This film is part of Free

Green Line

Crawley is the venue for a great gathering of buses and coaches to celebrate a half-century of Green Line services in this memorable film from Beryl Armstrong

Amateur film 1980 6 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for Screen Archive South East

Overview

We begin with buses of all shapes, sizes and liveries converging on Crawley bus station from all over the country. There are single and double decker and open-topped buses and coaches with one bus even going to Kathmandu. As passengers board coaches departing on actual services, visitors to the site walk amongst the visiting buses. A small scale omnibus is seen with doll passengers all in period costume. Also seen are large numbers of enamel signs and a 1928 trolleybus.

New Zealand born Beryl Armstrong began making films while living in India in the early 1960s. For the next thirty years her output was prolific and Beryl’s films, which often captured aspects of rural life in Sussex and Hampshire, appeared at local amateur film making festivals and competitions, where they won trophies and certificates of merit. She also wrote articles for film magazines and taught her sons Richard and Anthony, who often appeared in her productions, the art of filmmaking. Both went on to create their own collections of short documentaries, comedies and animations. Beryl is also a successful author, publishing twelve novels as well as a book about designing and building doll's houses.