| What is the SA Collection all about? |
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My collection comprises buses with some connection with the City of St. Albans. They have either been based at SA Garage or have operated into or through the City at some point. It is intended to restore them to the sort of condition they would have been while in service in the area; I believe that preserved buses should look like buses in service rather than like larger versions of highly-polished classic cars. My favourite sort of preserved bus event is the "running day" where vehicles pertinent to a particular town are able to carry passengers on recreations of past bus routes. Such events have taken place in the London Country area and at least one of my collection has been a regular participant. It is worth mentioning that I have ridden in many of the vehicles in my collection while in service in the St. Albans area; other vehicles have some other form of link to my past. Some of my vehicles are known to have passed right by my door on 361 journeys! The SA Collection is my own personal way of commemorating the buses and now -demolished garage in my former home City. |
| How I became interested in the local buses.... |
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The Cathedral City of St. Albans, Hertfordshire, is where I spent my formative years; to be accurate I actually lived in an area called "How Wood", which was a twenty-minute bus ride away from the City Centre. Local buses were provided by the Country Bus Department of London Transport, which became London Country Bus Services in 1970.
The City had its own Bus Garage, built in 1936 by London Transport. Vehicles allocated there carried the allocation code "SA".
Buses passed my front door regularly on route 361 to St Albans, although occasional 304s also passed. Some of my earliest memories of the 361 include green "RT" double deck buses, at that time still in London Transport ownership. The 361 was the favoured method of travel to get to St. Albans for shopping trips with mother, but once I started school in the City I usually travelled by train. There were, however, occasions when the 361 or 304 were used for the trip home! My main experience of the buses in the St. Albans area came between the late 1960s and 1983, the year I went on to further education. Consequentially I am most familiar with the London Country era. In the later part of the 1970s, my interest in buses became slightly more formalised, when I discovered the delights of Ian Allan fleet books for London Transport and London Country! I was thus able to record buses that I had seen and even those that I had ridden in. Sometimes, I was able to indulge myself with a visit to the forecourt of SA Garage before school or during my lunch break… |
| The Demise of SA Garage |
| In the mid to late 1980s, the once large London Country company was broken up into smaller units then privatised. One casualty of this was SA Garage, which closed in January 1989. The building stood empty for a number of years and during the mid-1990s an annual bus rally was held in St. Albans, utilising the Garage forecourt in each case. These rallies were organised by the "Save St. Albans Garage" campaign; their mission was ultimately to fail as the garage was demolished and the site used for housing, however a positive outcome was the formation of the Three Counties Museum. |
| Credits |
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This web site was created and is maintained by Jonathan Wilkins. Pages are tested against Mozilla, Netscape and Internet Explorer. If it all comes out as a mess, please contact Jonathan.
The photographs are not necessarily credited individually, but are a combination from Eddie's and Jonathan's own, with most capable images from Ian Smith at the various Country Bus Rallies. |
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