page_title: Tillingbourne Bus Company
section_title: Fleet
hierarchical_section_title: Tillingbourne Bus Company / Fleet
caption_attribution_description: English: Safeguard Coaches' X307 CBT, an Optare Excel, in Guildford on route 5.
context_page_description: Tillingbourne Bus Company was a bus company based in Cranleigh, Surrey. The company operated bus and coach services in Surrey, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire from 1924 until 2001.
  It was founded as Tillingbourne Valley in 1924, and became a limited company in 1931, taking the name Tillingbourne Valley Services. It initially operated routes in the Guildford area from a garage in Chilworth using small single-deck buses painted in a maroon livery. Coach hire and excursions began in 1931, but two years later these activities split into a separate company, Tillingbourne Valley Coaches, which operated independently for a further 24 years. Until 1970 Tillingbourne was owned and managed by three generations of the Trice family, before being sold to Trevor Brown.
  The company changed its name to Tillingbourne Bus Company in 1972, changing its livery to blue and yellow, and moved to a garage in Gomshall in the same year. A second garage in Ewhurst was opened in 1974. An expansion of operations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, much of it through the award of county council contracted routes, took the company's vehicles into West Sussex and Hampshire as well as Surrey.
context_section_description: The first vehicle to be bought by Tillingbourne was a single-deck Chevrolet with 14 seats, which entered service on the launch of the company's first route in 1924. It was joined by a similar Overland Automobile bus later in the year. Two further vehicles had been purchased by 1928, when a depot fire destroyed three of the four buses. They were replaced by second-hand buses including an 18-seat Dennis and several Thornycroft A2 vehicles. From November 1934 until the outbreak of World War II, these were progressively replaced by new buses, also built by Thornycroft. The first double-deck vehicle to be bought was a Bristol K Type, which joined the fleet in 1959. Eight Guy Vixens were bought from London Transport between 1963 and 1964 to replace the entire previous fleet. These were succeeded by a wide variety of types, with Bedford coaches and buses the most numerous. In the 1970s, a number of second-hand Bristol SUL4A's, with ECW B36F bodies, were operated.
  In the period shortly before and after deregulation, a range of types were used. As well as a large number of Bedford vehicles, which continued to be bought new until the late 1980s, the fleet also included the AEC Reliance, Leyland Leopard, Leyland Tiger and Volvo B10M models, and the first two Dennis Lancet single-deckers to be built. The company bought its first minibus, a 16-seat Ford Transit, in 1985. The Tillingbourne fleet in the late 1980s and early 1990s also included two rare Dennis Dorchesters bought new, and a Volvo B10M coach with the last Plaxton Derwent body built.
  The fleet was substantially updated shortly prior to the company's closure. Two Volvo B6 single-deckers were bought in 1994. These were followed by a number of Optare products including the Metrorider minibus and four of the last Optare Vecta single-deckers built. The most common type in the fleet in the late 1990s was the Mercedes-Benz 811D minibus; by 1998 21 were in use out of a total fleet of 65. Tillingbourne bought its first low-floor buses, two new Optare Excels, in 2000.
caption: One of a pair of Optare Excels new to Tillingbourne operating with Safeguard Coaches following Tillingbourne's collapse
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