A COMPANY which carried passengers, including schoolchildren, on old buses with a catalogue of mechanical defects has been given a warning by a traffic court.

The public inquiry in Leeds was told that TWRC (formerly The Wensleydale Railway Company), of High Street, Northallerton, had had no history of problems with its buses until an expansion of services last year began to strain maintenance arrangements, when attempts were made to overcome the deficiencies.

Elizabeth Perrett, deputy North-East area traffic commissioner, said the company, which no longer runs buses as part of its efforts to improve public transport and reinstate the Wensleydale railway, had become a victim of its own success.

The defects were revealed during spot checks conducted over three months by vehicle examiners on the fleet run by TWRC, which kept five buses at Leeming Bar railway station.

Among the faults were fuel leaks, excessive smoke emissions and a defective road spring, seat mounting and door opening warning device.

Vehicle examiner Karl Hunt told Miss Perrett that between November last year and January this year, 11 prohibition notices ordering buses off the road were issued. These included five refusals of clearance, regarded as being of serious concern, when buses were presented at an HGV testing station.

Mr Hunt said: "The age of the vehicles and the work they did meant they would need a lot of maintenance.

"These vehicles were being asked to work school contracts in the morning, work in service during the day and school services again in the evening, which is perhaps a little challenging for buses of that age."

On another occasion examiners who did a spot check on a TWRC minibus carrying schoolchildren at Great Smeaton found it did not have a certificate of initial fitness or a PSV test certificate. The company was later fined £500 and ordered to pay £85 costs by Northallerton magistrates.

The inquiry heard that in June last year TWRC, which had been operating school contracts and a weekend nightclub bus, significantly expanded its work in stage carriage services so that it was running buses six days a week.

Operations director Dave Woracker said that in response to maintenance problems, he increased the amount of time available to the fitter and broadened the scope of a commercial garage already employed by the company for some work.

When it became apparent that these changes were not solving the problems he brought in a fitter's mate, but it was decided in February this year to end in-house maintenance and contract all work out to the commercial garage.

Chris Bulmer, a vintage bus enthusiast who was appointed part-time transport manager of TWRC, said he introduced wall charts for the planning of inspections and offered advice on putting things right.

Mr Bulmer said the minibus checked at Great Smeaton had been taken out on a school run by mistake.

TWRC, which originally operated buses out of Aysgarth railway station, started operations in 1998 by leasing three low-floor vehicles for experimental services linking Wensleydale towns with rail and hospital services. Those buses were returned when the experiment ended three months later.

The operation moved to Leeming Bar in November 2001, but Mr Woracker said the company had run no services since April 7 this year. Drivers and administrative staff had been made redundant.

He said: "We needed more modern vehicles but were waiting for the results of the tender round for school buses. We did not know what contracts we were going to be offered.

"In the tender round we were offered eight new contracts which left all the buses in the wrong place at the wrong time. We could not see how we could run a viable network with the contracts offered and without replacing the buses."

Miss Perrett said she did not find that either TWRC or Mr Bulmer had lost repute