In just over two weeks’ time, on Saturday 31 May, we are celebrating our fortieth birthday with a party!
Time to Celebrate!
On Saturday 31 May this year, by kind permission of Winchester City Council, FoKAB will be taking over the upper part of the Cattle Market car park to mount a spectacular display of our fleet in a circular, double-amphitheatre, arrangement.
From noon until 1600 the display will be open to the public, with a free shuttle bus service to and from the Broadway. We are hoping to welcome everybody, to help us celebrate this special anniversary and set FoKAB on course for the next forty years. See you there!
Forty Years Ago
It was on Saturday, 31 May 198,5, that a group of like-minded people gathered, appropriately, in the King Alfred pub, in Saxon Road, to discuss the formation of a group to take forward our interest in all aspects of King Alfred Motor Services.
The decision to call a meeting resulted from the realisation by James Freeman that he could not on his own manage the ongoing preservation of the two KA buses that he had already rescued. Those two buses were Leyland Tiger Cub WCG 104, which James had bought from Eynon’s of Trimsaran four years previously, and Leyland Atlantean HOR 591E, which had been plucked from the jaws of disaster at Bristol in 1983.
Both had required prodigious effort to get them running again and there had been three celebrated Running Days already – the first, involving just the Tiger Cub, being on March 3, 1983.
Enthusiastic attendance at these events had amply demonstrated to James that support was out there, so he issued a notice headlined: “Going for Scrap –if you don’t come to a meeting to form a group to take on these buses!” (or words to that effect)!
