About the Fleet

Southwestbus is a 1/76th scale model bus fleet based in Bridgwater, Somerset. Established in the summer of 2009, the fleet is relatively young compared to others but has its origins in Blue Bus, founded by Stephanie Charlton in November 1997 with one Mercedes 608D bus. 

That fleet expanded from one bus to some 250 vehicles at its peak before the business was sold to Pilgrim Travel Group in July 2008. 

The fleet began trading in East Kent & East Sussex as southbus where several growth opportunities were identified to create a ‘mezzanine’ operation serving routes that larger operators consider unviable, allowing them to concentrate on the profitable, main line corridors which deliver the growth required by shareholders.

A change in operating area came about in the summer of 2010, when the fleet was briefly based in the fictitious county of Wessex (as immortalised by the novels of Thomas Hardy), though by Autumn the fleet had expanded into Somerset, where growth opportunities had been identified that were not being adequately met by existing fictitious fleet operators, despite those opportunities to grow being rather obvious.

southwestbus is owned and managed by former Blue Bus managers though the former owner of Blue Bus is a non-executive director and shareholder in this new operation. The very simple business philosophy is to grow the business by a mixture of commercial and contracted revenues across the South-West region, and this led to the fleet expanding to around 140 vehicles in a very short space of time. 

The fleet does not intend to compete with others and does not pay attention to activities of other fleets. This said, we do work closely with a few other operators. 

As a local business, southwestbus is very in tune with the needs of the communities it serves, and many of its bus services are better than those provided by real operators. Since August 2013, all services have been operated with low floor, DDA compliant buses, meeting the deadline some eighteen months to two/three years early.

The bus route network takes inspiration from the routes of real operators in Somerset, but with important differences. Provision of evening & Sunday services is viewed as important, as it provides a 'complete' service allowing customers the opportunity to reduce car journeys by catching a bus. Something that is now not possible with real services in many parts of the country. 

The network is also inspired by real operators such as Norfolk Green and Western Greyhound who grew substantial businesses in very rural areas not known for being ideal bus territory, the thinking being if they could make it work there, why not in the West Country? Coupled to my own industry knowledge, built up over some years working in support and planning roles within the bus industry and in consultancy, the result is a sizeable, locally focused regional fleet filling in the gaps left by others.

Southwestbus operates a daily coach service connecting parts of Somerset not well served by rail to London. This commenced in 2011, using mid life Van Hool coaches, and during 2013 brand new Caetano Levante coaches were acquired for the service. In 2017 4 brand new 55 seat Scania K340/Irizar i6 coaches arrived to replace the Levante coaches and also to begin a second route.

Another important part of the southwestbus operation is provision of school and college contracts, which require around 70 vehicles. Price sensitive in nature, this work is the home for a lot of older buses and coaches, and this is where my enthusiast interest comes into its own.

A lot of these older vehicles are used for school related hires, much of which is within 50 miles of our operating area, and it is this part of the business that contributes the most income and is the largest part of our fleet. Unlike other areas, no age limits apply to vehicles used. Therefore high capacity buses and coaches deemed life expired in other areas continue to be used for as long as they are capable of being operated. In some cases this means rebuilding and renovating vehicles using our apprentices - this being a cheaper way of getting a contract vehicle into traffic.

In my early 'real' career I worked for a coach operator who took immense pleasure from buying a vehicle that others would have thrown away and making it work for a living again. I take the same approach with my model fleet.

Fleet Additions are carefully sourced, to ensure all available (diecast) models are represented. We don't have a particular fleet standard vehicle here. We have tried most types of vehicle, and if we really like them, then we acquire more. There is a dislike of the modern generation of Euro 5/6 bus here so they're not represented beyond token examples - much of the bus fleet are vehicles from the 2000s as the mechanical complexity of 'new' vehicles combined with their eye watering purchase prices (c£50 a time!) limit my ability to run a large fleet of this type of vehicle.

The company is associated with the shuttle bus operations for the Glastonbury Festival, where some of the double deck fleet, plus hired in vehicles provide the entire means of transport to and from the event. Operation of this service is undertaken using elderly double deck vehicles retained especially for this work and stored off road for the remainder of the year, amongst the fleet are Bristol VRTs and Leyland/Volvo Olympians.

Another part of the business is private coach hire, which requires a number of modern coaches, mostly purchased new. Hire work sees the fleet travel abroad and across the UK quite often. This side of the business is twice as large than our bus service commitment of around 50 vehicles. A number of 'heritage' buses are also owned and these are used on private hire work, typically school proms, birthday celebrations and weddings. A number of London Routemaster buses are in the fleet for this work which takes vehicles into London on a daily basis though this side of the fleet covers much of the South West, South Wales and parts of Southern England.

The fleet is unusual in having a number of open top buses for private hire work - as opposed to the more conventional seasonal bus services these buses typically operate. One particularly unusual hire sees one of the Bristol VRs travel from South East London to the Le Mans 24 hour race every June. Some of our Routemaster buses are open toppers, and two of these are used on a daily London sightseeing tour, with others available for private hires. The remainder of the open top fleet are Bristol VRTs and a few Leyland/Volvo Olympians.

The southwestbus fleet has most of the low floor buses made such as the Optare Solo, ADL/Dennis Dart MPD, Dennis Trident, VDL DB250, Volvo B10BLE and the Volvo B7TL. Older step entrance buses include examples of the Mercedes 709 and the Vario, step entry Dennis Darts, through to Leyland and Volvo Olympians which are confined to school contract work post 2015-2017 and the advent of PSVAR. The coach fleet is similarly diverse, with Volvo B10M, DAF SB3000, Scania K340/360 coaches on Plaxton, Van Hool Alizee or Irizar bodywork. Smaller coaches include Mercedes Sprinters, Ford Transits and Iveco Dailys. The coach fleet finds use on private hire work, school/college contract work and on the London Flyer service.

The fleet is mostly comprised of diecast models though resin kits and scratchbuilt models did feature heavily until 2014 when the decision was made to focus on diecasts. Diecast buses in need of renovation and tidying up are actively sought. There is something rewarding about bringing a distressed model back to life.

The Southwestbus fleet does get out to events across the UK reasonably often. Additions also feature on our photo album on our website and if I'm feeling up to it, our facebook page.

2019 saw the 10th year of trading and a celebratory bus rally and running day in Bridgwater was held on the Whitsun bank holiday - 27th May 2019. 27th May 2024 saw the 15th anniversary birthday party.

Southwestbus is a 50% partner in Flexicoach, established in 2018 to provide on demand coach travel services across the United Kingdom. Starting with a route linking Bristol with London, steady progress has been achieved and the route network significantly expanded to cover much of the UK. 

In 2020, Southwestbus' parent company invested in British Transport Hotels, a company set up to take on former hotel properties owned by Shearings before their entering administration. This has opened up new business opportunities, not least in the field of providing our own holiday tours. 

2023 saw the start of Tours UK, a group tour holiday operation selling UK inbound tours solely to groups. Southwestbus has provided some start-up funding for this venture and has a 30% shareholding in the business with a number of our modern coach fleet being used on the work.

Last time we checked the fleet total in May 2023, there were a total of 407 buses and coaches in operation, plus 45 ancillary vehicles. Something, somewhere, has gone very seriously wrong.