Open top buses

Paphos and Larnaka have open top Hop on / Hop off open toppers probably second hand from UK. The Paphos trip which we did costs 10 € which is quite dear for such a small town. They have 3 buses at Paphos – a Leyland Atlantean and 2 Scanias, although you could do the whole timetable with just one bus. They are stabled in the open by the harbour bus station. In reality one bus returns and another leaves having taking passengers on board at it’s stabling point. The Atlantean is the drivers preferred vehicle - it does more trips per day than a Scania, but on the day we wanted to do the trip there was an oil leak from the rear axle so it had to be driven to a garage. So we had a ride on a Scania open top bus, but the Leyland was back in service a couple of days later.

There are other open top buses in the country but we only saw 2 more in Paphos and one of these was out of use all the time we were there.

Northern Cyprus

A mixture of old and new vehicles but some unusual driving on display is how I can best describe it. We didn’t use any public transport in Northern Cyprus due to lack of time, although we did think about it but could not get a meaningful timetable from anyone. The local people seem to know where and when to get their buses from so I guess that’s the main thing.

Below is a selection of 12 buses in service in North Nicosia and Kyrenia.

Vintage buses

Apart from old cars in some areas particularly in the North of the island Cyprus doesn’t do vintage apart from some Bedford Commercials now used for hen parties and similar events. We had to go to North Nicosia to find a postcard which shows these Bedford Commercials in use. But the ones that have been restored look great, others are abandoned or scrapped. We also found a Morris commercial bus in Paphos with what looked like UK registration plate.

Railways

The government narrow gauge railway [2ft 6in] closed in 1951 although an engine is meant to be preserved at Famagusta station in the North, but we didn’t get there. So imagine our delight when we saw from a coach brown tourist signs to the Cyprus Railway Museum in the hills near Troodos.

Unfortunately no–one knew anything about it, including tourist offices in Paphos and Nicosia who actually questioned if we had seen the sign. Well truthfully I hadn’t but my wife had, and that’s good enough for me. My argument [anywhere] is if you have these tourist signs – you should know something about the museum. That fell on deaf ears. Since then I’ve received an apology from the local Cyprus tourist office saying the museum is not yet open – an understatement.

Hiring a car we found the museum at the old terminus at Evrychou station. It was all closed up and is a work in progress museum. However it’s cited as underway in 2006 from information I found on the net on our return – so I don’t know what progress if any has been done since 2006, but they obviously plan a car park etc one day.

Evrychou station was 75 miles from Famagusta, at the end of Section 3 up the Solea Valley, and closed in 1933, due to poor usage but believed to have closed because the locals revolted against the English in 1931 as detailed in this short summary from The Cyprus Tourist office sent with their apology.

There’s a Cyprus Mines Group [also 2ft 6in] industrial diesel locomotive on a plinth on the main road from Nicosia to Kyrenia, but our coach driver wouldn’t stop so we had to take it from the moving coach – it’s been repainted and given the number CMG1.

According to information on the international steam website HERE:

I did find a mint copy of the 2003 book for sale in Paphos. At nearly 3kg and over 400 pages it covers all the railways of Cyprus, including temporary ones at archaeological digs and self propelled cranes at harbours... It cost me 75 € so is my heaviest and most expensive book. It does contain hundreds of b/w pictures though. However a second hand copy in the UK is being advertised for £138, so I’m happy as only 500 copies of the book were produced.

Cyprus issued stamps in 2010 about the government railway and we found these still on sale in Nicosia and Paphos but not the miniature sheet. Since returning home I found that Cyprus postal services are willing to sell one or more so they are still available and I’m going to order one.