Model Buses

[SRman]

Looking back at what is available for pre-World War 2 bus types, most of the ready to run types are also London bus types.

EFE's inventory includes the London STL, 10T10 and, at a pinch, the RT2 types, plus the Leyland Titan TD1 and the Tiger TS8.

 

OOC have contributed the LT AEC 4Q4 single decker and the double deck version, which has been released in many non-LT liveries.

 

More recently, there have been a couple of resin models released through Jotus and/or the London Bus Museum; these include London Transport LT 'Scooter' single deckers and the CR rear-engined Leyland Cub.

As can be seen from the above, the vast majority of these are London types (which suits me fine!) but there are a few for those modelling outside of the London Transport sphere.

After that, one has to resort to kit building, whether they be of white metal, plastic, resin or card/paper. 

If anyone is interested, here are some of my pre-war collection of models, a good many of which are still only partially constructed from kits.

I have just finished putting the glazing into this Little Bus Company (LBC) resin 'Godstone' STL, which I have chosen to finish in its original 1934 livery (or as close as I can get to that). It will wear the 'General' fleetname of the first deliveries.






I also put together a diorama shot with all pre-war buses and liveries (all London types, I'm afraid). In the foreground, facing left are an LBC resin 9T9 in Greenline livery and an ABS Streetscene white metal LT 'scooter' in central bus livery. Behind them, facing right are an EFE 10T10 (although I did build a Varney/ABS white metal one, it has post-war route details), and OOC 2Q2. Behind the fence, left to right, are the LBC 'Godstone' STL, beside a much earlier Varney white metal version (with fogged upper deck windows - I used the dreaded superglue!), an LBC resin 5Q5, an RTC white metal CR in red, and OOC Green Line 4Q4 with its engine hatch removed.
 

I do have quite a few more buses in these early liveries. Probably the toughest ones to research and attempt to get right are the pre-war LT country area liveries as they went through an alarming number of shades of green before eventually settling on the well known Lincoln Green. The 'Godstone' STL, a Chiswick bodied forward entrance country STL (an LBC kit) and that 9T9 took much mixing of paints trying to get shades of green that appeared correct.

Hopefully I haven't bored everyone with my ramblings here.

[PhilJ W]

A few more pre-war buses would be nice. A Bristol K/ECW would cover a lot of livery variations as would the London (General) ST. The first one was purchased not only by Tilling group companies but many municipal operators, the latter had at least 6 different livery variations in London service as well as near identical versions operated by Exeter corporation and one or two other operators.

[SRman]

An ST may appear shortly after I finish my LBC ST kit!! Mind you, that may be a while yet ... I haven't actually started it! I haven't decided what livery to finish it in, either.

 

OOC have done the post-war Bristol K/ECW, as well as a Bristol L/BBW (very similar to the ECW body). As you said, Phil, a pre-war K with the higher radiator and six-bay ECW body would be nice.

In my off the cuff list before, I forgot to mention the Matchbox Yesteryear 'diddler' trolleybus. With decent white metal wheels from the LT class AEC Renown the trolleybuses come up as decent models. The earlier issues in red need some livery tweaks with cream and black bands, whereas the London United version is nice just as it comes (apart from those original wheels).

[runs as required]

Thats a beautiful London diorama. As a kid coming home from school (on the 10) the big boys showed us how to lean out into the wind at the top of the ST's open stairs and spit into the wind and watch where it landed back on the road...... then the posh silent RTs came along.

 

I had the same thought about the Bristol K and made a start on orthonal images  (see below) but got diverted into rarer beasts like Leyland Gnus and foreign exotica.

 

dhig

[runs as required]

The Art Deco

The attached set of jazz-age charabanc drawings were sparked by an encounter with a man with a passion for the Art Deco. Amidst a whole town centre of scratch built streets at a recent exhibition he pointed out a Harry Weedon cinema, a bus station and several elaborate Gotham City style office buildings.

 

Reflecting on the 1920s and 1930s Gresley and the other Big Four RTR models we are beguiled by, I slid into a computer reverie searching for images of the Streamline era.

Particularly striking was the metamorphis of the road motor coach in little more than a decade from crude toastrack ‘chair a bank’ of raked bench seats strapped to an army surplus First World War solid tyred truck chassis to six wheeler luxury furnished streamlined land cruiser. In my ‘black and white’ post war schooldays in the north west, we still termed such coaches “sharrers”

 

The 6 wheeler drawings

I’ve enjoyed drawing out a colourful sequence of OTT Art Deco examples to !:76 scale as a possible starting point for some quick card models. It was interesting to find that, as with locomotive design (most notably Churchward): new ideas were transposed from the USA. These coaches coincide with the 6 years between Stanier’s move from Swindon to the LMS in 1933 and the outbreak of war in 1939. The drive to maximise seat capacity caused engineers returning from the US to seek to relocate engines/transmission away from the traditional position of the horse. For the longest 30 ft British PSV vehicles six wheels on  3 axles was mandatory until the war years. But were the twin axles better at the rear - or at the front as a twin steer unit like the later Bedford VAL ?

 

The “Baroque”

I enjoyed drawing out Wyndham Shire’s 1937 Midland “Red” SLR coach as the Ritziest example - and all those Art Deco grilles. In the post war years Sinclair’s more dignified red and black livery for Midland "Red" coaches curbed the earlier flamboyance. By November 1959 when the M1 opened, the pre-war coaches had all gone for scrap; Sinclair’s new C5 coach took possession of the M1’s centre lane.

 

dhig

 

[edit of typos]

[runs as required]

Pioneer British vehicles

My fairly instant web 'research' resulting in the above drawings begin with the first really modern PSV introduced in 1933. The SE6 was designed in Northern General’s Gateshead works by Chief Engineer Gordon Hayter with his assistant DM Sinclair. It utilised an American 6 cylinder Hercules engine low enough to be mounted behind the driver yet still permitting 40 forward facing seats. A total of 67 vehicles were built up to 1939, 8 of which were coaches usually with Shorts of Rochester bodies to NG’s design.

The topmost elegant touring ‘car’ with fully opening coupe sliding roof was modified in the early 1950s to run its last few years enclosed with curving Perspex roof panels  (drawing 2). Northern's SE6 buses were modified to two axle SE4s after MOT axle loadings had been relaxed.

The SE6 chasses had been built for Northern by AEC Southall. Their engineer G.J. Rackham, also with US experience at the Fageol 'Twin Coach' Company of Ohio, had designed AEC’s own version of the side engine: the better known Q type two axle 27' 6". bus. This used a taller AEC engine either under a longitudinal seat or below the stairs on a double decker.

 

The emergence of the modern vehicle

The lower pair of 6 wheelers are the enigmatic Leyland Gnu front engined-rear/wheel drive twin steers that date from 1934. The City Coach Company of Brentwood was the main user for transporting London holiday makers along the newly opened concrete ‘arterial’ Southend road. The two examples shown have the optional forward chassis overhang which, in the case of the Scottish Bluebird coach, afforded a front entrance beside the driver.

In 1941 Leyland delivered a similar chassis but with a horizontal underfloor engine to Alexanders of Falkirk  who paradoxically fitted a utility centre entrance bus body. In the post war years this Leyland Panda got rebuilt as a rather austere Bluebird coach. The Panda remained a ‘one off’; it would be a decade before Leyland returned to the underfloor configuration.

 

Meanwhile in 1940, Northern’s Donald McIntyre Sinclair had been appointed head of bus building at BMMO in succession to Wyndham Shire who’d stamped 20 years of individualism on Midland “Red”. By 1945 squadrons of Sinclair’s underfloor engined buses, were taking to the roads, developed from rebuilds of Wyndham Shire’s rear engined prototypes.

Ironically had Sinclair persevered with the rear engined configuration it might have delivered a low floor chassis capable of single or double deck bodywork.

 

dhig

 

I'd appreciate any corrections or amplifications to these notes.

 

[edit: red highlighted text changed following from PhilJW's post #36 below]

[SRman]

Of those illustrations (nice ones, BTW), two have been offered in kit form at different times.

 

Little Bus Company did the SE6 in resin some years ago. I don't think there are any plans for a rerun at this stage.

 

One of the Leyland Gnus is available from RTC kits in white metal.

 

Just in case anyone is interested!

[PhilJ W]

You forgot the AEC 'Q' one of the most innovative and forward looking designs of the 1930's. AEC also pioneered the entrance ahead of the front axle from 1922, on trolleybuses. Another innovative design was the Maudsley SF40 also designed for an entrance ahead of the front axle.

[runs as required]

You forgot the AEC 'Q' one of the most innovative and forward looking designs of the 1930's. AEC also pioneered the entrance ahead of the front axle from 1922, on trolleybuses. Another innovative design was the Maudsley SF40 also designed for an entrance ahead of the front axle.

I couldn't find a pic of that 1922 AEC trolley - only an early 1920s  "Railess" single deck with an entrance towards the front.

The implication from the stuff I found was that AEC's Rackham developed the Q from the contract work for NGT.

 

Those Maudslays (apparently dating from 1935) look heroic; were they front engined like the Gnu? I rode old US buses in Mexico (in about 1980) that were all front engined with entrance alongside the driver.

[runs as required]

.......Just in case anyone is interested!

Me, me, me!

Thanks for your response to that A4 Art Deco charas post.

1

Before drawing up the SE6 (first the bus, then) the coach, I did enquire of LBC about their SE6 resin bus kit. They emailed that it was not in their plans for re-issue. Dave Alexander also did an etch but likewise he is not planning a re-issue.

No one seems to have issued a kit of the stylish coach – so I plan to have a go at the pre and post war variants.  

2

Thanks for mentioning the City Coach Company Radley kit – I see it is of the more numerous version of the Gnu without the front overhang. (I wonder what the difference in driving these was like? And there would be no power steering in the 1930s!).

3

As someone mentioned before the Midland “Red” SLR is available as a Lancer kit.

 

Getting back ‘on track’ I have begun dreaming about working up some card bodies from fuzzy photos to model 00gauge pre-war rail traction experiments  - such as the Armstrong Whitworths, Michelines and the LMS red and cream DMU set.

 

dhig

[PhilJ W]

I couldn't find a pic of that 1922 AEC trolley - only an early 1920s  "Railess" single deck with an entrance towards the front.

The implication from the stuff I found was that AEC's Rackham developed the Q from the contract work for NGT.

 

Those Maudslays (apparently dating from 1935) look heroic; were they front engined like the Gnu? I rode old US buses in Mexico (in about 1980) that were all front engined with entrance alongside the driver.

The first 'Q' was on the road in 1931, long before the SE6 was even on the drawing board. Rackham spent a few years working in the USA, his inspiration for the Q was the 'Twin Coach' city bus which as its name implies had two engines, one mounted on either side. Rackham settled for a single engine to avoid the mechanical problems caused by trying to work two engines in unison. The Maudsley did indeed have its engine forward of the front axle, a 4 cylinder 5.3 litre double overhead cam unit. Later they were made available with Gardiner 4LW or 5LW units. The AEC trolleybuses were mostly exported to the far east, almost 1,000 of them mostly to Shanghai.

[runs as required]

The first 'Q' was on the road in 1931, long before the SE6 was even on the drawing board. Rackham spent a few years working in the USA, his inspiration for the Q was the 'Twin Coach' city bus which as its name implies had two engines, one mounted on either side. Rackham settled for a single engine to avoid the mechanical problems caused by trying to work two engines in unison.

 

Thanks for the comments.

The history notes I posted to the drawings were trawled via image searches. I've just done a bit more googling and found these:

1

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEC_Q-type

2

http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=29903&page=79  see post 1173

 

and here is your Shanghai trolley:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Shanghai_AEC_trolleybus.jpg

 

Please do keep the comments coming......

 

dhig

[runs as required]

Further to post #37 above I remembered (while driving back home from Durham Trains, Stanley) the source of the claim about the SE6: it is here

http://www.nebpt.co.uk/vehicles/northern_omnibus_trust/pg41.html

SE6 indicated Side Engine 6 wheel, the design of the vehicle was very advanced, compared to the normal front engined half-cab buses that were available at the time and in fact, the first "modern" British single-decker with engine under the floor, 44 seats all facing forward and driver control of the entrance. The American Hercules petrol engine was fitted under the floor on the offside.

 

So, in the light of what PhilLJ has posted, might we presume that  NGT (in effect Sinclair with his American experience) schemed the SE6 along with AEC's Rackham, but for AEC's NG build Sinclair specified the shorter American Hercules rather than the AEC engine so enabling 44 forward facing seats?

 

I've read somewhere that one of the reasons the Q never achieved commercial success was its significantly higher first cost .An imported American engine must have been even more expensive, yet NGT (a BET subsidary) operating in a depressed corner of Britain acquired a fleet of 67 of these vehicles.

 

The only SEs I ever saw were two SE4s mouldering away around the back of Beamish museum in its early days, but I regularly rode to work on the sole (ex LT) Q bus in Malta.in the late 1960s - early 1970s.

 

dhig

[PhilJ W]

The reason for using the Hercules engine in the SE6 was it did not protrude too much above floor level being a side valve petrol unit. The AEC engines were quite tall and the normal practice was to put a longitudinal seat above it. The lack of success of the Q type was largely down to the fact that it was intended mainly to be a double deck bus for London but London Transport opted for more conventional buses, the STL. The main reason was that the entrance in front of the front wheels was considered dangerous. Platform doors in London were banned by the Public Carriage Office who had the final word on such matters. The Public Carriage Office delayed the introduction of covered top double deckers, pneumatic tyres and even drivers windscreens on buses in London during the 20's and 30's.

[runs as required]

.......OOC have done the post-war Bristol K/ECW, as well as a Bristol L/BBW (very similar to the ECW body). As you said, Phil, a pre-war K with the higher radiator and six-bay ECW body would be nice.

Sitting (bored) in my daughter's house over Christmas while all the kids and adults were on screens, I decided to do the same and have posted the pre war Bristol K with ECW 6 bay lowbridge body.

It is in United livery on the Newcastle-Hexham route south of the Tyne that passes our lanehead, (though I have guessed at its old route number).

If it has reproduced at the wrong size the overall 27'6" length ought to be 112mm at 1:76 scale.

dh

dh

[coachmann]

I produced patterns for a range of cast white metal bus radiators, bonnets, front wings, headlights, wheels, step-rings, upper deck front, roof and rear dome to covert the 1:50th scale utility double decker into peacetime variations. These were followed by an identical range for 4mm scale just covering radiators. Off the top of my head I did :- 

 

Leyland TD2, TD3-4 TD5 and PD1 rads, the latter designed to replace the EFE rad.

AEC Regent I, II & III rads

Daimler COG, Wartime and CVD rads.

Prewar Thorneycroft

Prewar Dennis

Crossley 1930's Petrol, Diesel, Streamlined and postwar DD42 rads.

Guy Arab wartime and Mk.IV rads

Forgot to mention Bristol pre and postwar rads.

 

I passed marketting to Ralph Jackson (ex Jackson-Evans and now Regent III Models).

 

AEC Regent III/East Lancs in Rochdale livery alongside Leyland TD4/Roe in Oldham livery using my rads, wings, bonnets and upper deck parts in 1:50th....

 

London Transport TD5 or TD7 just using the radiator....

[davknigh]

Is there a source for 1:50 London Transport transfers? I have a Solido RT that is a bit the worse for wear and needs new ads and destination,well the whole lot actually.

 

TIA

 

David

[runs as required]

I produced patterns for a range of cast white metal bus radiators, bonnets, front wings, headlights, wheels, step-rings, upper deck front, roof and rear dome to covert the 1:50th scale utility double decker into peacetime variations. These were followed by an identical range for 4mm scale just covering radiators.

WEB Bus AEC III & TD4.jpg

Lovely pictures.

Those Rochdale AECs were always beautifully turned out in their 'streamline' livery. My salesman dad was very proud of securing Mr Humpage, the Rochdale Corporation transport engineer as his customer for Shell-BP fuel and lubricants in the late 1940s.

The Rochdale coachpainters offered to apply their distinctive blue and cream to my coveted Dinky double decker, although I had to share the model with my dad's work desk thereafter.

dh

[stewartingram]

Anyone know of a source of 1:76 radiators? In particular the narrow tapered Leyland radiator (Coventry) fitted to the Eastern Counties AH rebuilds; the standard Bristol type; and the ECW/Dennis rebuilds of ECOC known as the CD class.

 

Stewart

[PhilJ W]

Anyone know of a source of 1:76 radiators? In particular the narrow tapered Leyland radiator (Coventry) fitted to the Eastern Counties AH rebuilds; the standard Bristol type; and the ECW/Dennis rebuilds of ECOC known as the CD class.

 

Stewart

Look at the MBF site under traders, there are several that make such items.

[HitchinLoco]

Is there a source for 1:50 London Transport transfers? I have a Solido RT that is a bit the worse for wear and needs new ads and destination,well the whole lot actually.

 

TIA

 

David

Might be worth looking at Model Supplies   Steve Flowers he use to have Dinky/Corgi type transfers. May be of help.

[coachmann]

Anyone know of a source of 1:76 radiators? In particular the narrow tapered Leyland radiator (Coventry) fitted to the Eastern Counties AH rebuilds; the standard Bristol type; and the ECW/Dennis rebuilds of ECOC known as the CD class.

 

Stewart

Ralph Jackson told me before xmas that he had just added the Leyland Covrad to the 1 :76 4mm range. By heck I they were ugly. The 4mm radiator range is mentioned in an earlier post.

[coachmann]

1 :76 4mm scale buses with new radiators and etched bonnet overlays with correct louvers and oil holes etc...

 

Crossley Condor/Mancunian  pre-war oil radiator....

 

Leyland PD2 conversion using special partly half-thickness PD2 rad for EFE buses....

 

Leyland TD5 conversion from EFE PD1 using TD5 rad and etched bonnet....

 

Just some of the original brass etchings that were used to make patterns for castings. AEC Regent I, II & III rads, pre and postwar Daimler, Thorneycroft, plus various Leyland rads and bonnet sides etc.

[TheWeatheringMan]

1 :76 4mm scale buses with new radiators and etched bonnet overlays with correct louvers and oil holes etc...

 

Crossley Condor/Mancunian  pre-war oil radiator....

WEB Bus Crossley oil.jpg

 

Leyland PD2 conversion using special partly half-thickness PD2 rad for EFE buses....

WEB Bus PD2.jpg

 

Leyland TD5 conversion from EFE PD1 using TD5 rad and etched bonnet....

WEB Bus TD5.jpg

 

Hi Larry,

 

Absolutely beautifull models, they really are.

 

Regards

[stewartingram]

Ralph Jackson told me before xmas that he had just added the Leyland Covrad to the 1 :76 4mm range. By heck I they were ugly. The 4mm radiator range is mentioned in an earlier post.

I've tried going back through the thread, can't find any reference to Ralph Jackson? Also, as I'm not a MBF member I'm restricted to buying from them I've searched their links too with no success.

 

Stewart