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Oxford Bus Museum Mini-Running Day, 21st March 2010<br />
by Berwyn Prys Jones<br />
Colourful full-page adverts in the March edition <strong>of</strong> Buses magazine and the<br />
April edition <strong>of</strong> Bus and Coach Preservation highlighted several attractions<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Oxford Bus Museum’s March mini-running day: the unusual if not<br />
unique City <strong>of</strong> Oxford livery on two AEC Regents and the launch <strong>of</strong> two<br />
books including one in Presbus’s ‘Return Journey’ series on the City <strong>of</strong><br />
Oxford fleet itself. A visit to the museum at Long Hanborough some<br />
years ago had made me promise to myself that I’d return for a running day<br />
at some point and this seemed as good a time as any. An early start from<br />
Cardiff should have made it an easy journey but finding Long Hanborough<br />
wasn’t as simple at it looked on the map.<br />
Arrival at Long Hanborough was a little later than the <strong>of</strong>ficial ten o’clock<br />
start, but I needn’t have worried. Though a small group <strong>of</strong> people had<br />
already parked their cars in the car park the gates weren’t yet open. The<br />
advert had said 10.00am but no-one inside the museum yard seemed keen<br />
to open the gates and the stallholders were still unloading their<br />
merchandise. It was 10.30 by the time the gates opened and a small<br />
crowd <strong>of</strong> us swarmed into the museum shop to pay our entrance fees.<br />
Any delay was swiftly forgotten for in the yard stood the magnificent<br />
lowbridge Weymann-bodied AEC Regent III PWL 413 with its livery<br />
sparkling. It was something <strong>of</strong> a disappointment, though, to find out that<br />
it wouldn’t be loading up and leaving straight away: there’d be an hour’s<br />
wait before departure. An hour, though, provided plenty <strong>of</strong> opportunity<br />
to photograph PWL and the other buses on show before too many other<br />
people arrived and made photography difficult.<br />
In the first shed on the left were the East Lancs-bodied Dennis Loline 304<br />
KFC and exposed-radiator AEC Regent V 956 AJO along with 14 LFC, the<br />
Wadham-bodied one-and-a-half decker coach <strong>of</strong> the Morris Motors Band,<br />
which by comparison with the ex-City <strong>of</strong> Oxford buses was in a rather<br />
drab livery <strong>of</strong> dark blue and cream. Still it reminded visitors that the bus<br />
museum site also houses a small but intriguing Morris motor museum<br />
filled with all kinds <strong>of</strong> Morris memorabilia, including a bull-nosed Morris<br />
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