Bus day attracts thousands

Now based at the town's central car park, the event has turned into a major attraction.

It started with a few vintage bus enthusiasts who got together to hold a sale of books and owners of old buses and coaches started arriving with their vehicles and giving rides

This year more than 50 vintage buses met, giving enthusiasts rides into the villages, around the town, and on trips to Longleat, Longbridge Deverill, Warminster Barracks, Stonehenge and Salisbury. Many of the day's journeys followed routes where buses no longer run.

Bob Eades, chairman of the organising committee, said: "Since we held our first Running Day in 1994 with just two vehicles the event has grown steadily each year and now attracts thousands of people.

"Indeed the event has grown so big that we have had to move it from the railway station to the central car park, which I believe was a major bus terminal back in the 1950s."

He said the routes of the vintage vehicles were carefully chosen to avoid any conflict with regular bus services from the town.

Among the buses on show was an old London bus that had run on the Westminster Abbey to Trafalgar Square route for most of its working life. Also on show was one of the Royal Blue coaches, which worked through the town on express services to the coast, when Warminster was a major bus terminal.

Driver Les Ronan said: "It is great to be involved with such an interesting event.

"We have brought the 1953 Bristol coach, which belongs to the Dorset Transport circle, on a nostalgic trip; putting her back on the route she used to work."

Taking time out from driving a modern day coach was German coach driver Chris Fischer who was on a real busman's holiday.

Mr Fischer had brought a party to Chippenham from its German twin town of Friedberg for the weekend and he was at the vintage day trying out the old-style cab of the AEC Regal which belongs to Jim Andress, of Chippenham.