Reviving back transport history with the traditional Maltese Bus

Peter Paul Barbara Director Special Projects Office of the Deputy CEO and COO

T-21 recently met with Mr Manuel Cutajar, CEO of Vintage Bus City Tours to discuss the new service, mostly intended for tourists who want to experience the old Maltese Bus that used to make up our national bus transport system for almost half a century.

1. What is the service called and for how long has the service been operational?

The service is called the Vintage Bus City Tour and has been operational since December 2020, but due to Covid, the service started very quietly, especially due to the fact that the number of tourists visiting the island during the early months of the pandemic was almost negligible.

2. With residents having a scheduled national bus service to make use of, I am assuming that the Vintage Bus Service is only intended for tourists, or do residents still make use of it as a means of transport? How do you consider your relationship with MPT?

Correct, it is fair to say that whilst the tours are primarily aimed at tourists, actually anyone can make use of the tour to the extent that we now even have an arrangement drawn up with Malta Public Transport that allows certain Tallinja cards to be used to pay for one-way trips. We have a good working relationship with MPT. MPT direct clients to us, mostly tourists who ask whether they can experience the old Maltese Bus.

3. This is all very interesting, so is there is standard fee in place to make use of the service?

Yes. We have two price regimes, one for adults and one for children. The ticket for an adult costs either €2.50 (one way) or €4.50 for a day ticket, which is more advantageous for those who want to make use of the service throughout the day, considering that one can board our buses as many times as one likes while the ticket is valid. The cost for a child is €1,50 one way and €3.00 for a day ticket, On Sundays, when both tours are running, the day ticket allows travel on both tours at no extra cost 4. I understand that the service is run daily from

City Gate, outside Valletta. Do all trips end up at

City Gate again?

Yes, both tours start from Putirjal, City Gate. Passengers can either make a one-way trip, remain on the bus and continue back to Putirjal, or get off and catch a later trip (hop-on-hop-off).

The Sliema/St. Julian’s tour runs daily every two hours, from 09:00 to 17:00 from Valletta and from 09:45 to 17:45 from Pembroke. On Saturday evenings, we also run two extra round trips at 18:30 and 20:00 from Valletta and at 19:00 and 20:30 from Pembroke.

With respect to the second Marsaxlokk tour, only on Sundays, the tour runs every 30 minutes using two buses. Trips leave Valletta from 10:00 through to 15:00, returning from Marsaxlokk between 10:30 and 15:30.

5. What routes are on offer to users? What are the destinations? I believe that this is a round trip with no stops, but all routes start from Valletta and stop only at the destination. Is this correct?

The main daily tour runs from Valletta, first doing a circumnavigation of the Valletta peninsula to give passengers views of both harbours. The bus then runs through Msida, Gżira, Sliema, Tower Road to St. Julian’s. Here the bus does a circular route through Pembroke (where the bus will wait for its scheduled departure time if it is early), drive down to St. George’s Bay and back to St. Julian’s before travelling back through Sliema to Valletta.

Depending on traffic, a typical round trip will take around 90 minutes. As well as the main Valletta stop, we also have pick-up and dropoff points at several locations along the route, including the main hop-on-hop-off stops such as Sliema Ferries, Spinola Bay, Pembroke (close to the Radisson Blu and Corinthia hotels), St. George’s Bay and outside the Dragonara Hotel.

The second route is that of Marsaxlokk and is only offered on Sunday. It has two main stops – City Gate, Putirjal and Marsaxlokk, close to the southern end of the harbour, near the football ground. Most passengers spend time in Marsaxlokk before catching our bus back.

We were also running a third route to Mosta, but this route has been suspended for now.

6. I understand that there are 7 operational buses.

Are these owned by different owners or by the operating company/garage?

There are currently five partners in VBCT, each

owning one or two operational buses. Some also have other buses currently being restored which will eventually join the fleet. The buses are also used for corporate and wedding hires as well as VBCT tours.

We also run another service but using what are classified as Heritage Buses, which fall under a different era than the vintage bus service. We only use this for customers requesting such buses for activities, including weddings, corporate functions and others.

7. I noticed that on the bus, a town or village name is indicated, for example Żabbar. Does this mean that that bus goes to Żabbar? Or is the name just there to depict the colour of the bus? Is it fair to say that the name depicted on the form of the bus indicates the original bus colour code? Up to 1973, each local bus route (or group of routes) had its own route livery, (that is different colour codes per group of routes). Our buses are being restored into these various original liveries.

The following are some facts about our buses:

‘Bedford’ 144 – the two-tone brown and white of the combined Mosta & Naxxar route Thames 399 – the two green livery of the Sliema group of routes

Thames 537 – the yellow, orange and white used up until July 2011 – this in turn was based on the pre-1973 livery used on the Żebbuġ & Siġġiewi combined route

Thames 596 – the orange and white of the Żurrieq group of routes

‘Bedford’ 676 - the two green livery of the Sliema group of routes

Thames 732 – the red/blue livery of the Żabbar route

Austin 003 - the light green livery loosely based on the old Cospicua livery, that then was used on all route buses between 1975 and 1995

8. Did the 7 buses operate on the route that the colour symbolised? For example did the Bus with

Żabbar name on it operate on the Żabbar route?

In some cases, yes, in others no (for example 90% of the Thames buses were allocated to the Sliema route, and while 596 and 732 would have been in that colour too when new, there was at least one Thames on most of the routes, and 596 and 732 have been painted to reflect this. 9. How were the 7 buses selected?

Currently, to obtain an “XY” licence plate, buses need to have the “normal control” layout (i.e., bonneted, the engine placed out the front of the bus). These are the 7 operational buses that currently meet that requirement.

10. Are there plans to introduce more buses to the service?

As mentioned above, more buses are currently being restored. For example, a 1950 Commer, painted in the brown, yellow and white of the old Naxxar livery (which it carried between circa 1950 and 1964) will hopefully be ready during the summer.

11. I understand that there was great restoration work done on these buses. Correct? Have the engines been restored or have new cleaner engines been installed?

Full restoration of each bus takes 18-24 months, depending on how much work needs to be done. As well as the bodywork being fully restored, the brakes, suspension and electrics are brought up to modern standards. To meet modern “Euro 6” emissions standards, each bus has been fitted with a “dual-fuel” system (HDDF) that uses both diesel and LPG (liquid petroleum gas). The mixing of the two fuels makes the buses as clean as any modern low-floor diesel bus today.

12. Can you please provide the year for each bus that has entered into operation (historical) and the make/model of each bus?

See the histories for each bus in Annex A.

13. Historically, were these buses built in Malta? Was the chassis imported or built here? Traditionally, up until 1980 the chassis of most Maltese buses were imported (either new or second hand), mostly from the UK, but a good number before WW2 came from manufacturers based in the USA & Canada. From the 1960s some chassis were assembled locally using frames made in the Dockyard and then assembled using parts from various sources.

The bodywork on Malta’s traditional buses had to be built in Malta. Over the years, around 20 individuals are known to have built bus bodies, sometimes just one or two, sometimes hundreds. The most prolific builders of buses were the Aquilina family from Paola, the Barbara family from Mqabba but with a workshop in Luqa, and the Brincat family.

Most of the Maltese bus builders either started as carpenters, or that was their main commercial concern, and the buses were a

side-line. This is because most of the body frames used to be made of wood. Some of the earliest bus builders in the 1920s actually started off by building horse drawn carts and carriages.

14. What year was it when the colour coded buses stopped being colour coded and all buses had one colour? I am assuming that this was done to increase the efficiency of the service and to give flexibility for operations to use different buses on specific routes according to the demand.

Prior to 1931, buses could be whatever colour they wanted. In 1931, as part of a process of regulating the bus industry, The Traffic Control Board introduced the route liveries, some of which were tweaked in the early years, but by the start of World War II had settled down into the well-known colours. In Autumn of 1973, the routes were grouped into three groups based on geography. They used three of the existing liveries – the light green of the Cospicua group of routes, the red of the Birkirkara route and the white with blue band used on the Mellieħa group of routes.

In 1975 every bus was painted light green. The exact shade morphed slightly over the years, but in 1995 everything then went yellow and orange. The grouping of everything in theory meant things were more efficient to run with a “dayon-day-off” roster being introduced, though owners were allowed to swap duties so that (for example) a Marsaxlokk based driver did not need to get his bus to Mellieħa to start service at 05:00.

The following table provides some historical details on each bus, that is; the route on which the bus operated, entry into service, bus builder, the lifetime of the service, whether the respective buses changed routes and the livery which they were painted in.

REGISTRATION - PXY 399 Chassis make - Thames ET7 Chassis new - 1953 Body make - Joseph Scerri of Ħamrun Body new - 1953

Livery carried now - Sliema group of routes two-tone green and white.

REGISTRATION - BXY 144 Chassis make - Bedford Body make - Joseph Xuereb of Mqabba Body new - 1951

Livery carried now - two-tone brown & white used by the combined Mosta & Naxxar routes from c. 1964 to 1973. REGISTRATION - EXY 537 Chassis make - Thames ET7 Chassis new - 1953 Body make - Joseph Micallef of Rabat Body new - 1953

Livery carried now - the yellow & orange used up to 2011 (itself based on the old Żebbuġ-Siġġiewi combined livery used from c. 1964 to 1973)

Notes - The last normal control route bus in service. New as 2501 on the Sliema route, it remained in use until the demise of the old buses in early July 2011.

REGISTRATION - ZXY 596 Chassis make - Thames ET7 Chassis new - 1953 Body make - Michael Barbara of Luqa Body new - 1953

Livery carried now - the orange Żurrieq group of routes livery.

REGISTRATION - ZXY 676 Chassis make - Bedford Chassis new - 1950 Body make - Sultana Brothers of Sliema (though later rebuilt) Body new - 1955

Livery carried now - Sliema group of routes two-tone green.

REGISTRATION - FXY 732 Chassis make - Thames ET7 Chassis new - 1952 Body make - Michael Barbara of Luqa Body new - 1952

Livery carried now - the red and blue Żabbar route livery REGISTRATION - LXY 003 Chassis make - Austin CXB Chassis new - 1950 Body make - Unknown Body new - 1950

Livery carried now - light green loosely based on the Cospicua group of routes, and that used by all route buses from 1975 to 1995.