HUNDREDS of vehicles travelled from across the UK to park up at the annual Barry Island Festival of Transport on Sunday, June 9.

And it was the first visit by a City of Budapest bus in Wales.

The Festival also saw the launch of a major £100,000 appeal for an 81-year-old coach.

Organising chairman of the heritage bus group at the Barry bus depot, Barry, Mike Taylor said: “Visitor numbers seemed to be quite strong despite the mid-morning rain shower, the sun came out and all the heritage open top buses ran during the day with quite a lot of families enjoying the event.

“We were busy managing the free trip buses even with a 10-minute frequency, we had queues of over 100 people at times.”

“We certainly attracted new people to Barry even if this time not so many when on the beach.

“I want to thank all the volunteers and Vale of Glamorgan Council as at times it was really busy.

“On the car side, one of the striking differences this year are the groups of performance car enthusiasts attracting a lot of younger people, in contract to the many classic cars from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

“On the heritage bus side, we are pleased the 1957 Red & White bus arrived as it marks the start of our call for donations to restore an 81-year-old 1938 Red & White coach.

“Amongst the other visitors there were ones we had not seen before this.

“We had three double-deckers from Birmingham and ones representing London, Bath, Swansea, and Bristol joining our Barry collection running free trips.

“The New Zealand single decker was on show and for the first time ever in Wales was a bus from Hungary.”

He added: “The Hungarian bus was from the Budapest Municipal Transport fleet, a 22-seater with standing area – three door city Ikarus-260 bus new in 2009.

“The one that visited Barry was a heritage vehicle in its own right at 29 years old, it is not what one would call unique.

“The Hungarian capital city bus operator owned 953 of them out of a fleet of 1,760 buses.

“As a type, the Ikarus-260 is recorded as the world’s most common bus as 75,547 have been built.

"Ikarus buses being a big supplier to Eastern European countries, but none of these to the UK.”