For those interested in old buses (and coaches)

[Gwiwer]

We had to display the yellow school bus signs and carry a first aid kit.  But the signs were only stuck on with suction cups (or more often placed anywhere convenient as the cups had vanished) and we were never trained in the use of the first aid kit but rather were advised to never use it - if it was life threatening call 999 and if it wasn't call the little tacker would probably be OK until dropped off.  

 

Naturally over time the school bus boards, nominally allocated to the required duty and issued to the appropriate driver, became misplaced, broken and lost.  Within a year most school runs were not displaying them.

[RThompson]

About 9 years ago in my early 20's I was driving on school runs around Staffordshire leyland Tigers with various bus and coach bodies and a leyland Lynx. But then I was also driving on regular service a Routemaster in Stoke on Trent!

 

Recently helping out various companies the oldest I've driven on schools was a 1994 Plaxton premiere on a Volvo b10m, ex greenline first.

 

The oddest coach I've driven is a 10 metre DAF with a Smit body! There's only a few about, I'm only aware of 2 so far.

[coachmann]

Odds & sods.....

 

John Holmes and I in our post-Oldham Corporation days taking a break on the Trans-Pennine Commercial Vehicle Rally of 1972. John was driving the Ribble Leyland Titan TD5 or TD7??? It didn't sound like the TD4's or TD5's I had heard in my youth....

 

 

The 'breadvan era' of buses that started in the 1980's was coming to an end when I photographed this one at Dolwyddellan on a rail-replacement service from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Llandudno on  21st February 2003...

 

Open top E 227 WBG is seen topping the climb out of Old Colwyn at Penmaenhead on Route 12 from Llandudno to Rhyl on 5th October 2011. Maybe someone knows this bus's origins....

 

A friend who had turned his back on the railway scene because he only followed Class 37's switched his attention to buses and was chasing Bristol VR's. I laughed because VR's were not exactly ancient, but I had overlooked that time passes on and buses we saw brand new and boring eventually become classics! VRU 589S was on its school run from Llanrwst to Llanfair T.H. when I photographed it arriving and departing Llanfair on 27th April 2005......

 

A lesson in weathering. Do bus modellers weather their models....????

 

Does this rate as an old bus yet? Our regular independent free-bus must have been having a service when W632 RNP turned up for a couple of days. Pictured at Tan-Y-Goppa returning from Llanfair T.H. to Abergele on a very hot 21st July 2014....

Edited June 9, 2018 by coachmann

[Gwiwer]

Do bus modellers weather ....

Yes. Yes we do. I’ll have to dig out a picture or two. EFE and Base models seem to accept powders quite well.

[SRman]

I got into trouble for weathering a Pirate Models Bristol VR after I had built and painted it!. My wife bought me some weathering powders at a model railway exhibition, so I used them on the freshly finished kit and showed her the result. She said that she would never have bought me the powders if she had known what they were for.  

[PhilJ W]

I got into trouble for weathering a Pirate Models Bristol VR after I had built and painted it!. My wife bought me some weathering powders at a model railway exhibition, so I used them on the freshly finished kit and showed her the result. She said that she would never have bought me the powders if she had known what they were for.

What did she think they were for?

[SRman]

What did she think they were for?

.

Your guess is as good as mine, Phil!

[Gwiwer]

.

Your guess is as good as mine, Phil!

 

Not powdering her nose that's for sure

 

Here's a couple of the Bristol LS wearing a bit of road grime.  I might be able to unearth more as several models wear shades of dirt in my fleet.

 

 

[coachmann]

I got into trouble for weathering a Pirate Models Bristol VR after I had built and painted it!. My wife bought me some weathering powders at a model railway exhibition, so I used them on the freshly finished kit and showed her the result. She said that she would never have bought me the powders if she had known what they were for.

Serves you right for practicing with her eye shadow and mascara... 

[Dave47549]

.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Dave47549
Removed pointless guff

[Gwiwer]

I have now dug the FLF out of my weathering roadshow box. The weathered LD types are packed away somewhere not having seen the light of day for over a year since we moved.

 

 

[coachmann]

Tilling buses were the epitome of utility to my eyes, yet the FLF's had something about them. 

Edited June 9, 2018 by coachmann

[John M Upton]

It has to be said that the EFE FLF Lodekka whilst at the time it was first released was revolutionary, it is looking awfully dated now.  Are Bachmann ever going to do anything with EFE at all as there seems to be little if anything new coming out since it was bought up, the same as with Hornby's acquisition of Corgi where line side appropriate vehicles were extensively talked about on the acquisition and since then... nothing.

Edited June 9, 2018 by John M Upton

[runs as required]

Tilling buses were the epitome of utility to my eyes, yet the FLF's had something about them. 

Yet the first post war ECW bodied Bristol L (low radiator) saloons looked quite swanky in the late 1940s alongside battered real Utility bodies - and oof !  those slatted seats in something like a Tilling OB Bedford for a long rural journey were quite an ordeal.

dh

[PhilJ W]

It has to be said that the EFE FLF Lodekka whilst at the time it was first released was revolutionary, it is looking awfully dated now.  Are Bachmann ever going to do anything with EFE at all as there seems to be little if anything new coming out since it was bought up, the same as with Hornby's acquisition of Corgi where line side appropriate vehicles were extensively talked about on the acquisition and since then... nothing.

Bachmann also acquired the Classix range a few years ago but nothing at all has appeared.

[coachmann]

Give me a battered 'ol wartime Utility any day....Yay, wooden seats and all..... haha.... St.Michaels square, Ashton-U-Lyne ...

 

[Giles]

In the mid '80s, I spent a year as a fitter/driver for a coach company in Daventry, where my brother was the fleet engineer.

My day started with a works contract run, followed by a schools run - then the day doing maintenance and repairs, followed by a schools run and finally the works contract run. Occasional 'Privates' were to be had in the evening.

 

We ran a fleet of fifteen or so Caetano Estorils, plus three Bovas, and a few Plaxtons. ALL were expected to be fit for Private work, and kept tidy and clean.

 

But the horrors I could tell....

[RANGERS]

In the mid '80s, I spent a year as a fitter/driver for a coach company in Daventry, where my brother was the fleet engineer.

My day started with a works contract run, followed by a schools run - then the day doing maintenance and repairs, followed by a schools run and finally the works contract run. Occasional 'Privates' were to be had in the evening.

We ran a fleet of fifteen or so Caetano Estorils, plus three Bovas, and a few Plaxtons. ALL were expected to be fit for Private work, and kept tidy and clean.

But the horrors I could tell....

That particular operator may be long gone but some things don’t change.

[runs as required]

Give me a battered 'ol wartime Utility any day....Yay, wooden seats and all..... haha.... St.Michaels square, Ashton-U-Lyne ...

WEB SHMD Utility St.Michaels Sq.jp

 

And here's another wartime haha !

But the laughs on me, I ordered it online since it is a Guy on route 107 I used to ride coming home from school in 1946/47. But I should have read the small print, the Corgi model turned up far bigger than the rest of my row of buses on the bookcase !

Sad 10 year olds from my school used to go round Sutton garage with their Ian Allan ABCs simply ticking off serried ranks of HHA utility Guys in numerical order - where's the sport in that?

dh

[5 C]

Just a handful of buses on display at today's Luton Festival of transport.

 

 

1960 Bristol FS5G with Eastern Coachworks body

 

 

An immaculately turned out RM.

 

 

Leyland PD2

[RANGERS]

Been a while so thought I'd add some more from my collection to the thread

These Alexander bodied AECs were particular favourites of mine, still in service in the early 70s, they frequently turned up on our school swimming run. The well padded seats were a particular memory of them.

The AEC-Plaxton Consorts had all but disappeared by the time I took any interest in buses, several being rebuilt and rebodied in 1969/ 70 but this one taken at the Corby depot where Barton were tenants of United Counties is a fairly rare shot

I dropped this in as 1245 and its sister 1246 were regulars on the Corby-Glasgow service, pictured here in Rotherham, which we frequently travelled on as kids to visit relatives north of the border.

The Volvo B10M-VanHool Alizee was state of the art when this pic was taken at Charnock Richard Services, the mid-point of Cotters Glasgow-London route, in 1982. Coach deregulation had driven competition on the route and it was cheaper to travel via London than directly home. The comfort was also far superior, at the time Barton were still using Leylands like the one above and the National / SBG option was little better with Leyland and Seddon - Plaxtons only a year or two newer

This Leyland Leopard - Plaxton was the coach I passed my test on though it had disappeared from the fleet before I later worked for Premier in the 1990s.

Edited June 13, 2018 by RANGERS

[leopardml2341]

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_06_2018/post-2974-0-14128200-1528833572.jpg

 

Brings back memories indeed, always a Saturday 'spotting' highlight, but as you say monotonously regular vehicles allocated to the service.

[Gwiwer]

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_06_2018/post-2974-0-14128200-1528833572.jpg

Brings back memories indeed, always a Saturday 'spotting' highlight, but as you say monotonously regular vehicles allocated to the service.

Back in the day there were some lengthy cross-country scheduled coach trips bringing unusual operators to far-flung locations. For a couple of years I was a regular observer at Worthing’s “Dome Coach Station” named after the cinema next door. Aside from the procession of gleaming Southdown vehicles (summer Saturdays brought in rare sightings from the Eastbourne and Portsmouth allocations) we had Black & White, Red & White, Royal Blue, East Kent, Maidstone & District, Eastern National and Bristol.

 

But special attention was always paid to the direct Birmingham and Yorkshire services which brought in Midland Red and Yorkshire Traction vehicles which would otherwise never have been seen south of London.

 

Midland Red’s offering was as varied as any of the other summer visitors with the same coach seldom seen twice. But “Traccy” used the same coach every week all summer, or so it seemed. Over two summers I only ever recorded two different vehicles and saw the working almost every week that it ran.

[coachmann]

I looked in on the coach parks in Llandudno in the 1970's. Loads of large swish coaches and in the centre a small white Bedford OB from Whiteways of Bangor.  It brought back memories of the late 1940's when the OB's were brand-new and were surrounded in Blackpool coach parks by weird and wonderful pre-war coaches and buses tarted up to look like coaches because of the post-war shortage. We once went on a dorsal-fin mid 1930's Leyland when going to Blackpool from cottonopolis was an adventure. 

[RANGERS]

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_06_2018/post-2974-0-14128200-1528833572.jpg

 

Brings back memories indeed, always a Saturday 'spotting' highlight, but as you say monotonously regular vehicles allocated to the service.

 

Once the 'grant' coaches had taken over the Barton fleet, the previous lottery of types used on the service became very mundane. When the services to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Greenock were pooled with NBC in 1976, there was occasional variety but Barton were still the prime contractor so 99% of journeys were worked with a Plaxton or Duple bodied Leyland or Bedford, frequently one of only a handful of vehicles dedicated to the service. The norm was to run Leyland in the summer months but relying on slower but better heated Bedfords in the winter.

 

Bank holidays and the Glasgow Fair week were the real highlights, they brought all manner of foreign types. Y and T Types from all the SBG companies, Eastern Seddons, Bluebird and Northern Duples (Fords and Leylands), the occasional 'London' coach as well as hired vehicles from MacPhails (Newarthill, Lanarks), Kimes (Folkingham, Lincs), Skills (Nottingham), Alex Smith (Nottingham), Parks (Hamilton), Halls (Bedworth), Fowlers (Spalding) and Claytons (Leicester). The strangest ones I saw were a Ribble Leyland National service bus and a Yorkshire Traction Dennis Falcon V. Presumably these were covering breakdowns or overloads, but it must have been an ordeal to travel from Ribble territory (which along the route would have meant Carlisle or Penrith) to Corby aboard a Leyland National and perhaps just as remarkable that the Dennis Falcon made it from Rotherham to Corby under its own steam! (as opposed to black smoke!)

 

After coach deregulation in 1980, Barton joined with British Coachways to oppose National Express, losing operation of the pooled services in the process Following this, the Glasgow operation was split between United Counties and Eastern Scottish who used Plaxton Seddons and Duple Leyland Tigers (Eastern) or Leylands with Plaxton, Alexander T or Duple Dominant IV bodies (UCOC). Barton continued to run the service in competition with National until 1988, reverting to its original X58 service number but the rolling stock remained the same, by that stage increasingly elderly Leylands.