Mr Eric Leverton's retirement

We had an interesting visit the other day, when our friends at Langley Mill based bus company trent barton asked to visit, on the occasion of driver Mr Eric Leverton's retirement. He'd started with Bartons, when we were a transport company ourselves, 39 years ago. Our business was sold to Trent's owners in 1989.

trent barton brought across their smart gold 'centenary' bus, and we fired up a 'retired' 1973 Leyland Leopard from our old fleet - just the sort of vehicle that was just coming in when Eric started, and which made such an impact on East Midland's streets in the early 70s. As someone told me just the other day -'if you had one or two of those coaches in your fleet in those days, your firm was the 'bees knees' - Bartons, with some similar looking Bedfords, had a fleet of some 200 +

The centenary bus celebrates 100 hundred years of Trent Motor Traction (Trent) this year, so our heartiest congratulations to them - a great achievement, from one local company to another. Look out for events to celebrate this fine achievement.

One thing that rather took be aback, was that looking on the side of the gold bus I spotted a familiar name, that of my dear old dad, Elson Barton, who is no longer with us. He was named as one of the long list of names they had chosen to honour as having made trent barton 'the really useful bus company'. Our founder, T.H. Barton OBE is also there. Real thanks are in order, from our family and firm, for you thoughtfulness.

Like Eric himself, Elson spent virtually his entire working life with one firm.

Have a great retirement, Eric, and good luck too for the next hundred years to the company you have just finished working for.

(Taken from our Facebook Page.)