About the Author

Jim Blake was born at the end of 1947, and he soon developed a passionate interest in railways, buses and trolleybuses. In 1961, he began transport photography, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s captured on film what are now very rare scenes of long-lost buses, coaches, trolleybuses and steam locomotives. These photographs have been published in various books and magazines over the past forty-five years, but there remains much unpublished material, which appears in his Pen & Sword books. Jim also started the North London Transport Society and, in conjunction with the group, he compiled and published a number of books on buses, trolleybuses and railways between 1977 and 2013, featuring many of the 100,000 or so transport photographs he has taken over the years.

Reviews

"A book full of memories, a song to the diversity and the colour, especially indicated for the lovers of transport"-- "Miniaturas JM"

"The pictures are presented largely in chronological order, so he takes us around the country and several times to Victoria and Wembley where his [Jim Blake] camera focused on vehicles that ranged from fleet standards to one-offs and other rarities"-- "Buses Magazine"

"This is a dream of a title for enthusiasts of bus fleets from the last century - I grew up in rural Gloucestershire, where all of the buses were made by the Bristol Omnibus Company, for obvious reasons, I guess. Jim's book is a celebration of the British Electric Traction Group's fleets of buses and coaches manufactured by some of the greatest names in the automotive industry. A brilliant celebration of bygone days!"-- "Books Monthly"

"Whether you can best recall the urban fleets that took you to work, shopping, or school or on outings to seaside resorts, it is an era now represented by bus preservationists and people like Jim Blake. The author has lovingly compiled 138-pages worth of black and white photographs and captions which will revive thoughts of the bus companies, their vehicles and the areas they served."-- "Best of British Magazine" (6/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)