A WONDERFUL WEEKEND AT BIG ORANGE, MANCHESTER

The big orange for the benefit of readers outside our North West England enclave is a celebration of the years of Manchester's orange liveried buses which ran from the formation of the public transport executives ( in Manchester and around known at first as SELNEC) and through the GMPTE and GM Buses eras and finally even into the privatisation era especially for the Northern section under First Group. The museum at Boyle street holds many affectionate memories for me, in some ways it's sad recalling the friends now long passed away or have moved or drifted on to other interests. There was a bit of a debate about the earliest dates of events there but today I met one of the museum members who was there at the beginning and confirmed that they took over the building as the transport museum in 1977 the queen's silver jubillee year. I was therefore in 1978 that we must have held the spring transport festival which I envisaged as a very wide progression from our model bus federation annual model show formerly at the Britons Protection public house and held in the small exhibits hall at the museum. This event which saw Boyle St, then a through road, being blocked off and we had everything from buses to traction engines. It could be that the model show was 1977 and the spring transport fair 1978.

I went to work in Ireland for four years from 1979 and had to leave my post as area sec of the MBF and the museum progressed the event as a sale and that eventually spawned a winter equivalent of the Christmas Cracker although these days the brass band and carols have faded away. We are very much looking forwards to that event this year and are very happy that we have had this extra chance to meet our friends and customers of PMP and all the lovely folk at the museum which has managed to retain almost without failure it's friendly warm approach to the hobby, newcomers, families and those who benefit from this 'sheltered' environment. It's good that there remain places where you can relax and let your guard down, things do change so even the environs of the museum are much changed in many ways, there are no longer the young ladies walking the streets and greeting customers in the doorway of the museum, the road is now a cul de sac, the ethnic make up has continued it's merry progression. I might even remark the the roof now leaks a lot less and learned the cost of such operations and the huge list of minor faults still to be remedied. Today I rode one of the Atlanteans plus the Leyland National both with very distinctive engine noises which saw the red needle flashing on the video camera sound system.

We had a rare old treat today as a good day on Saturday turned into a really special day on Sunday and those who lingered to the end had a few more treats as the buses were marshaled ready for return to their regular positions or homes. The special DVD I had prepared was a resounding success, I couldn't really stop looking at it myself, not something I am usually given to doing - it just emphasises how many years the PMP archive now covers and how old we are getting and how young the majority of enthusiasts are and how much is the a contradiction to those who bemoaned that all the enthusiasts were dying out. We are happy that so many are enjoying the DVD and the funds are going to the purchase of a new machine which will print our future DVDs with a standard format with our logo and copyright details etc , this is coming from Northern Ireland, I just need to sort payment details out with the vendor tomorrow. Talking of tomorrow, intended destinations for filming Oldham and Bury, no doubt I may well bump into some of you there. Lots more intentions for later in the week, Tuesday I go to Cleethorpes on a cine film purchasing expedition! So here is what you are really wanting rather than my ramblings, todays Big Orange.