Local Transport History Library

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About the Library

The original source for this website was Peter Gould's 'Local Transport Histories'. Peter had been interested in transport history for a long time and began collecting information about various transport undertakings that he had a particular interest in, initially for his own use. As the collection of notes began to grow he decided that they may be of interest to other historians and enthusiasts in general and so began developing a website. In 1999 he established his own website which he ran for 13 years under the title 'Local Transport Histories'.

In 2012, having retired from the bus industry, he was joined by a few of his former colleagues, who had also reached retirement age and were looking for something to occupy a few hours. Together they came up with the idea of modernising the website into an illustrated library in book form, that could be freely accessed at any time – and so the Local Transport History Library was born. The PDF format was chosen for simplicity and in 2014 the project started.

A new domain name was chosen and preparations made for the transfer of Peter's histories into illustrated PDF format. At the same time Peter's old domain name was relinquished as the histories were slowly transcribed and re-formatted into PDF booklets.

In November 2014 the first few PDF booklets were added to the library and the LTHL opened. Over the next few years the library grew to over 200 booklets as the project continued.

From there the LTHL has evolved into an online community of bus enthusiasts, bus historians and many other interested parties; it is not a society or organisation with members that you need to join, everyone can take part in the project. With the onset of Covid-19 in March 2020 the use of the Internet and e-mail increased dramatically and now all communications and submissions are entirely online - a system that works just as well as personal contact. Whether you consent to your photographs being used or just submit a single photograph; a snippet of text; or even, like some of our contributors, a whole history; you can join in. All the work on a single subject is co-ordinated by Peter Gould (who still plays a major role) and collates all the information received into PDF booklet form to a standard format (which has changed many times as the site has become larger). Our main area of interest is pre-deregulation and generally we do not deal with anything later, but anyone is welcome to submit anything for inclusion in any of our booklets and all submissions will be acknowledged. Although based in Lancashire we do try to cover most of the country, but as you would expect most of the original histories were northern municipalities and operators, although the content of the site is now more widespread.

The cost of running the LTHL (which is around £200 p.a.) is met by a few individuals who subsidise the project and no profit is made on the website, although donations from other parties are often received, for which the LTHL is grateful, and various items are sold to boost funds.

It came as a surprise, however, when we discovered that one individual had taken it upon himself to post Peter's old website back onto the Internet, without his permission, using Peter's old domain name! The site is, unfortunately, out of date and much of the information contained on there has been updated and is now included on the LTHL site. Amendments have been made to the original pages, which have probably been recovered from a copy on the 'Wayback Machine', giving the impression the site is still being maintained (e.g. the site is dated 1999-2016, whereas the original website was 1999-2012, when it ceased to be updated). From time to time commercial links have been incorporated (mainly about fuel systems), although currently it does not appear to have any; minor changes to pages have been made but no further information or updates have been found. We recommend that anyone checks the LTHL website for information they may require and does not rely too much on Peter's old site!

The enactment of the 1985 Transport Act on 26th October 1986 (de-regulation) effectively ended municipal operations throughout the country and this date has been used as a convenient cut-off date for the municipal histories, even though operations may have continued in the private sector after this date. We have also used this date as a convenient cut-off date for most of the companies in the private sector and most of our histories are pre-deregulation when the passenger transport industry was changed forever and many historic names were lost to corporate identity. This site attempts to chronicle the industry up until that time, although some leeway is given to companies and undertakings that have or had a substantial history before that date (e.g. John Fishwick & Sons Ltd).

All publications on this site are in PDF format - they are readable on most devices including iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire tablets with the Adobe PDF Reader download. The body and seating codes used in our publications are the standard PSV Circle codes and can be viewed HERE if you are uncertain about any of them.

We are always grateful for further information or archive and historic photographs for inclusion in second and future editions of our PDF booklets. If you can help then please email us. If you spot any mistakes or typo errors please get in touch. If you have anything you think might be of interest to us that we can publish in PDF format please let us know - we are always interested in unpublished material - as long as you have copyright.

For any other enquiries please email us: lth.library@gmail.com

CLICK HERE to visit our contributors page which lists all those involved in
the project or who have given permission for their work to be used >>>>>