I'm enjoying reading through this thread, Ludo. Around the time you were designing publicity material for the Crosville I was eagerly lapping it up as a card-carrying enthusiast, travelling the length and breadth of the company on the "Explorer" and "Rideabout" tickets and capturing the scenes with my camera for posterity.
At the specific time you mention the Dragon-liveried Olympian deckers going into service on the Coastliner I was training to be a driver with the company and I rode out of Chester on the first bus on the new service which was actually on the first Sunday of the New Year. It was the 5th of January 1986, not 1985. It was a long time ago but I remember it well for those specific reasons.
Now you get the benefit of me photting one of your buses at your end on the big day while you were off gallivanting down the other....
As for your cut-out Lodekka, I think that a high resolution scan would be appreciated by the enthusiast fraternity. I've never seen such like before and its appearance would cause a bit of a stir I think. Keep your illustrations coming, they are of real historic significance to transport enthusiasts.
Thanks!
Thanks to everyone who replied to the stuff I posted - what an interesting place this is!. You know, this is one of the very best things about the interwebs for me - that an event from the past can be brought to life from so many different perspectives by photos, experiences artifacts from the people who were there - truly amazing. Thanks Crisparmour for all the interesting images, I have already spent many nostalgic moments Flickr-ing through them!.
Amazing that you were also there taking shots of my Dragon bus on the same day, and that you took the first one out! - now that deserves some sort of prize I think. You are right about the dates too - how the memory plays tricks after so long. I agree about the 'dumbed down' version of the Dragon livery. I was not very happy with it, but it was done after I left the company to work for an ad agency so it was out of my hands by then. All of the staff in our department jumped ship around then as we could see the great axe of privatisation coming tearing up all before it. Good that we did too - within two years of my departure, the Crosville Crane Wharf Headquarters was a barely discernable bump in the ground with only weeds left to tell the tale of the building's 80 years of successful and trusted public service. I remember watching herons on the river Dee out of my office window during moments of wistful hiatus between designing Divisional Manager's monthly return form pads and the latest Setright stats reports. Ho hum - happy days...
I did find the Lodekka model recently (and then promptly lost it again) but I will scan it and post it here asap. There is lots of other stuff from my Crosville/NBC days too - I haven't posted it yet as I didn't really want to clog up your fantastic forum with a lot of stuff about buses - but hey, if there is some interest - why not eh?
ding ding - here we go... no talking to the driver while the vehicle is in motion please!
