to John Kay, the inventor of teh flying shuttle used in cotton weaving.

All that was to change in MArch 1980, when Greater Manchester Transport opened a grand new Bury Interchange on one side of the Gardens. The bus station was combined with the town's new railway station, to which the existing electric railway line from Manchester was diverted, and the whole was an impressive new transport hub.

At the south side of the facility, the architects placed an area that was used for a taxi rank, a 'kiss and ride' drop-off point, and parking for buses. It's the latter that's in focus in this 1983 view, with three GMT buses pausiing between duties. Two are 'Standard' buses built to Greater Manchester's secpifications, while the one on the right had been ordered by Bolton Corporation but delivered after that town's transport department had been absorbed by the Passenger Transport Executive.

The first floor area of the Interchange, just visible on the left, housed GMT offices and a staff canteen: no doubt that's where the drivers of these buses were. Bury Interchange is still substantially the same today (2024), but a rebuild has been proposed by TfGM given that the Interchange is now almost 45 years old.

2025 will mark the centenary since Bury Corporation first started to run motor buses, and so the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester will hold a centenary event in July 2025 - details at the museum's website motgm.uk.

If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester 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 / Fishpool (show map)

Taken on: October 24, 1983

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