50,000 items are left behind by bus passengers

Fifty thousand items of lost property - including £4,000 cash, false legs and even a jar containing panda urine - were left on the region's buses last year, the Express & Star can reveal today.

A box of kittens, a fully-decorated Christmas tree and even people's children were all forgotten on buses in the Black Country, Birmingham and Staffordshire in 2010, National Express West Midlands, which is the biggest bus operator in the region, revealed today.

The most unusual items left on its vehicles included the same tuba that was forgotten on five separate occasions, and a zimmer frame with false teeth attached.

The most common items left behind by passengers include umbrellas, mobile phones, workplace ID cards and bus passes.

Lynn Howles, lost property co-ordinator, said 60 per cent of lost property was reclaimed within a week. Uncollected items are donated to charity or returned to the person who found it.

She said: "We reunite as many people as possible with their lost property, but it is a mammoth task. The majority of our lost property are standard things such as umbrellas and purses but now and again we get something which baffles us, such as a jar of panda urine or false legs."

National Express added that any children left behind on buses were always speedily reunited with their families.

The bizarre items were found on the company's fleet of 1,700 buses, with them ending up at a treasure trove at the Yardley Wood garage in Birmingham.

The biggest lost property store in the country is Transport for London's Baker Street offices, which keeps items going back more than seven decades and handles around 200,000 pieces a year.

Last year in London, items left behind on the buses, trains and tube included breast implants, a coffin, and human ashes. To reclaim lost property, people should go to www.nxbus .co.uk and specify which routes they travelled on.