A very professionally produced video, Midland Red 100 - A Centenary Celebration centres on the events of 27/28 November 2004 at the Black Country Museum.

The video is very comprehensive, and is an amalgam of speeches made at the event, interviews with former key employees such as Ray Braithwaite (Chief Engineer) and James Isaac (Traffic Manager) etc., and features a substantial collection of memorabilia and some archive material. We see models, hear reminiscences, and savour the delights of seeing former Midland Red buses in service carrying passengers and delighting spectators and photographers. The Black Country Museum does of course provide an excellent setting, and the opportunities thus presented are exploited to the full by the filmmakers.

The history of the company as recounted by Martin Hobson is well illustrated by footage shot at the event, and individual types are accurately and comprehensively explained. Archive footage of C5s on the M1, the rescue by memebers of the Oxford Bus Museum of an REDD from Moreton-in-the-Marsh etc., are sensibly cut in, producing a very watchable video.

Following the sequences at the Black Country Museum, we are treated to some superb footage of the Birmingham and Midland Musuem of Transport’s D10, 4943 on its first day back carrying passengers on public roads in many, many years. The bus was restored to working order by BaMMOt at Wythall specifically for its Midland Red Centenary Day earlier in the year. Surprisingly this brief encounter with 4943 is the only record on the video of this significant and very much related event.

Apart from the minor point just made, it is difficult to fault ‘Midland Red 100 - A Centenary Celebration’, in which it seems I also make a brief and completely unexpected appearance - but please don’t let that stop you from buying it!

Phillip Lamb.

Reprinted from Bus & Coach Preservation - May 2006 edition