1934 - 2025
By 1941 the family occupied the house at no. 1 The Oaks in Normandy Park Road, now Pirbright Road, where Peter went on to live for the rest of his life. In the 1950s his mother worked at the nearby Wyke junior school. Peter had strong views about many things and one became clear when he inherited the house, when he immediately had the gas supply disconnected because he was scared of a gas explosion. Peter's lifetime interest in buses started when he was at school in 1946, when he travelled by bus from his home in Normandy to his school, Pewley Secondary School in Guildford. Peter always used to travel as close to the cab as he could and watch the driver, and this early schoolboy interest turned into a lifetime fascination. After leaving school in 1952 Peter was called up for two years National Service in the RAF. They said if he volunteered for an extra year they would try to give him his own choice of posting. He did volunteer for the extra year, making three years in total, and they posted him to "Shipping Movements" in Malta. He went to Malta by ship and he returned over land, so although spending three years in the RAF he never flew in an aeroplane. In fact, he never flew in an aeroplane ever in his whole life.
Three years later in 1958 he transferred to Aldershot Depot to work in the Traffic Operating Office under the Traffic Manager, Arthur Ivor Evans where his duties involved organising the excursions and express services. He was later put in charge of Coastal Services from Aldershot, and the London service. In 1965 he was promoted to Assistant to the District Manager at Guildford and Woking. Bill Tutty's first memories of Peter are from the day he joined A&D as a conductor at Woking Garage in March 1961. Schedule changes were being planned at the time and Peter appeared in the Woking Garage office with rolls of graph paper under his arm ready to do battle with the trade union. Bill always found Peter's knowledge, not just of local buses but also the entire UK coach network, including fares and timetables, absolutely amazing. He could rattle-off bus and coach timetables, fares and connections 100% accurately off the top of his head. Should you ask him anything, his favourite saying was always "Look it up mate - it's the only way you will learn" but he would quickly provide help when it was needed. About the time when the Farnham Road Bus Station opened in the 1950s Gerry Bixley's father Fred, a conductor at A&D's Guildford depot, told him about Peter, who worked in the A&D office. Even in those days his enthusiasm and knowledge of the company and how it operated was obvious and because of this he earned great respect even though he was a non-traffic member of staff. Peter did take his job very seriously. Bus enthusiasts in those days were oddities, and some drivers didn't like being photographed. However, it seems Peter was identified as one and he seems to have been accepted as such, probably because of his unoffensive friendly attitude.
He was an active member and secretary of the Guildford Motorcycle club. The one and only motorcycle he had was a Triumph twin, possibly a 650cc, which he rode on a provisional licence. In those days you could only ride a bike over 250cc on a provisional licence if it was fitted with a sidecar, so he had a sidecar fitted, but he never took a driving test and only ever rode it on a provisional licence. He had an accident on it - he was only shaken up, not injured, but he never rode the bike again or indeed ever drove any vehicle, even though he went on to own at least three ex-A&D buses. Things in Peter's idealistic life changed dramatically on 1st January 1972. This is the date that Alder Valley was formed, merging the Aldershot and District and Thames Valley bus companies, and Peter's beloved Aldershot & District became consigned to the history books. Peter never did get on with this new company, and the last straw was later in 1972 when they transferred him to their new Head Office at Reading. He hated this and said at the time the atmosphere was so bad you could cut it with a knife. Peter belonged to a different age, a gentler age when public transport was for the benefit of the travelling public and not as it is today as a means of making money for the shareholders of large company groups with Head Offices in distant locations and sometimes even in foreign countries. Peter could never seem to quite grasp this modern commercial way of things. This was especially so round 1980 when, as a result of the National Bus Company's MAP Project, Alder Valley changed the service numbers for every route, baffling the travelling public, including Peter. Peter left Alder Valley and got a job at London's Victoria Coach Station dealing with the thousands of coach enquiries that came in every day. He did this for eleven and a half years before his career took a very drastic turn, he left the bus industry altogether and took a job on the railways. He became a telephone clerk at Waterloo, something which he did until he took early retirement in 1995.
In the early 1990s ADBIG, the Aldershot & District Bus Interest Group, was formed, and Peter was elected to the ADBIG Committee as Secretary. Bill Tutty was ADBIG Events Organiser and when Bill took over from Les Smith as ADBIG News Editor in 2019 Peter helped by becoming Assistant News Editor. This involved proof-checking the newsletter by going through the draft using his famous red pen to highlight any errors or anything else that he disagreed with (quite a lot!). Peter was brilliant at spotting errors, but he had a poor sense of timing, sometimes insisting on re-writing complete items just as Bill had got everything ready for printing! He continued to produce excellent articles for the ADBIG Newsletter under the 'Pete's Pages' heading for every edition, right up until he went into hospital for the final time in March 2025. The only problem was that Peter wrote everything by hand in miniscule writing, so small that Bill had to use a large 'Sherlock Holmes' magnifying glass to read it. He would travel around by bus for whole days at a time personally delivering ADBIG Newsletters to almost every public library and council office in the Surrey/North Hampshire/West Sussex area, which he saw as a vital part of his ADBIG duties, saying that he believed in the personal touch. He could never understand, or trust computers and he would spend whole days travelling by bus all the way from Normandy to/from the printer's office in Winchester to personally hand over the newsletter file on a memory stick to the printer. He also spent several days every year going round much of Normandy, knocking on people's doors collecting for the Royal British Legion poppy appeal. Peter remained a member of ADBIG all of his life and to honour this, ADBIG granted him the status of Honorary Member, an achievement very few members reach. Peter was one of the organisers of a bus enthusiasts tour organised by the Aldershot-Guildford Group of the Omnibus Society, this being the famous Guy/K4 tour of 28th March 1965. Les Smith saw an advertisement for this tour, and this was the first time he met Peter. That was 60 years ago, and they remained good friends ever since. Peter used to do talks to local history groups in village/church halls, and Les used to accompany him as his chauffeur and projectionist. They did this for many years and had many happy hours doing so.
Every room in Peter's three-bedroom house, apart from the kitchen and bathroom, was crammed from floor to ceiling with often valuable A&D memorabilia stored in filing cabinets, in cupboards, on shelves, even on the floor, everywhere. His house has a moderate size garden where a canvas-covered shelter houses his preserved A&D Dennis Loline double-decker 357 and A&D Dennis Lancet coach 196, and he also had another Dennis Loline 348 which lived in his garden until recently. As he did not hold a driving licence, he had to rely on someone else to drive his preserved buses. Peter's pride and joy was the preserved A&D Dennis Loline, SOU 465 (number 357), one of the 33 rear entrance Dennis Lolines entering service with A&D in 1958. 357 was also one of the first Aldershot & District buses to be preserved after spending her final years with the company as a driver training bus in the Guildford Training School, where two of A&D's first lady drivers passed their PSV driving tests at the wheel of 357 in 1971. Peter acquired 357 for preservation when she was put up for disposal by Alder Valley around 1975. For the 50 years since then she has lived in a purpose-built shelter in his garden at Normandy, and remarkably 357 outlasted Peter and is still in good running order today. When he owned and restored his own buses Peter was always looking for drivers and soon had Gerry Bixley down as a driver for one of his Dennis Lolines. Gerry stressed that he wasn't a proper PSV driver but that didn't matter to him, and he drove both of his Lolines. Peter's impracticality in some areas soon came to the fore on one Brighton trip. The route was Normandy, Guildford, London Victoria, and then down to Brighton. At Guildford he came up to Gerry and said we would have to get a move on because we were due at Victoria at some time or other which seemed a bit tight bearing in mind I didn't even drive cars to London. When I queried this, he said something like 'Well, National Express coaches can do it'. That's when I realised a Dennis Loline would do 48 mph on the Kingston By-Pass. We were supposed to pick up passengers in London Victoria, but none appeared. Other jobs I had for Peter was taking his Lolines to Slyfield Test Centre for their MOT tests. His expectation was that if you could drive you could sort out anything. Apart from his own acquired A&D files he used to go to The Bus Archive at Hampton Lovett, near Droitwich, from where he extracted loads of information from their records. When Gerry found he was doing this he started taking him with him when he went there, but he was very sparing with his petrol money. He based his contribution on the mileage from Normandy. He didn't see why he should contribute to Gerry's six miles each way extra to pick him up as he carefully counted the mileage! That was our Peter. He enjoyed researching and frequently visited local libraries and archives looking for historical items relating to Normandy and Ash, contributing extensive extracts particularly from newspapers to the Normandy Historians and Ash Museum, always documented in his neat but miniscule handwriting. He was a long-standing member and supporter of both organisations. Soon after Ash Museum opened Peter came along bearing donations for the growing collection. He gave us copies of several photos he had taken of Aldershot and District Traction Company buses going through the Ash area 1959-1960 and not only do these show the buses and route numbers, but they also show buildings which have since disappeared. One favourite shows the number 20 stopped at Ash level crossing, with the end of the station building and the Chester Arms pub sign visible, and another shows the 106 coach stopped at the Dover Arms with the pub in the background. Peter also brought in copies of a selection of bus timetables ranging in date from 1919 to 1971, which provide a valuable glimpse of all the local bus routes as they once were. For many years he was 'door-keeper' at Normandy Historians' open meetings and was well-known to most members, and his assistance with several Historians' publications was much appreciated, but he never forgave one author, John Squier, for mis-spelling his name in the Acknowledgements section.
He had a great interest in music and went all over the country to concerts, particularly to see André Rieu and The New Seekers with Judith Durham. Often he would go to live broadcasts of these concerts at cinemas and theatres, because the tickets for the live concerts themselves were prohibitively expensive. Another frequent outing was to attend the opening of each new branch of Wilkinson's the retailer, where he was known to the management team and welcomed as a guest at the events. However, Peter intensely disliked their re-branding as 'Wilko's'. Peter had strong views about many things, and another of 'Peter's peeves' was the renaming of route 20 from Aldershot through Normandy to Guildford as the 'Kite', which he saw as a complete waste of money and which has since been quietly dropped. He was similarly disapproving of route 6 to the Prospect estate which was renamed the 'Yoyo' then later dropped. To at least one of his friends he was a mixture of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine and Grandad from Only Fools and Horses. Compo for living in an untidy and cluttered house and not being overly bothered about his appearance or what people thought about his appearance, and Grandad for being in his own little world, not bothering to keep up with the modern world and its technology. Sadly, Peter Trevaskis passed away in the Royal Surrey Hospital, Guildford, on Wednesday 28th May 2025, just short of his 91st birthday. Peter was a lifetime busman, and he will be sorely missed by all who knew him, both in his life in the industry and as an enthusiast. John Squier Bill Tutty and Tony Waller. Photos of Peter taken over the years by various photographers, courtesy of Les Smith.
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