Taking the bus ………… a silly Didsbury story

I say silly but that would be unfair on this bus destination roller board, and equally unfair to Southern Cemetery, Withington, and the White Lion which also featured as places on the route.

My old posty friend David Harrop sent it over with the covering note that it dates from 1939 and alas “the original blind has been cut up I'm afraid”.

You might be forgiven for wondering about the historical significance of what looks to be at best a  trivial piece of transport ephemera.

But not so because if I have got this right, this destination board will have been for one of the buses which replaced the old tram services on the route from town to Didsbury.  

Long before the last Manchester Corporation Tram slid into oblivion the Committee had been replacing tram by bus.

And from December 1938 through to February 1939 the 41 service  [Chorlton-Exchange/Piccadilly] and the 42 [Didsbury-Piccadilly/Exchange] were turned from tram to bus.

All of which makes this bit of roller blind quite something.

Well, that is if you mourn the passing of the old Corporation trams and are fascinated by a 1939 bus.

Of course, I might have bits wrong, and will no doubt be corrected.

I was assisted in this story by David Posty Harrop and that excellent book The Manchester Bus, by Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, which I borrowed from Andy Robertson who may want to ask for an overdue fine given the the time it has sat on our shelves.

Location; 1939

Picture; bus destination roller board, 1939, courtesy of David Harrop

*The Manchester Bus By Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, 1989