Omnibus edition

Crook Market Place, 6.30am yesterday. If this is to be a little moment in history, Crook is in great danger of sleeping through it.

You’d have thought they’d have turned out the town band, wouldn’t you? Instead all that can be heard is the dough-ray-me of an unloading bakery van and the sterilising sound of a street cleaner, obliviously brushing with time.

At 6.37 the first OK bus for 14 years will depart, headed for Darlington, though none appears to have told the chap who programs the real-time destination board. The screen insists that the first bus is an Arriva at 6.45m and still a pretty unreal time at that.

Arriva, and United before them, have run the No 1/1B between Crook and Darlington via Bishop Auckland since the days of solid tyres. They also operate the service 46 between Crook and Durham.

Now Go North East, which bought the privately owned OK company in 1995, have re-introduced the red and cream brand as the OK1, nine minutes faster between Crook and Darlington chiefly by going through West Auckland instead of Shildon.

They’ve also introduced the Pronto X46 between Crook and Durham, on exactly the same route as Arriva’s.

It marks the first skirmish in a new outbreak of bus wars. Whatever the route number, it’s a battle to be No. 1.

THE original OK buses were famous, friendly and often fumefilled.

Go North East is altogether sleeker, its branded routes including names like SimpliCity, Red Arrow, Clipper, Drifter and, surfer on the side, Whey-Aye Five-0. As might be supposed, that one goes to South Shields.

Andy Dunn’s bus arrives at 6.32.

Among the immediately obvious differences from their rivals is that both bus and driver are immaculate. Were there to be a competition for Arriva’s scruffiest driver, there might be 100 joint winners.

I’m first on, disappointed that the ticket isn’t No 1 but No 16437. That little scrap of paper also reveals that it’s bus 5232, trip 100, duty 410, driver 3157 and “equ 1046339”. Whatever an equ may be, it can only be a matter of time before bus tickets give the day’s weather forecast and a tip for the 3.30 at Catterick.

An accompanying leaflet advises the existence of a service delivery manager, who travels around making sure everything’s all right. They used to be called inspectors.

Four others join. A fifth, carrying a briefcase, gets on at Howden-le- Wear. There are more bells than St Mary’s.

The bus also has a great array of symbols indicating what may and may not be allowed – more do’s and don’ts than the first day at infant school – and a yet-greater litany of advice on anything from how to alight to where to stand. In the good old days the only signs were about expectoration being forbidden, and since few knew what on earth they were on about, spat on the floor, regardless.

Much of it’s now health and safety, nanny-state-of-the-art. If they close the libraries, as folk fear, they could put in a good couple of hours reading the bus, instead.

Most sit with folded arms, an indication that they need to do something about the heating. The chap with the briefcase is writing furiously in an exercise book, like a recalcitrant school bus boy who hasn’t done his homework.

Another joins at Bishop, none thereafter. On time, we’re approaching Darlington before 7.30am, almost all the traffic heading out of town as if someone’s shouted that it’s on fire.

The OK1 stops in the town centre right next to the Arriva 1. The sky’s lightening and the realisation dawning that Arriva have a real fight on their hands.

Cold comfort, I’m still clutching ticket 16437, the cat that got the red and cream.

THE Competition Commission reported recently on the big bus services, advised them – a slight paraphrase – to gan canny.

Martin Harris, Go North East’s commercial director, insists that they’re just adding to passenger options.

“We are genuinely looking to fill a gap in the market. This isn’t about Arriva, it’s about Go North East.

“We simply want to add to the quality and speed of service.”

Nigel Fealtham, managing director of Arriva North East, insists similarly that they don’t intend to enter into bus wars – “We are simply working hard to ensure our passengers have the best possible service.”

Yet here’s the real bus stopper. Arriva is about to introduce an X1, so that its own daytime service between Crook and Darlington will now be every 15 minutes. What’s more, it’ll go through West Auckland.

It may just be the town hall clock striking eight o’clock as I head towards breakfast, but it sounds awfully like distant drums to me.

DAVID Holding travelled happily with the OK for 30 years, wrote a company history in 2007, is regional manager of the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

So what’s the Holding position?

“My personal belief is that Go Ahead wants to show to the Competition Commission that they aren’t as big mates with Arriva as they think,” he says. “They want to slit their throats.

“Until it gets to the point of fighting in the street, I think Go Ahead is doing exactly what the Competition Commission wants.”

Rivalry is nothing new. David’s history – “only four remaining,” he says, with proper pride – records that in the 1920s up to 20 bus operators were running between Bishop Auckland and West Auckland alone.

Fares were slashed from threepence to a penny, competition so fierce when the Bishop picture houses turned out that one firm offered a free penny dip from Bainbridge’s the butcher.

Initially as Gaunless Valley Motor Services, the company took to the road on Easter Saturday 1912, formed by Evenwood businessman Wade Emmerson, one of many generations with that forename. It became OK in 1929 because he wanted “something more peppy” and recalled American servicemen using the term “OK” during the war.

He was followed into the business by son and grandson, the trio identified in the book as Wade Senior, Wade Junior and Young Wade.

Young Wade, now a canny age himself, is keen to do something to mark the centenary.

Perfectly OK, the company fared nicely – particularly in south Durham. David Holding, who lives near Chester-le-Street, travelled daily on the affectionately remembered route between Bishop Auckland and Newcastle via Nevilles Cross, still recalls being woken by a friendly conductress if in danger of oversleeping his welcome.

Last in the region, the route retained conductresses until it ceased in 1997. By 1993-94, OK had an £11m annual turnover but also a £4m overdraft.

By 1995 there were 212 vehicles at depots in Bishop Auckland, Peterlee and Gateshead – some, it has to be said, suffering from a sort of automotive arthritis.

I remember hiring elderly double deckers from Peterlee. They kept conking out, problems referred to the depot manager. He was Richard Startup.

OK had originally opposed the Go Ahead takeover, completed in 1995 for £5.3m. “Though OK buses continued as a Go Ahead subsidiary, the name disappeared with remarkable and unexpected speed,” wrote David Holding.

Now, at a speed neither remarkable nor unexpected but still nine minutes faster between Crook and Darlington than Arriva, they’re back. It seems a bit of a cheek – more Yah boo than OK yah.

“I think cheek’s what it’s about,”

says David. “They don’t want Darlington- style fighting in the streets but they don’t want to be too cosy, either.”

Younger, brasher, Go Ahead is said steadily to have been picking up passengers in recent years. Are the roads of County Durham wide enough for both of them? Free penny dips may be only a matter of time.

UNALONE, bus historian Peter Cardno believes that Go Ahead lives up to its name.

“I’m reluctant to criticise them, they’re a very enterprising outfit.

“They have far more passenger loyalty, their buses turn up and don’t seem to catch fire. They’re the best of the three big North-East companies.”

A retired chemistry teacher from Stockton, he has written nine appealingly anecdotal bus company histories, the most treasured of all a wonderful account of Trimdon Motor Services – usually abbreviated to TMS or thereabouts translated as Trimdon Muck Shifters.

His history of Stockton Corporation transport even managed to recall that Group Captain Simpson, in charge of RAF Thornaby during the war, camouflaged the station’s pigs in order to save their bacon.

These days, though four projects are on the go, he’s sticking to specialist journals. “You’ll appreciate that it’s very difficult to sell books in a recession. Besides, I’m getting too old to be lugging round great parcels of them,” says Peter, chairman of the North-East branch of the Omnibus Society.

He has also spent several years researching the Weardale Motor Company, happily still up and running.

So what of the battle for No 1 spot, at least between Crook, Bishop Auckland and Darlington? “I wouldn’t have thought the market was big enough for both of them,” says Peter.

Might it be Arriva derci after all?