Travel Merry Hill was a bus operator in the West Midlands. It was a subsidiary of

National Express National Express Group is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It operates bus, coach, train and tram services in the United Kingdom, Ireland (National Express operates Eurolines in conjunction ...

History

In 1988, the Merry Hill Minibus company was formed by the former owners of the Merry Hill Centre, Richardson Developments. Originally launched to compete with

West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive The West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) was the public body responsible for public transport in the West Midlands metropolitan county in the United Kingdom from 1969 until 2016. The organisation operated under the name Centro f ...

's Mini Buzz service, at that time the Merry Hill Minibuses were the major form of public transport linking the surrounding areas with the shopping centre, of which approximately half had been opened by the time the service was launched (the first retailers had moved to the centre in 1985 and it was completed in 1989). In the early days, the fleet consisted of

Carlyle Works Carlyle Works was an English builder of bus and coach bodywork based in Edgbaston. History In 1920, the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company established a bus repair facility on land adjoining Rotton Park Reservoir. It initially perfo ...

bodied Freight Rover Sherpa vehicles. An attraction to customers of the Merry Hill Minibus service was that the buses gave change to passengers not having the exact fare, which was not the case with the incumbent West Midlands Travel. The company intended to operate around 100 vehicles from the time of the centre's completion in November 1989, but stalled at 46 following the early 1990s recession. An unusual further attraction was that all the drivers wore bow-ties.

National Express takeover

During 1997 Merry Hill Minibuses was taken over by West Midlands Travel's parent company

who continued to run it as a separate subsidiary. The operating centre was moved in 1999 from the back of the Merry Hill Centre to the Pensnett Trading Estate in

Dudley Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...

. Subsequently the garage was relocated to a larger location elsewhere on the Estate to cater for an increased allocation of vehicles. The routes were mostly withdrawn and the fleet used standard West Midlands Travel buses such as Leyland Nationals and MCW Metrobuses. On 17 February 2001, following a group restructuring, the Travel Merry Hill services were absorbed into Travel West Midlands with the Travel Merry Hill brand dropped.Brierley Hill Area Action Plan - Baseline Report - Accessibility
Dudley Borough Council

References

External links

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{{NEXG Brierley Hill Former bus operators in England National Express companies Transport in Dudley 1987 establishments in England 2001 disestablishments in England