'Scene' on a 'Day Out with Dennis' to Southwell

This set of images is to illustrate an article written for a magazine called ‘All Things Local’.

 

This community magazine is produced and distributed from a base in Kilburn, Derbyshire and covers large areas of the towns of Ripley and Belper.

 

IF YOU ARE TRAVELLING FROM BELPER, 

 

your first bus of the day will be ‘trentbarton’s (tb) ’the sixes’ from Belper to Derby.

 

A Swedish built Scania Chassis carrying a Wright body produced in Ballymena in Northern Ireland.

 

Onward from Derby into Nottingham it is a ‘tb’ ‘red arrow’. Largely these days in the hands of a coach chassis again produced by

Scania but bodied in Spain by a company called Irizar.

 

This is likely to change soon because ‘tb’ have a batch of new coaches on order which will replace most of them.

 

IF YOU ARE TRAVELLING FROM RIPLEY,

your first bus of the day will be ‘tb)’ ‘rapidone’.

 

An Optare Versa which is produced in Yorkshire

 

From Nottingham to Southwell the bus is provided by ‘Nottingham City Transport’. Normally double deck buses are used but single decks are also used from time to time.

Both types are Scania products with the double deck body coming from East Lancashire Coachbuilders who are no longer in existence and the single deck being built in Poland.

 

Should you decide to return via Mansfield and Ripley then the bus from Southwell to Mansfield would be provided by ‘Stagecoach’ and would probably be a double deck Dennis Trident chassis which at one time was built at Guildford in England but more recently in Scotland bodied by Alexander’s of Falkirk.

The bus from Mansfield to Ripley is another Optare product called the Solo again from Yorkshire.

Should you be going back to Belper, another ‘the sixes' from outside the old Hippodrome will take you there.