fair trade resulting in fines for all concerned. By that time GM Buses (South) had been acquired by Stagecoach and re-branded Stagecoach Manchester and GM Buses (North) by FirstBus. MTL maintained the Lancashire Travel branding for the St Helens depot however MTL North fleetnames were used by St Helens from the Spring of 1998 right up to the acquisition of MTL by Arriva in February 2000. Southport & District Southport & District was a re-branding of Merseybus services in the Southport and Formby area, and was part of a general exercise to introduce local branding at MTL in 1994. Wirral Peninsula Buses Wirral Peninsula Buses was another of MTL's brand names, introduced in 1994 for services in the Wirral area. The Wirral company was based at Laird Street, Birkenhead, Wirral and now the bus Depot is owned by Arriva North West. St Helens Rider St Helens Rider was an earlier branding exercise, introduced in the summer of 1993 for Merseybus services 33 and 44 in St Helens. These routes were facing large amounts of competition from a number of smaller operations in the town and the St Helens Rider operation was relatively short-lived, being quietly dropped around the time the Lancashire Travel branding was adopted by St Helens depot in autumn of 1993. Blue Triangle Bootle-based 'Forrest' (trading as 'Blue Triangle') was formed by former Merseyside Transport driver David Forrest in the late summer of 1988, initially focusing on Merseytravel contracts with a small fleet of second hand vehicles. By the late summer/autumn of 1992, however, the company would begin new commercial operations of its own, running into competition with Merseytravel-contracted services, and soon enough, into direct competition with MTL itself on two of its routes. By 1993 the Blue Triangle fleet had increased to over 20 vehicles, including a wide variety of vehicle types such as ex-London Regional Transport Routemasters, former Merseyside Transport 'Jumbo' Atlanteans repatriated from Isle of Man Transport, and two brand-new K-registered Plaxton Pointer bodied Dennis Darts, the first of their type to operate in Liverpool. In the spring of 1994, MTL acquired Blue Triangle, merging the company into the MerseyRider operation then-based at Speke depot and some of the competing commercial services were either withdrawn or merged into existing MTL services. Excluding the Dennis Darts, the majority of the Blue Triangle fleet was either sold on or scrapped, though one former Blue Triangle Routemaster was