Open top buses in Weston-super-Mare
Open top buses in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, were introduced in 1950 and have run along the sea front most summers since.
[2] On 13 May 1902, the Weston-super-Mare Tramways opened a tramway along the sea front from the Sanatorium at the south end of the Beach Lawns (today the site of Royal Sands) to the Old Pier, using a mixture of double-deck open top tram cars and open-sided "toast rack" single-deck cars.
[3] The Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company started to operate buses in the town in 1910 and opened a garage on the sea front (on the site of today's Carlton Mansion) in 1928.
[4] It started a seasonal bus service between the Sanatorium and Old Pier on 19 May 1934 which deprived the tramway of much of its profits and, three years later, it paid the Weston company to stop operating, which it did on 17 April 1937.
These used conventional vehicles with roofs, although by this time some seaside resorts were operating similar services with open top buses.
They proved popular with passengers but were replaced after a year or two-year with more conventional Bristol buses which had their roofs removed.
Although these buses carried the name "Bristol" on their sides, this was replaced a couple of years later with the coat of arms of Weston-super-Mare.
These tours required more buses so two second-hand convertibles were acquired in 1973, and a vintage open top arrived for the following season.
In the summer of 2000 Rexquote operated a scenic tour with heritage open top vehicles from the Sea Front.
[12] From 2017 until 2020 First West of England operated some services on route 20 from Weston-super-Mare to Burnham-on-Sea with open top buses branded "Somerset's Coaster".
The open top bus service in Cheddar Gorge continued for many years but provided by Longleat Enterprises in conjunction with their caves and attractions.
They were built on Bristol Lodekka chassis with 60-seat ECW convertible bodies – that is with detachable roofs so that they could operate as conventional buses during the winter.
They had 60-seat ECW bodies with a conductor-operated door, which made then a more attractive proposition for winter services than the FSs with their open platform.
Like the LDs, it was fitted with a 6-cylnder Bristol engine but had a power-operated door at the front instead of the rear entrances on the earlier buses.
It also appeared on television, including an episode of the Shoestring detective series, when some criminals met on the top deck as it drove along the Sea Front.
[10] In 1979 it was placed in the hands of a preservation group but returned to Bristol Omnibus and then on to Badgerline who put it to work on the city tour in Bath for several years where it carried the name "Prince Bladud".
[15] When Rexquote operated their vintage open top tour in 2000 they used Bristol Lodekkas, this time the LDL model (a longer version of the LD) with a Gardner engine and 70-seat ECW body.
Three of them were Hants & Dorset buses of the Leyland Atlantean PDR1/2 type with low-height Charles H Roe bodies, originally delivered to the King Alfred Motor Services in Winchester.
