As part of the “Worcester Agreement”, on Friday 1st June 1928, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) commenced operation of a new local bus network in Worcester, replacing the electric tramway network that ceased operation on the previous day. The new Worcester bus network was the first of many area networks to be introduced by BMMO carrying a letter prefix on route numbers to denote the area, with Worcester route numbers having a “W”-prefix.
Service W28 was not part of the original network introduced in 1928, but was one of the many new routes introduced at a later date as the network expanded.
See Service W1 for a list of routes operated as part of the 1928 Worcester local bus network.
In the late 1940s, a new Council House development was build at the top of Ronskwood Hill, opposite the “temporary” wartime hospital, that had been built in 1941. In c. 1948, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) added Service W18 to Worcester's local bus network to serve this new housing estate.
Service W28 followed in c. 1951, as a short-working variation to Service W18. While the W18 ran along Canterbury Road to terminate at the junction with Westminster Road, the new Service W28 terminated at the junction with Ripon Road, which was only a short walk from the entrance to the aforementioned Ronkswood Hospital.
In 1963, Service W28 was extended along Canterbury Road to turn right into Liverpool Road, just before the Service W18 terminus, and terminate with the junction with Prestwich Avenue. A bus layby still exists at the site, but it has now been several decades since a bus last terminated there. At the time this change was introduced, both Service W18 and W28 ran a 15-minute frequency to give eight buses each hour over the shared sections of the routes.
By 1969, the combined frequency had been reduced to each route running every 20-minutes to give six buses and hour, then to every 30-minutes by 1972 to give four buses an hour.
On Monday 3rd December 1973, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) sold a number of depots in the Birmingham area, and the operations of those depots, to the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE). As a result of this, the company renamed to Midland Red Omnibus Company Limited (MROC) on Friday 29th March 1974.
The Ronkswood routes would continue to be run by MROC until the company ceased trading as a bus and coach operator on Saturday 5th September 1981. From the following day, the network of local Worcester bus routes would be operated by the newly formed Midland Red (West) Limited.
Meanwhile, that “temporary” wartime hospital that Service W28 was originally introduced to serve would finally close in 2002, outliving both the bus route and the company that ran it!