60 year celebrations of the Stonegravels bus depot

Celebrationing 60 years of the Stonegravels bus depot

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, I'm Shane Howarth. I'm the Assistant Operations Manager for Stagecoach in Chesterfield and we're here in Stonegravel's depot

00:07with a line of vintage vehicles to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the depot that was opened on the 3rd of September

00:151964. The buses operate

00:17originally with Chesterfield Corporation Transport and the depot is now operated by Stagecoach.

00:23We operate 77 vehicles every day out of this depot.

00:27The farthest north we travel is Barnsley, the farthest south is Belper

00:32and we also operate 12 National Express coaches out of the depot too.

00:37Yeah, so the Suddex are one of the new buses, if you could tell me a bit about it.

00:41Yeah, so this is the Peak Sites here operation. We've been running this for two years now. Last year we ran two buses, this year

00:48we've ran six buses

00:50linking Chatsworth with Bakewell and Castleton and all the various attractions along the route. We've been very, very successful

00:57and we're hoping for another successful year next year too.

01:00So exciting times ahead. Next year we will receive 57 brand new electric vehicles,

01:07a mixture of midi, mini and double deck buses.

01:11They will be the biggest ever single investment in new buses in Chesterfield and will radically transform the fleet for us.

01:18So we will probably then only operate maybe between 20 and 30 diesel buses.

01:23Everything else will be brand new and fully electric.

01:27Hello, I'm Tony Stacey. I'm the owner of this vehicle 225.

01:33I'm here today for the simple reason that this depot is 60 years old and we're having a bit of a celebration for that occasion.

01:42I remember this bus when it first came new to Chesterfield Transport in

01:461959 and then on the 1st of January

01:491960 I was pleased to say I was the conductor on this bus

01:54to Hollymoreside for eight trips and returned. My driver at that time was Joseph Faulkner.

02:00The bus remained with Chesterfield Transport until

02:041989

02:05which was then it was given to our twin town in Darmstadt in Germany.

02:10I was the driver taking the vehicle over from Chesterfield to Darmstadt on that occasion.

02:16It remained in Darmstadt for 10 years and then in

02:211995

02:22the

02:23German government altered the legislation for the height of vehicles and at this point

02:29anything over four meters high was not allowed on the highway. So I approached the

02:34German

02:35owners of this vehicle at that time if I could have it back for the people of Chesterfield.

02:40So I

02:42fetched the vehicle back from Germany all the way to Chesterfield for the people of this town and since then it's remained in

02:50service

02:51doing rallies, weddings and various other things and I'm glad to say it's still going strong to this day.