AS a lad growing up in the 1940s, Geof Dickson lived on Wellington Street. From his bedroom window, he had a grandstand view over the old West Yorkshire Road Car depot off Barbican Road, where more than 100 vehicles, including double-decker buses, were housed. "I was lulled to sleep at night by the engines," he recalls.

That sparked a life-long love of buses.

Mr Dickson, now 74 and living off Hull Road, never actually worked on them: instead he joined Rowntrees and was a member of the buying team which bought much of the factory's machinery. But he does have a comprehensive collection of old photographs of early double-decker buses in York - and an encyclopaedic knowledge of their history.

Before 1934, buses in York were operated by the York Corporation, he says. From 1934 onwards, however, the York-West Yorkshire Joint Committee was formed, and until bus deregulation in the 1980s buses in York were operated by the West Yorkshire Road Company.

In the late 1930s, two fleets of new double-decker buses were commissioned for York. One fleet was brought into service in 1938, and had number plates beginning with a CW. A second fleet, commissioned in 1939, had plates beginning DW.

These buses served the city throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s.

By the 1950s, however, the buses were getting old. The decision was taken to replace them. But there was a problem, Mr Dickson says Bus licences were granted by the police. And, because of the city's narrow streets, they refused to approve new buses, which would have been eight feet wide.

Instead, the West Yorkshire Road Company was forced to send its old, narrower buses - which were a mere 7'6" wide - to Harrogate, where the worn-out bodies were stripped away.

The chassis were then rebuilt using the old engines and gear-boxes, before being sent to Lowestoft in Suffolk for new, 7' 6" bodies to be fitted to them.

It was only a few years later, after the bus company had successfully trialled some wider buses around the city, that the police relented, Mr Dickson says, and wider buses were allowed.

Mr Dickson has some wonderful photos of those narrow old double deckers trundling around York - including one of a 3A heading down Walmgate towards Hull Road, passing the INL Working Men's Club on its left.

The photograph must have been taken some time in the late 1950s or 1960s, because it shows one of the 1930s buses after a 1950s refit (you can tell this because the destination board is in three parts, Mr Dickson says: before the refit the destination boards were in two parts). The photo was taken from Walmgate Bar, he thinks. "In the background are all the old buildings which have long since gone."

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Other photos show the 3A coming into Walmgate through the bar; a No 6 bus in Rougier Street before its 1950s refit; a 4A (again before its 1950s refit) which has just come over Lendal Bridge and is about to turn through the city walls to the station; and a 'special' racecourse bus (one which has undergone the 1950s refit) turning just in front of the railway station, with the corner of the Station Hotel visible in the distance.

There are also two photographs showing the process by which the buses were refitted in the 1950s. One shows the stripped down chassis of a bus ready to have a new body fitted, parked somewhere near the Central Works depot in East Parade, Harrogate.

The other shows the discarded body of a bus lying on what looks like waste ground, presumably somewhere near the Central Works. It is an oddly poignant image, the number plate still clearly legible, the confident adverts for Bovril and for Hammonds Tower Ales on the back looking oddly out of place on such a wreck.

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