Thanks for coming to our party at Wroughton

Many many thanks to all of you who came to our 60th birthday celebration event at Wroughton, Wilts on 18 October — whether you came as a paying spectator, brought a vehicle, ran a stall or were one of our volunteer marshals.
By common consent, the day was a great success, attracting around 2,000 visitors and around 80 visiting buses and coaches — helping mark the launch of Buses Illustrated back in 1949 and raising more funds towards Cobham Bus Museum’s £150,000 appeal to keep pioneering AEC Regent double-decker RT1 in Britain.
The weather was remarkably kind to us, remaining dry all day with some lengthy spells of sunshine.
Three of the buses ended the day winning prizes. Colin Billington’s magnificent 1933 Western National Bristol H single-decker was judged Best Preserved Bus, a Bluestar Scania OmniCity was Best Working Bus and London General Routemaster RML2575 — brought across from Dublin for the weekend by Fleet News Ireland editor Ian Molloy — was the Farthest Travelled Vehicle.
Thamesdown Transport and Stagecoach West operated the shuttle service between Swindon and Wroughton using two of their heritage vehicles — a Daimler CVG6/30 and an ex-London Routemaster — while Friends of King Alfred Buses operated the Wroughton-Faringdon leg of the link to the Oxford Bus Museum’s open day using an AEC Renown double-decker.
Among the many buses operating rides around the Wroughton site and to nearby Avebury, one of the most entertaining was Roger Burdett’s recently restored rear-engined Foden coach with its distinctive and potent two-stroke engine.
When it was not being used in service, Ensignbus’s Bristol K6A HLJ 44 was parked alongside Wilts & Dorset Optare-bodied Scania 1410 to recreate our anniversary issue front cover. Parked nearby was ex-Warrington FED 795, the all-Leyland Titan PD2 featured in the November issue — a bus that has made many journeys around the globe over the past 40 years.
For many, another highlight of the day came at lunchtime, when former editors Alan Townsin and Stephen Morris, accompanied by long-time contributor Michael Dryhurst — also known as V. H. Darling when he wrote the Look in on London column for most of the 1960s — joined editor Alan Millar to cut a celebration birthday cake, which we shared with many visitors.
As the man who has provided generations of enthusiasts with a foundation of their knowledge of buses, Alan Townsin was an especially welcome visitor, who chatted animatedly with visitors for much of the day.
For some visitors, the one major disappointment was that not everyone was able to visit the reserve collection of preserved buses that the Science Museum stores in Hangar L4 at Wroughton. We were very much in the museum’s hands on this, as it only made 500 tickets available for these guided tours. Such was the demand that the tickets were all snapped up before lunchtime.
We managed to persuade them during the day to make another 50 tickets available, but sadly that still left many people wanting to join the tours after the last tickets were distributed. We are sorry for those of you who were unable to see the reserve collection and if it is any consolation, the editor was among the Buses team members who chose not to visit L4 in order to make space available for our valued readers.
Sorry also to anyone let down by the lack of a bus connection from Swindon railway station at the start of the day. A mix-up meant that the first few journeys went direct to Wroughton from the bus station, but this omission was rectified as soon as we learnt about it. Our thanks to those of you who brought this to our attention.

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