Preserved OTA 645G at The Big Bus Show, Stonham Barns - 10 Aug 2025 (P1210798)

Sunday 10 August 2025 – On display at The Big Bus Show, Stonham Barns, Suffolk.

A classic coach wearing a classic livery but a combination that never actually existed in reality. The famous red and black Midland Red livery is carried by OTA 645G, an Eastern Coachworks bodied Bristol RELH6G new in April 1968 as a Royal Blue coach for Western National.

After getting caught in the fire that destroyed Bournemouth Coach Station on 25 July 1976 the coach was repaired. This included the fitting of a deeper apertures on the destination displays.

During my time working in the Traffic Office at Yelloway (1967-1974) this coach was one of the Bournemouth based coaches that used to appear in Rochdale on the direct joint service operated by Associated Motorways and Yelloway. Working the northbound day service on Fridays it would usually return south with a full load of passengers out of Manchester on Saturday as a duplicate to the Yelloway coach

Yelloway worked all the other runs on the service one running southbound overnight on Friday returning north during Saturday daytime and another running southbound Saturday daytime returning overnight Saturday night.

The PiPs (photo in photo) show the coach in Rochdale and the timetable for the Rochdale-Bournemouth service.

(On the right is Fareline Bus & Coach Services (Geoff Morss) of Wingfield, near Eye, Suffolk T127 OAH a Wright bodied Volvo B10BLE that was new to Ambassador Travel (524) in March 1999. It had also been operated by Whincop Coaches of Peasenhall and registered OJI 742).