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.