STEAM BUSES – ALMOST ON A ROAD TO NOWHERE!

Such names as Walter Hancock [Fig. 1] and Goldsworthy Gurney made great strides in this direction and passenger-carrying services were operated by Hancock between Stratford and central London in 1832 and the following year between London Wall via Islington to Paddington.

Later, Hancock put into service a small ten-seater bus he named Infant on revenue earning journeys between London and Brighton. The railway lobby at the time was extremely powerful and it’s said that they put a stop to the continuing development of such road vehicles by introducing road traffic regulations in Britain such that they had to be preceded by a man walking in front with a red flag. However, it must also be remembered that the conditions of the roads themselves at the time were not really conducive for the heavy weights of such vehicles anyway.

Time moved on and with the repeal of the ‘Red Flag Act’ in 1896, rather surprisingly it was the railway companies in Great Britain which first really pioneered the use of steam buses to bring in potential customers to their railway at a somewhat lower cost than providing a new line to serve the many and varied localities relatively close to their stations.

This is perhaps something which should have been learned by