Barrow’s 60-year-old Hindpool Road bus depot could soon be replaced by a brand new state-of-the-art garage, reported The Mail in March 1994.

Cumberland Motor Services was making plans to move its 58-vehicle maintenance and repair operation to the Project Furness site.

The Hindpool Road depot had been developed by the former Barrow Corporation Transport department in the 1930s and occupied a prime town centre site.

CMS operations manager Steve Barber said: “The building is years old and the engineering facilities are more suited to 1930s vehicles than those of the 90s.”

Managing director Paul Southgate added: “The company has for some time been seeking to improve facilities in the Barrow area.

“We have already made a considerable investment with the fleet and we really need the type of depot to cater for it.”

In 1996 a traditional blue and cream Barrow Corporation double decker bus drove out of the past and into town.

The 1958 Leyland, number 0956 and owned by VSEL worker John Hambler, had journeyed from West Yorkshire where it had been stored.

It was preparing for a vintage bus service to run in August that year as part of the Furness Railway’s 150th anniversary celebrations.

The bus was the youngest of three which would run a free shuttle service between Ulverston station and Haverthwaite station, where the 150-year-old Furness Railway steam engine Coppernob from the National Railway Museum in York would be on show.

The Barrow double decker was one of two owned by members of the Barrow Transport Group.

It would share the shuttle service with a former Ribble Leyland Tiger single decker from 1934 owned by the Ribble Vehicle Preservation Group, and a pre-Second World War low bridge Cumberland Motor Services Leyland TD4 double decker.

In November 1995 a new Sunday bus service from Teasdale Road, North Scale, on Walney Island, to Furness General Hospital, was launched thanks to Cumbria County Council funding.