A tribute by Tony Wilson

On the 2nd November 1959 the first major section of the M1 Motorway was opened between Watford in Hertfordshire and Crick in Northampton. This was around 60-odd miles in length and carried nothing like the amount of traffic that now uses the road. Since then the motorway has been extended further south to the North Circular Road in North London, but more importantly for us through Derbyshire and onwards to Yorkshire. However, it was not until the late 1960s that the stretch from Junctions 28-30 and beyond was built and the residents of Chesterfield and North East Derbyshire were linked to the present network.

In the early years the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company saw a grand opportunity to use the motorway for an express service to link Birmingham with London and thus introduced a fleet of handsome CM5 and then CM5t coaches. The latter came with the addition of a toilet facility.

Over the years coach services using the motorway have expanded and Chesterfield and the surrounds have benefitted enormously from the now regular coach services provided by the National Express network.

One other feature of the motorway is that it provides bus and coach builders a quick and easy method of delivering their new vehicles to operators and the suchlike. Thus one can observe products from Falkirk, Leeds and Scarborough making their way south to their intended owners. Likewise one can still see older vehicles taking their ‘final drive’ as they head towards the famous breakers yards in South Yorkshire.

1. One of the handsome BMMO CM5t coaches now preserved. These 41-seater vehicles had been capable of reaching speeds in excess of 80-miles per hour and back in those days were able to use the outside lane of the motorway. Since then after some quite spectacular and disastrous accidents with more modern vehicles, such large vehicles have been confined to lanes one and two of any motorway of three lanes or more.

2. A Scania K34 type Caetano Levante negotiated the roundabout at the Lordsmill Street end of Markham Road in as it approached the next stop at Chesterfield coach station on National Express route 320 bound for Oxford in February 2009.

3. National Express currently has the franchise to provide nationwide transport for major events at the new Wembley Stadium. Here one of Dunn-Line’s Plaxton bodied Volvos passed through Chesterfield town centre in September 2009 in preparation for just such a run down south with the destination ready in the blind box. Note the small crest of three lions adjacent to the doorway, which now appears on most of the coaches.

4. It is not often that one is able to observe the growing fleet of 60-plus seater tri-axled coaches that are now in use on the National Express network. However, a rare sighting did take place on the occasion of the June 2008 bus running day in Chesterfield when this Go-Ahead operated Scania with the longer version of the Caetano Levante bodywork came through the town on service 326 bound for Newcastle. Here the vehicle paused on the present day Pronto bus stop having threaded its way between a trio of local vintage vehicles parked up on the south side of the coach station.

5. Many coach operators use the motorway for their coach holiday work and thus with Chesterfield but a few miles west of Junction 29 are able to serve Chesterfield coach station as a local pick-up and drop-off point for such work. Likewise visitors to the area from far and wide can be brought to the town such as in February 2009 on another Scania, this time a K114 with a 59-seater Berkhof body. Bearing holiday operator Lochs & Glens livery the vehicle was owned and operated by faraway Burtons Coaches of Haverhill in Essex as it passed along Markham Road just about to turn into the coach station.

6. And finally to illustrate the many buses and coaches that have made their last journey up the motorway are two former Eastern National Bristol types a K and an LS from the mid-1900s, and no doubt would have passed through Derbyshire. Here on suspended tow they passed through Junction 4 in the northern reaches of Greater London at Edgware, once the photographer’s home town.