Red & Blue Admiral (Portsmouth)

[GearJammer]

What happened to them?
I just looked at the new buses being scrapped thread and some of them looked in good nick, it got me thinking of the buses i recall in my area, the old MK1 & 2 Leyland Nationals that Provincial used were pretty much life expired when they desapeared but there was this firm called Red & Blue Admiral that used a massive fleet of mini buses and transit vans.... what happened to them, they just seemed to vanish.... the firm and the buses?

 

[radamfi]

Harry Blundred decided to sell all the Transit Holdings companies in the mid 90s. Red & Blue Admiral was sold to First. Thames Transit and Devon General were sold to Stagecoach. The new owners quickly replaced the minibuses with bigger buses, although Thames Transit had already been mostly converted to Darts.

 

[robertclark125]

In addition, the bus war in Oxford between City of Oxford and Thames Transit started to end once Stagecoach bought Thames Transit. Although Stagecoach Oxford does run a few city routes, the head to head competition has gone, and stagecoach mainly does runs from outside the city.

 

[BestWestern]

Harry Blundred decided to sell all the Transit Holdings companies in the mid 90s. Red & Blue Admiral was sold to First. Thames Transit and Devon General were sold to Stagecoach. The new owners quickly replaced the minibuses with bigger buses, although Thames Transit had already been mostly converted to Darts.

Much of the former Admiral fleet remained in service under First. Around the same time they also acquired Provincial which had it's own large fleet of minibuses, alongside the bigger buses. The two fleets were combined to form First Provincial - hence the Red & Blue Admiral identity was no more - and many of the minibuses continued on in service.

They were unexpectedly strong performers, the Iveco chassis lasted a long time considering their very hard use. The Mellor bodies on most of the Admiral fleet were poor, but the Marshall bodies on the ex-Provi (and a few Admiral examples) were very sound. They rattled considerably less than the Plaxton Merc 709s delivered new around the same time, and far less than the Merc Varios cascaded in some years later, all of which had supposedly superior Plaxton bodies.

One of Harry Blundred's initiatives was dual door minibuses, a very strange concept at the time but one which sort of made sense when combined with his high frequency ideas. The 'Admiral Liner' name was given to the 'big' minibuses (Iveco TurboDaily instead of Ford Transit!) which all had centre exit doors. First later converted some of the examples it kept in use however, removing the second doorway. Blundred was much maligned for his fleets of 'breadvans', but in many was he was years ahead of his time. Colour coded destination blinds were an idea he used, way before many other fleets caught on to the idea of clear route branding. 'HAIL & RIDE' was another passenger friendly idea, whereby you could simply flag down a bus without needing to be at a stop. Some genuinely interesting ideas, but sadly some didn't well work in practise.

 

[GearJammer]

Much of the former Admiral fleet remained in service under First. Around the same time they also acquired Provincial which had it's own large fleet of minibuses, alongside the bigger buses. The two fleets were combined to form First Provincial - hence the Red & Blue Admiral identity was no more - and many of the minibuses continued on in service.

They were unexpectedly strong performers, the Iveco chassis lasted a long time considering their very hard use. The Mellor bodies on most of the Admiral fleet were poor, but the Marshall bodies on the ex-Provi (and a few Admiral examples) were very sound. They rattled considerably less than the Plaxton Merc 709s delivered new around the same time, and far less than the Merc Varios cascaded in some years later, all of which had supposedly superior Plaxton bodies.

One of Harry Blundred's initiatives was dual door minibuses, a very strange concept at the time but one which sort of made sense when combined with his high frequency ideas. The 'Admiral Liner' name was given to the 'big' minibuses (Iveco TurboDaily instead of Ford Transit!) which all had centre exit doors. First later converted some of the examples it kept in use however, removing the second doorway. Blundred was much maligned for his fleets of 'breadvans', but in many was he was years ahead of his time. Colour coded destination blinds were an idea he used, way before many other fleets caught on to the idea of clear route branding. 'HAIL & RIDE' was another passenger friendly idea, whereby you could simply flag down a bus without needing to be at a stop. Some genuinely interesting ideas, but sadly some didn't well work in practise.

Yes i remember the Red and Cream livery on the bigger Nationals, it looked nice, shame it never lasted. I also recall the Mercs, used mainly on Pompey-Waterlooville/Clanfield services as i recall, we on the Pompey-Fareham service had the smaller Ivecos and the bread vans and i think the bread vans were also used up round Paulsgrove?

What happened to the breadvans? All scrapped i hope as they were always crowded from my memories of them?

From memory my earliest recolection of buses were Provincial operating the Fareham/Gosport area with Southdown covering Fareham-Portsmouth-Waterlooville area, sharing Portsmouth with CityBus (pink and white buses?). Then Stagecoach coming along and buying Southdown and Citybus? Provincial then covering teh whole of Gosport-Fareham-Portsmouth-Waterlooville area and stagecoach taking Portsmouth-Havant and all points east of there. There was a period that we had Stagecoach buses in Fareham but it did'nt seem to last very long at all?

 

[BestWestern]

I believe Mr Blundred emigrated to Oz in the end, and I heard a story that he took his Transits with him - I don't know if there's any truth in that at all though, in reality I suspect they were probably cut up. Certainly they all went before First came along, they inherited the bigger Iveco efforts.

The Stagecoach thing got a bit complicated. They bought Southdown, which is where they got into the south coast and why they now operate from Portsmouth all the way through to Worthing and into Brighton - that's Southdown country. They also bought out Pompey Corporation, but the competition bods got involved and they were ordered to sell it again - that's where Admiral got onto the scene. They always kept one of the old Corporation Atlantean double deckers that they painted white with red and blue bands and it popped up here and there among all the breadvans. And Stagecoach ever since have kept just the old Southdown routes in Portsmouth, with a few tweaks over the years. And then, ironically, along came first a few yeats later and bought themselves a nice little monopoly which nobody seems to have any problem with, and the punters today are crying our for some competition to get them to buck their ideas up!