Big green Mottram machine - a photo on Flickriver

On the eastern fringes of the Pennines, straddling the Cheshire and Lancashire border, the four towns of Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield needed a public transport system but each of the four wasn't individually big enough to justify its own system. So the four clubbed together and formed the SHMD Joint Board, at first running trams and later buses, linking the four towns and connecting them to other local destinations including Manchester.

Most early buses were red but SHMD always had green as its main livery - a dark green before the secnd world war, and a mid-apple green afterwards. SHMD was the main bus operator in its four towns and its buses were a familar sight in Hyde and Stalybridge bus stations, where for almost thirty years Manchester and Ashton trolleybuses swished in and out using overhead wires owned by SHMD even though SHMD never owned a trolleybus (though it did order some, but the order was cancelled).

For many years SHMD bought Daimler buses - perfect municipal buses, they were smooth and their preselector gearboxes were well-suited to busy urban operation. If SHMD was more loyal to anyone, it was its bodywork supplier - Northern Counties of Wigan, who was virtually the exclusive builder of bus bodies for SHMD for over thirty years.

Number 66 here brings these elements together - a Daimler CVG6 bus with Northern Counties coachwork, in Hyde bus station. But the trolleybus wires are gone, as this is 1970 and the very early days of SELNEC - over three years after the last trolleybus ran to the town.

Number 66 has long gone to the bus station in the sky but number 61 from this batch survives in private preservation, albeit in very poor condition at the time of writing. But you can see an SHMD bus any time - at the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester, where 1955 Atkinson number 70 is restored and on display. If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.motgm.uk.

© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.

Taken in: UK / England / Hyde (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1970

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