About us..... 

Starting from October we intend to extend our brief to cover all aspects of the Welsh vintage and classic motoring and transport scene and our events programme will feature actions and events from the widest world of Welsh Transport, a new departure.

We will put all our effort in pushing for the establishment of a Welsh Transport Heritage Centre  in the former Adams stone quarry at Risca which will be a transport museum centre for all of Wales, and not just for the promoting groups.

This exciting project was the initiative of the Rhymney Valley Transport Preservation Society and had many doubters in the beginning, but with an increasing number of Caerphilly CBC councillors on board and the interest of other like minded groups, we expect to see an early announcement.

There are other projects at varous stages of developement, proposed bus museums in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, and  Swansea and smaller proposals for a specialised museum in Cardigan.  We have not received news of progress from any in recent months,  but cannot assume that they have stalled, as we receive new information we will keep you updated.

There are many old buses of great interest to the heritage of South Wales that are crying out for reconsteruction, a good example is this former West Monmouthshire Leyland PD2/40 with Wigan built Massey Bros. lowbridge body registered 260BAX and owned by a well known local enthusiast which currently lies at the Heads of the Valleys subject to the ravages of the weather up there, it needs to be under cover before it is too late.

The British public visit transport museums in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in their thousands every week, every year,  but in Wales we have yet to offer them such an opportunity !  It is true that we have more than our fare share of wonderful preserved narrow and standard gaurge steam railways and even now exciting new projects are being announced in Anglesey.

Through this website , your voice will be heard, the voice of transport heritage in Wales and in addition, we hope to bring you the very best news and information on our road transport heritage scene  as and when it happens.

We will continue to add new photos and operator histories to our public service vehicles history pages and your help would be appreciated to enable us to record the history of public transport in the Valleys and South Wales in general and especially the buses in their different liveries of the municipal and council bus companies we are equally interested in the vehicles of North and Mid-Wales.

All the photographs are supplied by you, our friends  and supporters and are edited to suit the page layout on which they appear. All photographs are copyright of the author whose name appears. Where necessary the photos are digitally repaired, and edited, but are not enhanced in any way.

Some photos are provided as part of a collection, and the photographer is unknown, if any photo has been wrongly credited, or is your copyright,  then please get in touch and we can correct the information or remove it, if you so wish.

If you have access to old photos of any form of road transport in  North, South and Mid-Wales,  please be generous and share it with like minded enthusiasts and students of transport for so much of our valuable Welsh transport heritage is lost for ever because somebody passed away and their photos, perhaps in a shoe box or the loft are seen as having no value. 

Look how many transport fans and historians have visited our new site since 1 January 2006

Bargoed

about your editor.......

........and what about the editor of this website !  Many visitors find it strange that the editor of this important website does not live in Wales,  in fact lives more than 1000 miles away from Wales.

Well I am a Welshman living in the Czech Republic for the last sixteen years with my wife, my young son Andrew Lloyd and my five Munsterlander cross dogs. 

You can see me to the left visiting a "secret" military vehicle rally which was not allowed in the then Communist Czechoslovakia in 1988, I am seen on the left and to the right with the back to me is the late George Trnka, one of the formost experts on American Jeeps despite living behind the Iron Curtain all his life and on the right is good friend for more than twenty five years, Peter Kudla, a jeep owner to this day.

I  "saved" my first double decker bus in  1972 and had never driven anything bigger than a car in those days, it has a crash gearbox and the best news is that it still lives on today , although not in my ownership !

Since the early 1970's many old cars ,  buses and lorries not to mention a spinkling of military vehicles have passed through my hands, each  had its special affection,  and although military vehicles were never a serious interest,  they gave me most fun, a US Air Force "Follow ME" jeep, a multi fuel engines 6 x 6 Reo  and best of all a GMC benzin engined DUKW, loved to take it in the river and local canal and it had a Welsh connection, it was purchased in an auction of Post Office vehicles at Welshpool, the old DUKW was used to take Post Office communications workers to their relay station when the Severn was in flood,  I wonder who ownes it now ?

In 1977 I founded the Bedford Register which had the aim of recording details of existing preserved Bedford vehicles, Bedford vehicles closed down in 1986 and now the registry records details and helps owners all over the world, I find windscreens for CF ambulances in Guyana, starter motors for old TJ trucks in the Maldives, TL wiring diagrams for the Burton brewery museum, and all sorts of parts for all sorts of vehicles,  sometimes found in Australia or New Zealand and shipped to Macau, or Uraguay, Canada or Finland !!

I have never worked in the bus industry in Britain, and have never lived in South Wales although strangly two different jobs took me to South Wales, as a young man working for a manufacturer of screens for the coal industry and made many trips to the coal mines and washing plants and of course the Steel Company of Wales at Llanwern and much later when with the US Army I was a frequent visiter to the armaments storeage facility at Caerwent.

I am currently self  employed and work as a driver and also a "action cars supplier" in the film industry, my last big film was "The Omen" made in the Barrandov Studios in Prague.   The above photo taken in late 2005 on a Sea France Channel ferry delivering an ex. London Transport RTL, thats the bus, not the young Polish lady who is not my wife ! 

I still collect old vehicles and have a collection of more than twenty British, Czech and Hungarian buses , coaches and lorries including several Bedfords and am pleased to be Chairman for the second time of the Bohemia Road Transport Museum . With your help I will always find time to keep this Welsh Transport Heritage website current and interesting.

Click on the logo below and then click Europe when the page appears, wait for the map to show and then zoom in on the UK and you will see where our last 100 visiters came from,  using the zoom facilities on the left hand side, you can take a close up look to see where our visiters are coming from.  The map does not show multiple visits from one computer.