The larger bus operators, whether municipal or company owned, have traditionally trained their own new drivers. Normally older vehicles from the fleet were retained and adapted for training, adorned with ‘L’ plates. In earlier days they would usually just retain fleet livery. Sometimes they might receive a separate livery, to warn other road users. When the National Bus Company introduced corporate liveries of red or green for its fleets, many of their constituent companies used yellow for their training and service vehicles. Then, as recruitment became more difficult from around the 1980s, colourful liveries with invitational recruitment slogans tended to appear and this has continued since. Rather surprisingly, companies often bought in buses for training from other companies rather than converting their own, and these might be types not otherwise represented in their fleet.

This book looks at a variety of training vehicles from around the country over the last fifty years, including examples that have survived into preservation.