Caves Buses

Caves Bus services only operated buses in Redditch after October 1986 for a short time in Redditch they were until the very untimely demise a significant and interesting operator in the locality. Caves Bus Services was formed in 1956 and started operating with one Strachan bodied Trojan minibus. The fleet grew to around five vehicles in the 1960’s with the company operating both private hires and excursions and the fleet became dominated by Bedford based vehicles. By the early 1980’s the company had become a bus operator and was running a Redditch to Solihull service number 5 as a replacement to the withdrawn Midland Red West R19. At bus de-regulation on 26th October 1986 the service number 5 became 175 and was cut back to run Wythall to Solihull only. Caves continued to run their service 9 from Solihull to Redditch after 26th October 1986 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The Saturday service being withdrawn on 7th March 1987 and the remainder after operation on 22nd December 1988.Caves built a small network of bus services in an around the Solihull area mainly based around school services. The company also provided a number of the weekend Birmingham night services. In the early 1990’s the company replaced the Bedford vehicles with Leyland Nationals. The original founder of the company Edward Cave died and the company was left in the hands of his children George Cave and Ann Lewis. Unfortunately in June 1999 George Cave died very suddenly and within days the company had to stop trading. The last bus operated by the Caves was HHA126L, George’s favorite National, which was used to transport all the company staff to and from his funeral. HHA126L is now "preserved" and is painted in Midland Red West National Bus Company livery. After a number of years attending bus rallies the vehicle was used as an office at the Birmingham Railway Museum at Tyseley in Birmingham. Unfortunately the vehicle was sold to Uk Bus Dismantlers at Bromyard for scrap in February 2008.

The operational fleet at the closing of the business in June 1999