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Birmingham 1946 bus street scenes

Thanks for posting that video Bammot. So many buses and people all over the place. Not many people owned cars in those days and so buses
were vital to getting around. The forecourt in front of Grey's Department store was always loaded with people. My Mother was awful for dragging me across Corporation Street in front of the Midland Educational shop to catch the 5A in that era.
 
Cheers Bammot a good find on your behalf , did you notice the West Bromwich Corporation bus too ??
Oh and nobody had any mobile phones stuck to there ears aswell .
ragga ............
 
Another really good video , Thanks Bammot, brought back a lot of memories, think a few bus drivers these days would pass out if they saw those crouds waiting to get on.
 
Thanks Bammot! :thumbsup:

That's a movie full of public transport interest: so many buses! Amongst all the Brum buses, I spotted one or two Midland Reds, including GHA 887 (1942 Guy Arab I) and HHA 18 (1944 Guy Arab II), both with Weymann WW2 "utility" H30/26R bodies.
 
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hi bammot
i can recall the days of the trams and the day they scrapped them and brought in the old trolly buses we thought they was smart then we thought even posher when they started to
bring in the midland red buses down the lichfield rd after tearing up the old tram liners and the over head cables
and then they gradulual brought the single midland red trolly buses we started on a sunday morning doing the midland red trolleyand single deckers of the
midland redbuses whilst other kids was train spotting we prefered the buses
those were the days only if we could put back the time
 
Brilliant footage and so clear I couldn't believe how long the queue's were. No wonder you had to have bus conductors!
 
Saturday night & Sunday morning Pie & Paper the (Sunday Mercury ) outside Snow Hill Station and the late night service Bus 5a outside Grey's happy days, Bammot thanks for the memory:)
 
Note that both this and the Wolverhampton footage are listed as trailers for PMP videos, this suggests this footage and almost certainly a lot more should be available on DVD.
 
A fantastic video clip BAMMOT: it has made an ordinary day into a brighter one - even if it is nearly 9pm.

The time frame is before many of the post war vehicles were introduced - I didn't see one but may have missed it.* There are wonderful glimpses of Daimler COG5's, Leyland TD's, Austerity and Manchester style bodies, even a piano front AEC I am sure. For good measure a couple of West Bromwich buses and last, but not least, the two or three Midland Red's. The tram sounds may well be coming from Steelhouse Lane, which of course, was off to the right.

* This might be rectified when I watch it again later or tomorrow. lol
 
Really good! I remember Saturday lunchtime when the Football Specials loaded outside Greys for St Andrews and Villa Park, there was one or
two cars about, too early for Bus Lanes, cheers Bernard.
 
Late forties and early fifties saw the highest level of population in Brum and it seems so busy in the scenes. The level of population has dropped significantly since then but maybe people have just moved out to surrounding towns and have no need to enter the city anymore.
 
Wonderful footage, thanks. Bammot. Brings back many memories.

I once delved into my childhood memory and tried to record a street scene from three or four years earlier, winter 1942/43. I imagine that the vehicles were much the same - just the traffic was lighter with hardly any private cars. Below are some of the bus/traffic bits. I'm standing in New Street, not far from the Odeon.

Chris

.........Eventually - but not for at least another quarter of an hour - our bus, always a double-decker, will arrive, having emerged from High Street to our right in front of a tall, modern building bearing the name "The Times Furnishing Co"; its white façade appears undamaged in contrast to the wrecked buildings beside it. ......The bus will pull up in front of us having reached its terminus and stand there, rattling in time with the throb of its engine and emitting a smell of scorched brake or clutch lining. At this stage of the day few people will alight, perhaps a soldier or airman or sailor stepping confidently off the back of the platform in the direction of travel before the bus comes to a stop and then hoisting kit bag onto shoulder and striding purposefully off in the direction of New Street Station or Snow Hill. When all its homeward bound passengers have boarded, the bus will set off, moving diagonally to the right across New Street before rounding the corner and roaring off up Corporation Street past the shops we have recently visited, then turning left into Bull Street and pulling up outside Grey's department store. Here another group of home-going passengers will step off the pavement and clamber aboard. Then off again, turning right in front of Snow Hill Station into Steelhouse Lane and, once past the General Hospital, left into Loveday Street. We shall now have moved away from the central area of the city but the buildings will still be tall, towering over the bus. Every so often there are gaps...........

.........The traffic between me and the buildings opposite is light. Much of it is buses, the red Midland and the dark-blue and yellow Birmingham Corporation on which I very rarely travel. Almost all are double-deckers, seating over 50 people and carrying many more standing but only on the lower deck. It is mainly the Midland Red that I notice, the ones I am most familiar with. Most originate from pre-war; they are solid, substantial vehicles retaining their padded, cloth upholstery, with registration prefixes of HA or AHA. But increasingly they are being supplemented by the newer "utility" buses, gaunt, angular, spindly vehicles with hard suspension and slatted wooden seats. From time to time a single-decker will pass, of pre-war vintage and occasionally very antique, even to my eyes, dating back to the very early 1930s. There are a few cars, almost all of them black in colour, and often a railway mechanical horse, a strange, articulated vehicle consisting of a flat platform or a boxed-in van structure, hauled by a three-wheeled "horse"........... Occasionally a car will pass with a huge, wallowing rubber bag lashed to its roof, overhanging both bonnet and boot and filled with town gas to fuel its progress in these days of tight petrol rationing. All of these vehicles will have fitted over their headlamps the familiar, round, black, metal masks bearing rows of hooded, horizontal slits through which glimmers of light will emerge to help the vehicle on its way after dark. The edges of mudwings and other extremities on all the public vehicles and many of the private ones are painted white to give pedestrians and other road users a chance of seeing the vehicle looming out of the darkness.

There are still horse-drawn vehicles about, usually brewers' drays bearing the name of their owners, Ansells or Mitchell & Butlers, or carts belonging to the LMS or GWR. One of these vehicles draws up alongside the pavement to my right, as they sometimes do. The driver in muffler and cloth cap gets down off his cart........

..........Buses arrive although still not yet ours. The bus-stops along this part of New Street serve mainly the routes out of Birmingham to the north of the city. The 118 goes to Walsall and there is a series of numbers denoting routes via the middle of Sutton Coldfield. The 101 goes to Streetly, as ours does, but travels via Sutton and terminates in Streetly village; the 102 to Mere Green, the 103 to Canwell. The 104, a more infrequent service, is always operated by a single-decker and pursues a circuitous route from New Street through Sutton and Streetly before disappearing off down the Chester Road towards Brownhills and finally ending up somewhere over the horizon in a distant place called Cannock. Another service which picks up here in New Street is one which is always identified by the conductor bellowing "Beeches" as he is doing today, meaning, as I find out much later, the Frankley Beeches Estate at Great Barr......

..........We shuffle on board and at my insistence climb the stairs to the top deck which is less crowded and where the view is far better. The fug of cigarette smoke starts to grow as more passengers light up but that is just about tolerable, as is the thought which always lurks in the back of the mind: whether the driver of this unwieldy and top-heavy vehicle will exercise due caution when negotiating the tighter bends on the journey. The conductor squeezes down the central aisle in order to collect our fares, holding a clipboard containing a row of different coloured paper tickets, starting with a white one for a fare of one penny. My mother offers the correct fare and two tickets are extracted, punched in a little machine which dangles around the conductor's neck and handed over. Then she - for more often than not these days the conductors are more accurately conductresses - moves on down the aisle to the next passenger.

I sit there and gaze out of the window at a Birmingham whole areas of which will disappear within a couple of decades, a concept quite beyond my wildest dreams or comprehension.............​
 
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A very interesting and well written piece ChrisM. Even after all of these years the places could be pictured very well.
 
Excellent recap ChrisM. I was along on that trip. My favourite area of town in the late l940's and l950's, the latter when I attended school on Corporation Street, was around High Street and definitely New Street near the Odeon. I used to catch the 5 or 5a near to the Midland Educational in Corporation Street and from school, the 39 in Martineau Street. I still like that area around High Street and New Street although it's very different these days. All that traffic from the top of New Street heading around to Corporation Street was something to behold most of the time in those far off days.. Using the buses throughout the years is exactly as you write about them. I always went upstairs and sat in the "fug" of a crowded bus and spent great lengths of time sitting on the 5 or 5a going up Alma Street at a snail's pace towards Six Ways during the rush hour while the bus shook as it was crawling along. Many times when the bus arrived at Witton Circle I would see two or three No.11's come to the bus stop outside the Co-op and nothing for another half hour. I remember the ticket system and the fare stages which often didn't work out well for me. Thanks for the memories Chris.
 
Great thread so brilliant to see the bus stops outside snowhill station at bottom of colmore row, where I used to catch the West brom bus to soho road to see my nan, auntie, uncle and cousins, and low and behold a No 12 Bartley Green bus just in view.
paul
 
Thanks for (embarrassingly!) kind comments, R., j. and T.

(I put the complete New Street memoir online some time ago, here. Sorry that I've probably mentioned it before).

Chris
 
Thanks for posting that video Bammot. So many buses and people all over the place. Not many people owned cars in those days and so buses
were vital to getting around. The forecourt in front of Grey's Department store was always loaded with people. My Mother was awful for dragging me across Corporation Street in front of the Midland Educational shop to catch the 5A in that era.
Those far away days, Midland Educational now I remember that well, maths text book I could never get the drift of.
 
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