Book review – Bus Breakers of the UK

Keith Jenkinson has documented the ultimate demise of the UK’s life expired buses for many years, focussing particularly on those in Yorkshire where just one road in Barnsley once housed some 15 companies engaged in the scrap business. Nowadays, there is a much wider geographical spread and most vehicles meet their end in modern facilities very soon after sale by an operator or dealer. In a follow up volume to his ‘Bus Dealers and Breakers of Yorkshire,’ Keith takes a wider geographical view over the past century, covering a selection of the 150 organisations that he has identified as being involved in breaking up buses and coaches, some lasting longer than others.

The comprehensive introduction takes the reader on a tour around the UK and a similar format is followed by the images, around 150, arranged in the usual Amberley two per page format. The earliest date back to the 1950s with some of below average quality included to illustrate the once common practice of breakers accumulating large numbers of vehicles on waste land such as disused quarries. If only some of those had survived into the era of widespread private preservation like Woodham’s steam loco graveyard at Barry. The images then take the reader though the decades almost to the present day and remind us how rapidly time passes with views of hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles at the end of their lives, providing a new challenge for the scrapman! Even an electric vehicle features – what was billed at the world’s first full electric double-decker converted for Transdev York in 2014 has now reached the end of the road! Definitively an interesting volume!

Review by David Cole.

Bus Breakers of the UK by Keith Jenkinson is published by Amberley at £15.99. ISBN 978-1-3981-0566-9. It is also available in Kindle, Kobo and iBook formats.

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