all things buses and coaches

“It’s more of an obsession than a pastime.” That’s the conclusion that Andrew Webster’s wife, Debbie, has come to over the years …. the many years … that Andrew has been collecting memorabilia around buses and coaches.

Andrew has been fascinated with coaches and buses since he was 15 years old when he read that Howletts of Quorn had bought three Bedford Duple coaches and one drove by just as he looked out of his window. Andrew became a shop-owner (he and Debbie had a hardware store on Barrow’s High Street), a driving instructor, a salesman and a travel agent – all just to kill time until he landed his dream job: a coach and bus salesman/coach driver. He’s even featured in the 2009 film, ‘The Damned United’, starring Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney and Jim Broadbent … driving the team coach, of course.

At one time, Andrew told me, Loughborough was the epicentre of the bus and coach industry with manufacturers: Brush, Willowbrook, Willowbrook International and Yeates. For a long time three-quarters of all buses and coaches sold in the UK came from Loughborough. Every single bus company, Andrew said, has a different make, model and colour of buses and coaches.

When he left school in 1969, Andrew started as a trainee coach salesman for Yeates. He was paid £4 a week. When he was 21 years old and became contracts’ manager, he asked for full wages; when his request was turned down, he left Yeates to join a smaller dealership ‘Coach Sales Consultants’. Here, he had a choice of cars he could drive around in: from Minis to Jaguars and Cadillacs. One day he drove home in a Ford Hearse. His mother was not amused and refused to get in it; but his brother lay in it covered in a white sheet and he sat up whenever they stopped at a traffic light! The brothers loved this fun. Later Andrew drove for Caetanos of Portugal from their UK depot at Coalville. He then drove for local bus company Kinchbus followed by many years working in Melton, firstly for West End Travel and later for Nesbits of Somberby where he drove coaches mostly round the rural lanes of Rutland with occasional trips to the seaside or London. He retired when he was 67 “having played with buses for 52 years and never regretted it once.”

You may be thinking that he has a hundred real-size coaches and buses parked outside his house. He wishes! But his hobby consists of: hundreds of books, many miniature models and old ticket machines. One of his favourites is a toy bus which an old friend had played with as a child and later gave to him.

A large part of his collection is housed in one half of a bedroom (Debbie insists on the other half for her craft hobbies) but another spare room is full of all sorts of memorabilia (but no bus or coach!). Debbie has combined one of her hobbies of embroidering cross-stitch pictures with Andrew’s and she’s embroidered a picture of three buses for him.

Karisa Krcmar