Bournemouth Corporation Transport and Yellow Buses

An illustrated history of Bournemouth Corporation Transport and Yellow Buses from its beginnings in 1902 to its end in 2022.

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This is an illustrated history of Bournemouth Corporation Transport. The first trams ran in Bournemouth in 1902 but the struggle to introduce trams into the Bournemouth and Poole area started in the 1880s. The first buses ran in 1906, under the name of Yellow Buses, named after the colour of their livery. During the 1930s there was a period of transition from trams to trolleybuses. The new vehicles were met with great excitement and ran to the late 1960s, before another change to diesel buses. The bright-yellow-liveried vehicles were a distinctive sight on the streets of Bournemouth, although under a change of ownership when Bournemouth Council sold the majority of its shares to Transdev in 2005, running under the name of Transdev Yellow Buses, which in turn sold to RATP, operating again as Yellow Buses, until the day in 2022 when Yellow Buses went into administration and were bought out, bringing to an end 120 years of history in this seaside city on England’s South Coast.