SELNEC PTE 6016 (2116 DK) at Arundel Street, Deeplish - Jan 1972

January 1972 – For a time the SELNEC PTE service to Arundel Street off Ashfield Road in Rochdale ran as service 26 from Holland Street, College Bank. Because the latter was too close to the town centre to attract many passengers it was discontinued and Arundel Street linked with the 4A (later numbered 444) service to Bamford.

6016 (2116 DK) was seen at Arundel Street leaving for Bamford. It was a Weymann bodied AEC Reliance 2MU2RA, the first of a batch five such buses delivered to Rochdale Corporation in December 1961 with fleet numbers 16-20.

I started secondary school in Rochdale town centre in September 1961 and these buses ran on service 5 to Bamford, one of my travel options to get home. In fact I would wait an excessive amount of time in order to use one of the shiny new buses. I finished school at 1600 and I could realistically catch a bus at 1605 and every five minutes thereafter but I would wait until 1630 for one of these.
They were dual door buses, the first the Corporation had bought for some years and were one-man operated. The drivers would often forget to open the centre exit door leaving me standing like a lemon as he dealt with the boarding passengers. There was however the emergency push button for the use of but they were moved out of sight and reach in due course. Another amusing aspect I recall, in the days when bell push strips were mounted on the ceiling rather than in childhood reach, was that I regularly used by 12 inch school rule in order to press the bell strip!