GALLERY: Take a trip down memory lane with the history of buses in Macclesfield
By Alex Greensmith
2nd Aug 2021 | Local News
Macclesfield: This article was nubbed to Macclesfield Nub News.
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Even if you own a car, a bus ride out on a summer's day is a very pleasant experience.
There's no stress of driving, buses these days are very easy to get on and off, and it's nice to be able to take in the countryside views, instead of staring at the car in front.
But if you're sitting on a bus, do you ever think about who runs it?
Bus companies (and bus routes) seem to chop and change all time, but that wasn't always the case.
Buses in our area go back to 1913, when a London company called 'British' opened a Macclesfield branch.
British would run rickety buses on solid tyres to Stockport and Buxton.
After the Great War, traffic expanded and it was decided that the Macclesfield branch should be split off into a separate company – the North Western Road Car Company.
North Western ran most of the area's buses for the next fifty years.
North Western buses were known as friendly buses, and the driver and conductor got to know their regular passengers well.
Their buses were red and cream, and there was even a combined bus station and garage in the centre of town on Sunderland Street that lasted into the 2000s before being demolished to make way for a health centre.
This is where the Waters Green Medical Centre now stands today.
North Western buses would pop up in the most unlikely places such as The Wizzard and Wincle, neither of which have seen a bus in years now.
North Western ran mainly single deckers, but they had a few double deckers too.
What was odd about them was that instead of having a gangway down the centre of the upper deck, it was over on the right-hand-side of the bus and to its left was a step up and rows of long bench seats, meant to seat four people.
It made the bus lower so it could go under the many low bridges in North Western's area, but it led to many bumped heads which was why every seat had a little notice on the back saying 'lower your head when leaving your seat'.
North Western's buses lasted half a century across Cheshire, north Derbyshire and much of Greater Manchester.
But up in Manchester there was a new, brash, orange neighbour called 'SELNEC' – South East Lancashire, North East Cheshire.
It had taken over all the old Corporation Transport departments in their area and was troubled by all the North Western routes – so in 1972 it made a generous offer to buy them.
What was left was just the countryside routes that didn't pay, so the rest of the company was split up between its neighbours and Macclesfield's buses were taken over by the green buses of Crosville.
That was comparatively speaking, just a brief episode, because in 1986 the government swept all that away with privatisation of the bus companies and 'deregulation' of bus services.
In practice that meant anything goes, chasing a dwindling number of passengers and all the changes just driving even more people away.
However, it is not all bad news for Macclesfield public transport.
In the twenty-first century there's been a bit of a revival for buses – government and operators have realised that cooperation rather than competition is more helpful for the passenger, and environmental considerations mean that more and more people are starting to consider the bus.
And Macclesfield buses often now have Wi-Fi and USB charging for your phone.
It's all a far cry from the North Western buses of fifty years ago but as anyone who was around at the time will tell you, they'd love a ride on a comfy red North Western bus from Macclesfield to Buxton again.
Fortunately the dedicated staff and volunteers at the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester keep old buses alive in their museum.
It houses 80 old-time buses including several North Western ones that would once have pounded the streets of Macclesfield on the 29 or 30 to Macclesfield.
The also have the old 24 to Congleton and Crewe.
So from time to time, you can still see a red bus in our region with 'North Western' on the side, and if you fancy a trip back in time you can find the museum in Boyle Street, Cheetham.
The Manchester Museum is open Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays and the museum's website with contact details can be found here.
No pre-booking is required to visit our town's old busses. You can follow the museum on Facebook and Twitter.
Macclesfield Nub News recently reported on average, a resident in Cheshire East makes just 13 trips per year by bus. That places our borough in the lowest 10 local authorities in the country. You can learn more about how councillors want our area to ride more buses, by clicking this link.
This article was nubbed to Macclesfield Nub News. You too can write for our Macclesfield Nub News, by clicking the little black 'Nub It' button on our homepage.
Macclesfield Nub News thanks Paul Williams of the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester, for submitting this article.
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