Keeping The 'red' Flag Flying Proud

摘要

The introduction to Malcolm Keeley's excellent new Working Days: Midland Red book reviewed on p68 this month includes a 33-year-old photograph of Leamington bus conductor Ashley Wakelin collecting a fare from a smiling young woman on the bottom deck of a BMMO D9 of Midland Red, the former Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company. Today that conductor owns his own D9, along with two other Midland Red vehicles, and has acquired the right to use the Midland Red Coaches name for a business that makes a living out of marketing bus and coach nostalgia. He graduated from conducting to driving and ended up as assistant depot manager at Leamington, leaving after the 1981 break-up of Midland Red to work in the coach industry. He has long harboured the dream of establishing a museum devoted to Midland Red, and towards that end developed a business called Wheels to raise the necessary funds. It has taken various forms over the past 22 years, and from 1992 to 1995 was Coaching at Wheels, based in his hometown of Nuneaton and running a small fleet of heritage vehicles in a cream and maroon livery.