Alan M Watkins

Alan M Watkins worked for a variety of bus and coach companies from the 1950s onwards and contributed numerous short stories and reminiscences to the [now defunct] Ceased Bus Operators e-mail discussion group. They were often prompted by photos that others had posted there and led Alan to what he described as his “digressions”. Sometimes he would tell the same story twice, occasionally with detail differences from one version to the other, but he was recalling events of many decades ago, so any slight inconsistencies can be excused.

We don’t have much information about his life, but the stories include operators he worked for over varying periods of time, starting with his beloved Premier Travel, and including the equally loved MacBraynes, Lincolnshire Road Car and Western National (briefly). He also recounts the tale of his mother who drove for the City Coach Company of Brentwood during the Second World War and has other stories of City, his local operator for many years.

He died in 2016 and it was with some surprise that I read in his obituary in the Maldon & Burnham Standard (8/12/16) that he was a journalist, a former news editor at The Sun, from the late 1970s onwards. There was no mention of his earlier career on the buses, sadly.

By the nature of the discussion group, the stories came as a result of random prompts, rather than in any organised way. I have tried to merge similar stories into single documents but rarely in any chronological order, as precise dates didn’t often feature in his digressions. The length of the individual stories varies from a page or two to up to 15 pages in some cases. The stories are reproduced here on Working on the Buses with Alan's permission.