Names on the buses

810 Magnus Volk

441 Magnus Volk

Connections with Brighton and Hove : This son of a German clockmaker was a great inventor and pioneer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He brought electricity early to his own house in Dyke Road and soon had the Royal Pavilion illuminated in the same way. He also brought the first telephone service to Brighton. Volk then built in 1884 his delightful seafront railway. It was such a success that it expanded and now runs between the Aquarium and Black Rock. More remarkably, Volk fashioned a railway that ran with its rails in the sea between Brighton and Rottingdean. Nicknamed Daddy Long Legs, the extraordinary contraption made slow but stately progress in the water. It survived the worst the weather could throw at it but could not bypass new groynes put down by Brighton Corporation to protect the beaches. Volk’s own little line, the oldest electric railway in Britain, was taken over by the council and in the late 1930s and is still council run today. The inventor himself appeared in public for the last time in 1937 at the opening of a station at Black Rock. He died later the same year. There is a plaque to his memory on his former home in Dyke Road.

810 Dennis Trident - carried name since delivery in April 1999, originally on METRO Line 1 then repainted into new livery in January 2004 and then METRO Line 7 from April 2004. Metro 7 branding removed January 2011. Bus sold in May 2011. New bus 441 arrived in January 2012 and took up this name on Route 7.