Northern General Transport FCN 631F - 17 July 1972

Monday 17 July 1972 - For my return journey from Leeds to Manchester I could have travelled on the North Western Road Car coach operating as a duplicate to Northern General 2631 (FCN 631F), the service coach on the 0900 Tyne-Tees-Mersey service X98. However, I wanted to travel on the service coach itself. The station inspector was aghast that I would choose this coach as opposed to a fairly fresh duplicate which had hardly any passengers on board. The NGT coach had travelled down from Newcastle on what was quite a hot day and was quite 'sweaty' featuring various aromas of food, fruit and the rest! There was just one empty seat, the centre one at the rear - but this ride was the main purpose of the trip! As it transpired the ride was to be fairly short lived because a problem developed after about 20 minutes and the driver took us in to a Yorkshire Woollen District garage (Dewsbury I think) where we all had to transfer to the YWD service bus seen alongside in this photo.