Бэдджерлайн: Тарихы мен дамуы

the Wisconsin bus line

Badgerline was a bus operator in and around Bristol from 1985 until 2003. Its headquarters were in Weston super Mare. Initially a part of the Bristol Omnibus Company, it was privatised in September 1986 and sold to Badgerline Holdings in a management buyout. It went on to purchase a number of bus companies in England and Wales. In November 1993, Badgerline Group was listed on the stock exchange and, on 16 June 1995, it merged with the GRT Group to form FirstBus. In 2018, Badgerline was reintroduced as the name for First West of England's bus services in and around Weston super Mare.

The Bristol Tramways Company started operating buses in 1906 to feed traffic into their tram services from beyond the boundaries of the city of Bristol. In 1910 a branch was opened in Weston super Mare where the company's first bus station was opened on the sea front in the 1930s. Others were built after World War II at Wells, Bath and Bristol. The company changed its name to the Bristol Omnibus Company in 1957 as it no longer operated trams, but by then it was owned by the British Transport Commission and so became a subsidiary of the National Bus Company (NBC) on 1 January 1969.

In the 1980s the NBC split its subsidiaries into smaller operating units. Bristol Omnibus established a separate operating unit for its services outside Bristol in September 1983 and then introduced three distinct brands in April 1985, with operations in Somerset and the Avon outside the city of Bristol becoming Badgerline.

In August 2018 First West of England relaunched their services in Weston super Mare as Badgerline, together with a new logo and take on the classic Badgerline livery. This followed the closure of Weston super Mare based Crosville Motor Services in April 2018. All 16 buses allocated to the depot for town services were repainted.

Badgerline's headquarters were in Weston super Mare. Bus services extended as far as Chippenham, Calne, Gloucester, Salisbury, Taunton and Yeovil but it also operated National Express services to destinations such as London. Vehicles were maintained at four depots: Bath, Bristol, Wells and Weston super Mare. The allocations on 1 January 1986 and 30 November 1989 were: The town's bus station was closed in 1987 when maintenance facilities were transferred to a new depot in Warne Road. Badgerline was operating 342 buses on 1 January 1986 but this had increased to 441 by 30 November 1989. Shortly afterwards the larger buses started to appear with the new logo and lettering style on a large green area in the centre of the body, either side of which was a yellow area that was angled up and backwards (opposite to the previous scheme). FirstBus livery began to appear on Badgerline vehicles in March 1998. In line with company policy this was initially only carried by new vehicles that were built to a high specification. The first of these were Wright Renown bodied Volvo B10BLEs, new for express service X39 between Bristol and Bath, and Wells based routes 173 (to Bath), and 376/377 (to Bristol and Yeovil).