We went virtual for 2020!
We were really disappointed to have to cancel the 2020 South East Bus Festival but the Coronavirus crisis left no alternative and ours was just one of hundreds of events across the country (and beyond) that had to be cancelled.

We were back in 2021 but to show we were not going to be totally beaten in 2020 we set up a ‘virtual’ South East Bus Festival that people could be a part of from the comfort of their own home while we all stayed at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

Vehicle entries
We invited the owners of vehicles that had been entered into the real event to post photos on our Facebook page of the buses and coaches they would have brought to the event, so take a look at the page to see who posted their photos. The relevant posts are dated 4 April 2020.

You can see the actual list of what had been entered into the real event at the time of cancellation here.

Continuous slide show
We always run a slide show inside the Clive Emson Conference Centre that is on a continuous loop, giving visitors to the event the chance to rest their feet and to watch an interesting selection of  bus and coach photos relating to the main theme of the event at any time while the bus festival is taking place.

For 2020 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the formation of the erstwhile London Country Bus Services company in 1970 that provided a comprehensive network of services in the counties surrounding London as well as the famous Green Line services to, from and across the capital.

The slide show also takes a look back at the Thames Valley company that was formed 100 years ago this year.
 
You can view the slide show here.

Talks by guest speakers
Another feature of the bus festival is the programme of talks by guest speakers, usually bus industry professionals.

In 2020 we were delighted to have arranged for three speakers to give talks at the event and while this could not happen for real, they very kindly prepared written versions of their talks in two cases and a Powerpoint slide show presentation in the third.

The speakers we had arranged for 2020 were as shown below and you can view their talks/presentations by clicking the links at the bottom of this section.

                          Andrew Braddock, a name well-known to bus enthusiasts as a columnist in
                         Buses magazine, talks about the history of London Country Bus
                         Services, the fiftieth anniversary of its formation being the main theme of this
                         year's event. Andrew's career spanned several decades and included
                         employment with a number of National Bus Company subsidiaries as well as London Transport, Transport for London and a period with British Rail in earlier times.

                           Roger Davies, well-known for his regular column in Classic Bus and the
                          author of a number of bus books, was Operations Director for the former
                          Maidstone & District company during its period of privatisation, having
                          worked for the company through the later years of National Bus Company
                          ownership. He has a wealth of experience from his career that also included working for Cardiff City Transport, Trent and Ribble. Roger has given entertaining talks at most of the South East Bus Festivals so far and has kindly agreed to share more anecdotes this year from his time in the bus business.

                           The Bus Archive is an exciting project that is creating a safe place to store,
                           for the future, a huge range of items that record the history of the bus
                          industry. As well as more than 1.5 million photographs, the archive holds
                          official bus company documents from the early years of the 20th Century
                          onwards and a substantial collection of publicity items and other artefacts, all stored in controlled environments to preserve them but available for researchers to view at one of the three locations in which they are kept.

Please click the links below to see the presentations:
     Andrew Braddock
     Roger Davies
     The Bus Archive (Powerpoint slide show)   (PDF document)

Celebrating milestones
The main theme of the 2020 event event was to have been the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of London Country Bus Services in 1970.

Formed by the divestment of London Transport’s Country Area operation to form a new company that was a subsidiary of the National Bus Company, London Country provided a substantial network of services in the counties surrounding London, as well as running the network of Green Line services that linked a large number of towns and villages with central London, many of the services running from one side of the capital to the other.

Broken into four separate companies in 1986 just ahead of the deregulation of bus services and the privatisation of the National Bus Company that year, much of the former London Country area has been re-united, after various ownership changes, as part of the Arriva group, although many of its original services are now run by a variety of other operators.

*You can read more about the history of London Country Bus Services here.

The secondary theme of the 2020 South East Bus Festival was to have been our own tenth anniversary. The first event was one called ‘M&D 100’ in 2011 that was arranged to celebrate the centenary of the formation of the Maidstone & District Motor Services Ltd.
Intended as a one-off celebration it was so popular that we organised another event the following year and another in 2013 and since then the South East Bus Festival has taken place annually and has become a major player in the bus event calendar.

The popularity of the event comes from its variety of activities and an ever-changing selection of buses and coaches on display. Around 50% each year are ones that have not joined us previously and forty of those entered are used on a frequent free service around the showground which really brings life to the event and gives photographers plenty of different backdrops to capture the vehicles against.

The talks by guest speakers, slide shows, the Reunion Tea Room and a huge number of sales-stands and model bus displays have ensured the ongoing popularity of the event. We hope to see you back at the showground on 10th April 2021!

*You can read more about the history of the South East Bus Festival here.  

A third anniversary that we would have celebrated in the souvenir programme is the fiftieth anniversary of Regent Coaches of Whitstable.

This local bus and coach company has been a familiar sight on the roads of north and east Kent and beyond. As well as its coaches being used for private hire, excursions and school transport, it has also run a number of local bus services (and continues to do so) and was involved in 2012 in the provision of some of the special services that ran in London as part of the Olympics transport network during the course of that event.

*You can read more about the history of Regent Coaches here.

Book launch

                      A brand-new book about the Maidstone & District bus company was set    
                      to be launched at the real South East Bus Festival, this stunning 208-page
                     large-format hardback publication having been eagerly-awaited by fans of the
                     famous bus company that served a large part of Kent and East Sussex for
                     nearly ninety years.

Compiled by David Toy and Ray Stenning the book looks not just at the vehicles and routes served by M&D over the period between 1946 and 1970 but also covers some of the ’behind-the-scenes’ activity that helps to keep a bus service running and which always makes for fascinating reading.

You can see more details about the book here, including how to order your copy.