All aboard for bus ride down memory lane
All aboard. We've been dipping into our archives to dig out some aspects of local transport history – and find to our surprise that our own offices were once an epicentre for relaxing Wolverhampton transport staff.
It turns out that years ago the Express and Star offices in Queen Street were also the home for the Wolverhampton Transport Club.
The club, for drivers, conductors, and other staff, was in the editorial department in a section on the second floor later occupied by the paper's feature writers.
It had a well patronised bar, two billiard tables and various other popular amenities.
Presumably we are talking of around the 1950s – any club members of old who can remember those days, we'd love to hear your memories.
By 1969 however the club was elsewhere, split across two different sites.
Membership at that time was about 1,000 and the club rooms were at Ward Street, between Horseley Fields and Walsall Street, and at Park Lane, Low Hill.
The club at Park Lane opened in 1958 and was conveniently next to the depot there.
While on our transport trip down memory lane, let's remember too the last day of the Cradley Heath bus depot – and three others – almost exactly 50 years ago.
In late May 1971 Midland Red veteran driver Bill Barnsley steered double decker 6124 out of the bus garage on his last journey and said: "This is a sad moment – the end of an era"
Above him as he inched through the gates was a large sign advertising the sale of the 32,000 square foot depot which ceased operation that night. Later driver Barnsley was joining about 25 other staff to collect redundancy pay at the 32-year-old depot which was being shut down under the company's economy axe.
Mr Barnsley, aged 63, with 23 years' service, clocking tens of thousands of miles with the firm behind him, ferried his last loads of passengers on the 205 Blackheath route.
Also among those collecting his cards that day was driver Kenneth Nock, of Woodlands Avenue, Quarry Bank. As garage union branch secretary he had been a leader of vain efforts to save the doomed depot, one of four being shut to ease Midland Red's huge cash deficit.
One of those closing at the same time was the Midland Red garage at Lichfield. The Last Post was played and a black flag bearing the message R.I.P. flew outside the building at half mast.
And if you were one of Wolverhampton's transport workers of yesteryear, did you merit a "Courtesy Star"? Among our archive photos is one showing the Wolverhampton Corporation transport drivers and conductors who left the first shift to be presented with their Courtesy Stars at the Cleveland Road transport offices in February 1965.
Let's remember that there was a time when women did not drive buses, but wartime brought big changes, and Wolverhampton's three female pioneers appear to have been a Mrs Worthington, a Miss A B Davies, and a Miss N Price, who were the first three women who trained.
They were featured on the front page of the Express and Star on May 12, 1942, when the story read: "Wolverhampton is to have women drivers of trolley buses. At present three women drivers, none of whom has a car, are being trained. Up to the present the three drivers have been instructed in the overhead wire system, and have been shown the method of replacing a trolley on the wires. This afternoon they attended the Park Lane depot, where they were shown the various controls."
And lastly let's meet driver Oliver Walton and conductor Bernard Parsons, at the time the longest serving employees of Wolverhampton Transport, shortly before the pair retired in 1947.
Mr Walton, driving since 1913, had travelled some 900,000 miles of Wolverhampton roads, and Mr Parsons, who began work in 1915, had since then clipped over 7.5 million tickets.
