My initial thoughts on viewing the new Focus Transport website are very, very good. My first browse proved to be of great interest and I can see great potential for the future of the website. I will certainly be a regular visitor and contributor to Focus transport and I shall start with my Memory Lane feature.

I was born in Chesterfield but lived all of my childhood in Matlock and grew up on the Hurst Farm Estate with my parents and one older brother. We lived at number 24 Lynholmes Road next to the first bus stop on the entry road to the Hurst Farm Estate and I was a regular bus passenger from the age of three! Had there been low floor buses back then it may have been earlier but I spent most of my baby days being propelled in my coachbuilt pram up the steep hill from Matlock Town Centre whilst the Trent service 159 roared on by and up onto the estate. My father was a keen motorcyclist and was employed by British Rail as a trackworker whilst my mother never gained the confidence to drive and was a full time carer for me at the time. Consequently I spent alot of my childhood years riding on buses and benefitted from limited free rail travel due to my fathers employment.

I remember rushing to the bedroom window to watch the local service 159 bus loading outside our house on a regular basis. The earliest memories I can recall was that the regular buses allocated to this working were Marshall bodied Bristol REs and the odd ECW bodied one allocated to Matlock Trent depot later succeeded by Leyland Nationals and the odd Leyland Leopard such as the preserved Alexander bodied example number 109 PRA 109R. This ran onto the Hurst Farm Estate in the eighties then came back in the nineties to appear on the same service but by then operated by Chesterfield subsidiary Whites of Calver as its number 306.

I was sometimes treated to a ride to Chesterfield on East Midland service 17 and can recall the Lowlanders which were regular performers on this service during my infancy before Leyland Nationals, Olympians and Bristol VRs became the more normal order of the day.

Derby was usually reached by a ride on a Swindon built Diesel Multiple Unit. I cannot recall the exact class number but they were quite common on services out of Derby yet were not all that common nationwide. This was before the introduction of the various Sprinter types which were tested in the Derby area and first entered service on the Matlock branch including the examples that were later exported to Japan.

Sheffield was where my mother was born and we often visited friends there usually by train via Derby where we had to change trains. Our onward train was the London to Sheffield service which was during my early years of childhood usually the charge of the Peak Class 45 locomotives but these were to be displaced in my junior by the revolutionary Inter City 125 High Speed Trains or HSTs for short.

I have always had a great interest in the City of Sheffield and can remember the various types of bus operated by South Yorkshire's Transport many having been acquired with the takeover of various municipals like Rotherham and Doncaster Corporations and that of Sheffield of course!. I can remember the unique whistling sounds made by the Van Hool McArdle double deckers as we climbed Bellhouse Road towards Shiregreen where my mother first lived with her parents and two brothers. I can remember the entry into service of the first of Sheffields many Dennis Dominators which were soon to Dominate the city ( pardon the pun! ). I can honestly state that Sheffield probably became the worst victim of deregulation in 1986 as far too many operators tried to launch services in the city and one of the biggest bus wars was to be witnessed. This was all too pleasing for the bus enthusiast and I continued to make regular visits to Sheffield especially in my teenage years to capture the battle scene on camera.

Camera! ah yes now when I was eleven years old on the 1st November 1986 and only a few days after deregulation my mother purchased for me from a Boy Scouts jumble sale my very first camera which was a 135 film camera that produced small square pictures and had a fault on the focusing adjustment. I was out with my mother the next day I won't say where because I want you to guess by quiz question? Let's say I was keen to get somewhere appealing to a child and my mothers bad legs were not helping so we stopped for five at a bench. " Come on mother " I said but it was no good. " Why don't you take some pictures with your camera " my mother replied. This I thought was a good idea and at that point I could see an ECW bodied Bristol RE was approaching in the livery of Maun of Sutton in Ashfield who at that time were based at the Sutton Junction premises today occupied by Trent. I stood on the bench pointed the camera and that was how I came to take my very first bus picture closely followed by a Trent Leyland National in 2nd place and a Kassbohrer Setra coach on tour in 3rd all taken on the 2nd November 1986.

History had been made and I have now gone on with better equipment and improved camera skills to capture thousands of top quality road and rail images.

Quiz question...where was my first photograph taken?

This quiz is now closed. Andrew would like to thank and congratulate the seven people who contacted him with the correct answer. The location is revealed below the photograph . . .