Visiting old bus depots is definitely not my thing… but I’ve found with age comes a different openness, appreciation, and interest for trying different things. So when the opportunity came up to photograph some classic buses, engineering and old advertising, I tagged along with my brother Rob to this Bank Holiday Heritage Bus open day.

Set on a rainy day at the end of April, the old bus depot in Barry, South Wales, is a cornucopia for people interested in vintage buses, with many examples permanently housed on the premises, it’s great they allow the public to venture in on occasion to view and marvel at the machinery from times past.

Not really knowing what to expect inside, although I do vaguely remember visiting the building many years ago, I decided to get straight to work documenting the vehicles inside, the people and details on display at the open day, which incidentally coincided with celebrating 120 years of Cardiff municipal transport.

From the photo’s I took and that are featured throughout this piece, you can see that the depot was well visited on the day with people travelling far and wide to attend the show. I was luck enough to speak to a number of interesting people, and actually purchase some vintage destination blinds, hopefully I can get them framed up at some point, the patina and typography on them was visually appealing to me, being a designer also. One of the highlights however for me was talking to Ken Morgan, the gentleman featured above in the main image.

Ken is a former RAF engineer, who went onto drive buses for Red and White back in the 1950’s which led him to meet his future wife a conductress working the same bus company. The fascinating thing for me engaging with Ken who is now 89 years of age, was the amazing life he has lead and the variety of jobs he has had, the places he has visited and his general outlook on living a fulfilling life was simply inspirational.

Having retrained to be a bus driver, he has said that “working one the buses with Shirley really was some of the happiest times of my life”. The bus featured behind Mr Morgan was the one he purchased a number of years back for £12,000 as a gift for his wife, they set about restoring it as a reminder of their early memories of meeting and working together. It now forms part of the permanent collection of buses at the Heritage museum in Barry, but as on this day, Ken still makes the long trip from his home to spend time with it, and talk and to fellow enthusiasts and people interested in these fantastic reminders of past transport. If you get a few minutes spare, click on the link below to read more about Ken in some of the news articles he has appeared in.

With the rain coming down outside, I wasn’t concerned with swapping lenses on the day so I limited my lens choice to the light and travel friendly RF f1.8 50mm STM prime lens for some tighter details and crops paired with my Canon R6. This allowed me to capture photo’s in relatively low light as it was a dull and rainy day and also have the ability to achieve some nice bokeh and subject isolation, which you can hopefully appreciate in the some of the photo’s I’ve shared in this post.

You can also check out more about the Cardiff Transport Preservation Group on the website link below:

Cardiff Transport Preservation

Thanks for taking the time to read this latest blog, and if you have enjoy it feel free to leave a like or comment, which are always much appreciated. In the meantime look out for my next blog post which will be dropping soon.

Ken Morgan news articles:

BBC South East Wales 2016

Wales Online 2016

Barry & District News 2016