In 1929, The Paragon Omnibus Company began operating their bus service from Blessington into the city centre, in competition with the Dublin & Blessington Steam Tramway. As well as the buses, new petrol lorries were taking much of the valuable commercial traffic. The steam tram was encumbered by a 12mph speed limit, which did not apply to the road traffic. The trams could not better an hour and a half for the fifteen and a half mile journey between Blessington and Terenure and could not hope to compete with the much faster and cheaper lorries and buses.
The Dublin trams, too, were feeling the onslaught. During the 1920s, many private bus companies sprang up all around the city, competing for the lucrative passenger traffic into and out of the city. The Dublin United Tramway Company countered this competition by introducing it's own bus services to complement the trams, the first of these beginning between the city and Killester on the northside in 1925. Indeed, DUTC buses had appeared in Terenure from 1928, when the new number 49 bus began working from the city centre to Tallaght, serving Kimmage Cross and Terenure Road West, before competing with the DBST for the business between Terenure and Tallaght.
In 1933, legislation was passed giving the DUTC the rights to take over all the private bus operators. By 1936, however, buses had become the flavour of the day, and all the trams were rapidly replaced by a large fleet of the new breed of double deck bus, halted only by the interruption of the Second World War. Interestingly, among the first important tram routes to be replaced by buses were the number 16 and 17 trams to Terenure and Rathfarnham in 1936, and among the last to go were the number 15 trams to Terenure via Rathmines, lasting through the war until October 1948. The present day 15, 15A and 15B group of bus routes are a direct link back to the old tram days, albeit very much extended with the growth of Dublin's suburbs far beyond what they were in prewar days. Even the present day 16 and 16A buses follow much of the old 16 tram route into and across the city from Terenure, via Harold's Cross Road and Camden Street.
What about the original bus service to Blessington? Well, just two years after the Paragon Omnibus Company entered their chestnut brown coloured International buses in competition with the DBST, they themselves succumbed to being taken over by the much larger independent operator, the General Omnibus Company. This company had it's own works premises on the North Wall, and a large, reliable fleet of mostly Albion buses, originally painted in a khaki and green livery, and later, in all over black with the 'General' logo in large cream letters.
In 1934, the General Omnibus Company was taken over by the DUTC as part of the acquisitions of all the private operators in Dublin. In that year, too, the Blessington bus service first received the route number 65, which it would carry for many years as one of the longest city bus routes operated by the state company.
Early DUTC buses were painted in the tram livery of dark blue and cream, but by the time of the acquisitions in the 1930s, an unpainted aluminium scheme was sported. In 1935 a new livery for tram and bus was introduced of green and cream. In 1941 the famous and long lived colours of dark green with eau-de-nil lining appeared, along with the infamous 'flying snail' logo, which was carried through into CIE days.
The 65 route was operated for years by prewar AEC Regal four cylinder oil engined single deck buses. In 1939, some services were extended to serve Valleymount, overlooking the Lakes. Further extensions over the years saw buses serving Hollywood Cross from 1948, Annalecky Cross from 1949, Ballyknockan from 1955, and Donard from 1965. Buses operated out of Conyngham Road Garage, the site of an old DUTC tram depot and also the old inner terminus of the Dublin and Lucan Steam Tramway, until about 1971 when they moved to Ringsend Garage, also an old tram depot. About this time, too, the first of a new generation of rear engined double deck buses were introduced onto the service. A short lived sister service, the 65A, served to the old DBST stop at the Embankment, using the original road as a turning circle for facing back to Dublin.
Today, there are number 65 bus services to Blessington, and to Ballymore Eustace, some three miles further on, but perhaps the most spectacular is an hour and a half run upstairs on the double decker bus to Ballyknockan, high up on the mountainside overlooking the Lakes, by narrow winding roads and tree lined avenues, the longest service by a Dublin city bus, and without a doubt the most scenic! The 65 bus still travels over the old line of the Dublin & Blessington Steam Tramway, but alas, very little is left in evidence to tell of the curious sight of the little steam trains hissing their way across the Dublin mountains, hauling their way up the incline at Crooksling, and disgorging their loads of day trippers from Dublin for a day by the lakes at Blessington, in the heart of the Wicklow countryside.