(14 Jul 2019, 1:52 pm)Adrian wrote

With Sunday sounding a lot more promising than the Saturday, I thought I would pay the extra for a day rover and have a slight detour along to Seaburn. Here's how it turned out:

This is a panoramic view from the vehicle entrance at the top right corner of the field.

This is another panoramic view, this time from the middle of the footpath, which runs down the left hand side of the field.

This is the entirety of the bus display, aside from one vehicle at the far side of the field alone (who knows why??!) and two others out on shuttle...

There were only a handful of people inside. I'd have a rough guess at less than 20, if you discount the people who have turned up as families with their vintage cars on show. There was about 20 cars there, but quite heavily dominated by 90s stuff.

In contrast, there were 3x as many cars turning up at the Coxhoe classic car evening a few weeks ago, and that included Ferraris and Lamborghinis...

It was advertised £2 in for the event, but the table by the entrance was empty, allowing people to just walk straight in. There were four stewards stood by the bottom gate, and nobody by the west vehicle gate.

Review of the day: 2/10, and that is only because its glorious sunshine and I got in for nowt, which makes up for the extra I spent on a Day Rover.

This is now the third event of the North East Festival of Transport, which when launching the idea in 2017, stated: "The event is aiming to fulfil a long held wish of transport enthusiasts in the region to create a major showcase event, similar to those held in some other part of the country."

And that: "Interest among vintage vehicle owners is already high with hundreds of vehicles expected on the large and easily accessible show fields, within sight of Sunderland’s Blue Flag award winning beaches."

So what has happened? Has the long held wish been fulfilled?

What time were you there? We didn't arrive until about 1:45 and there were a good 40-50 cars there. And an aeroplane. On a smaller field, it would have looked like a decent turnout, even though some of the cars were stretching the definition of vintage, somewhat. The couple of MG midgets were in much better nick than the rust heaps in my dad's back garden!

That said, I was expecting more, even if buses weren't the main focus. The EYTCC organises some massive events. We attended one at Sewerby hall, a few years ago and, with the zoo there for the kids, we passed a good few hours.

(14 Jul 2019, 9:24 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote

Certainly wouldn't recommend this one to anyone - either day.  I was amazed to see (admittedly hardly any) people paying to get into the field to see the 'display' today.  I counted a grand total of 8 vehicles, only 3 of which weren't from NEBPTs own stock.  Aside from the obvious limitation of the lack of buses, there also appeared to be relatively few cars/other vehicles and very few of those looked to be especially 'vintage'.  There was also a dearth of stalls from what I could see.  All in all this didn't leave much to do in between the shuttles - which were only once an hour.  The ones I sampled had good loadings, close to capacity on some, and it was a shame they weren't more frequent (though that would have left the field even emptier!).  The Festival of Transport has never been particularly well attended, but this year was the worst by a long way, by exhbitors and visitors alike.  I hope it doesn't impact negatively on the viability of the August Bank Holiday Seaburn rally which was always great - always seemed odd to have two in the same place so close together, and moving this earlier in the calendar seems to have done nothing to help. A real disappointment.

By the time we found out when the shuttles were running, the very full 2pm open topper was just setting off. By 3pm, we were on the 78 to Chester le street! No way were we going to kill an hour.