LightBulbFun

Oh I have no doubt shenanigans like that happened, I have heard it happening on the Bus shite thread, the one good bus kept to one side to get all the others "though" their tests, and even with Model 70's, I know of a good few with mixed up identities, usually when a user wrote a machine off or it was Beyond economic repair, rather then properly replace it with another one and register the replacement machine to the user in question, some of the less by the book repair shops would just, slap the written off machines number plates on a decommissioned car around back and send it back out with the written off machines plates on it! never mind the logbook and chassis plate no longer matched up or anything like that LOL and going back to passing tests, in Northern Ireland funnily enough, exactly what you describe, was done to a was barn find Model 70, which had its identity stuck on clean and roadworthy Model 70 as to get it through an inspection , so whoever back in 2008 could rob the barn find car of its number plate, (and then it was used as a number plate mule for sometime), eventually I was able to track down both the original barn find and the roadworthy car, and sort the whole mess out (and thats when I found about the whole mess and finally figured out why I had 2 stories/histories for the same car, because the "same" car "existed" in 2 locations for about 15 years LOL) so I have no doubt similar shenanigans would of happened to black cabs, these sorts of shenanigans just seem to happen to all fleet vehicles in one form or another and its well known that one of the biggest fleet operators of all, London Transport made it its modus operandi when it came to RT's and RM's

25 years?! fucking hell the TX range is still modern as far as im concerned LOL its weird how time has slowed down like that, I mean go back to 1973 for example, that would of been a car from 1948! interesting that its operating as a Mini cab, is that legal over there? one of the things that kinda killed off the FL2 hire car was legislation put in place that made it illegal to use a vehicle that looked like a hackney carriage, for private hire work have you seen any R Reg TX's over there? if I had the ability i'd love to preserve one, just for K reg mondeo type reasons https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-shoppers-in-oxford-street-london-55949939.html here it was 10 years ago! and according to Carbaba, only 2 total keepers, looks like it went right from London Service up to NI in 2014-ish? I wonder how much of a triggers broom it is (as an aside I love that its a Bronze, which is the bASe spec)

Just wondering, did this get picked up in the end? I am curious on two fronts: a while back me and Adam discovered the gearboxes do actually have numbers, so I am curious if you can see any on this one while you have it bare? (the locations of said numbers seem to a bit inconsistent however so I cant really state an exact area to search sadly) but also, im thinking, I know @dollywobbler is planning a restoration on TWC soon, and given the sad state his gearbox/diff is in, this might be worth flogging to him? unless you want to keep it as a spare for TPA which is understandable (as an aside to all this I am still curious to know if TPA's original transaxle is serviceable or not, last I heard it was stuck in gear, but they are such simple units, I am quite curious to know whats up with that) I was just thinking about it at 4AM as you do....

I dunno, I was looking at your picture and thinking you should of had the speedo pointing at 222 km/h as well, I mean you of all people have the one Hyundai Stella that probably could achieve such a shot (I was also going to say the same to @MorrisItalSLX but he gets a free pass because I realise his speedo only clocks up to 180 km/h)

Looks like Simon has treated himself to an early Christmas gift I know Simon does know a couple good mechanics that have gotten other machines in his collection running, so hopefully we might see LPD806D running and driving at some point

Stanley Mk7 Invalid Car (Model 65 in Ministry speak) they look like this from the front (282RTA) only 1 example is known to survive, they where the direct successor to the Stanley Harper Mk6

No problems! I really appreciate it regardless, although, I have seen this one before its a very nice Model 70, I would not mind it myself to go with REV!, it will be interesting to see what it goes for KPK has always amused me because, it looks much newer then it is, in that its got Rubbolite rear lights, 10 inch wheels and retroreflective plates and shiny paintwork it also has an engine from a later Model 70, however the rest of the car does look period, its certainly on a Mark A, AC chassis, and the rest of the features do match up with it being an early machine, so from that theres a good chance it is what it says it is, although of course goes without saying, I always recommend checking the ID's to be safe when new it would of had pressed silver on black bordered number plates, and black 12 inch wheels with the bigger (CEP or LEP?) rear lights

Awesome! many thanks for grabbing those shots, came out perfectly! and the chassis number lines up with my chassis number calculations perfectly so thats good to see but it also interesting as it tells me its a Ministry example, which is really curious, I really wonder what its actual story is, how did a Ministry example, end up in Museum so long ago, back when no one care about them, back when they where common street furniture from what I understand this come off the road in 1976 and ended up with the museum soon after (assuming what the museum themselves are saying is accurate, yeah I know!) so I really do wonder how it ended up with them, back in 1976, very few regular people cared about these vehicles from a preservation point of view, so its really quite interesting to see and its interesting to see the slight damage to the chassis plate, I do wonder if they started to strip it off the machine for disposal and then when they realised its going to a museum they hastily stuck it back on/stopped removing it? it reminds me of GPG721K, that one also ended up with the Glasgow Transport museum, in 1980! another one that I have wondered about, again no one cared about Model 70's back then so I wonder how they ended up with it exactly

thats why I tagged @Inspector Morose if anyone is a trolley bus in human form its probably him, mad as a box of frogs he is, get it? (sorry....) speaking of buses and relevant to this thread, spotted on twitter just now a video of TPE409S being filmed driving around a yard somewhere, with a couple Routemasters in the background https://twitter.com/NickLov05153866/status/1728129939545944142

further to that CUTxxx was first Issued in October 1943, so by the time of the Jags im pretty positive CUT7 would of already been a private reg, so I imagine it just gets transferred from one car to the next so not much of a mystery in that regard

£1250 I think is very stronge money especially with the description saying "recommend to be taken on truck"! not sure TX1's have quite started to go up in value just yet! and you can get a MOT'ed running driving TX4 for about £1000-£2000, London has a 12 year age limit on diesel cabs so plenty of 2011 ones ones on the market atm for example even if it was a good price and working, sadly I just cant find anyone who will insure me on a black cab I do wonder if could squeak an R or S reg TX1 onto a classic policy (over 25 years old) but I think most classic policies would baulk at the on street parking, and then there would be the challenge of finding an R or S reg TX1 thats not completely shagged but I think an R Reg TX1 would be worth preserving mind, cant imagine theres many left at this point, I think Production Started in October 1997? I appreciate the heads up tho

interesting! I too wonder how it works! still not figured that out yet! it certainly contains Neon and Mercury in it, but a lot of higher power Negative glow neon lamps do contain mercury as standard, but its used as a means to improve lamp life (by reducing the rate of electrode sputtering) and is not normally part of the main discharge, but if you excite/drive one in a particular way, it is possible to ionise that mercury instead of the neon and get one to glow blue, but I have only seen that done under conditions I dont think would be present on a Trolley bus?, so it very much is a lamp thats got me scratching my head! its electrical specifications are strange also in that its etch says "220V 5W" but I dont think it ever had an internal ballasting resistor, so the voltage rating is a bit meaningless as its a discharge lamp (its voltage drop would probably be about 65V-110V) however being a Neon lamp it would certainly be unlikely to be driven from any sort of low voltage circuit and wherever it was used, it would of been used in series with some sort of resistor to limit the drive current to what it was designed for, but it certainly is a DC lamp, both its asymmetrical electrode construction tell me that, (as you would expect from a negative glow lamp the large flat electrode is the negative one) and the fact its one remaining lamp cap has a + symbol inked on it the date code on my example date it to November 1948 or November 1956, if that helps any!

I just had a fellow lighting collector drop me a visit, a chap called James, now James is one of the leading lighting collectors out there and also leading experts, he manufacturers and designs lightbulbs for Sylvania (and in the past worked for GE and Iwasaki), and it was really awesome to get a visit from him, he last dropped by 12 years ago so its been some time! spent lots of time talking about all things lightbulbs, it was awesome and it was like Christmas come early as he also dropped off a few box loads of some very rare special, prototype and custom made lightbulbs, I have got my work cut out for me tomorrow going through it all but for example for starters, for @PhilA or any other US members, heres a *clear* 3 way bulb, bet you aint see one of these before (well actually I know Phil is on the same lighting forum as I am on, so he might of seen one, but you know what i mean LOL) a very small run of these where specially made in clear back in 1997 to show off GE's new 3 lead wire construction (previous 3 ways lamps employed a 4 lead wire system IIRC) normally 3 way bulbs only ever came in soft white (white opaque) coating anyways where im going with all of this, and why I have quoted the post that I have, is I took the opportunity to ask him about the mystery neon trolley bus lamp and he says that according to another collector, Ray Tye, another prolific collector who has been collecting lamps since Trolley buses roamed the streets of London, that this neon lamp was part of some indicator in or on the bus, that would change from red to blue (or blue to red?) if someone singled the bus to stop im just wondering, @Inspector Morose @Mr Pastry or anyone else who knows their trolley buses if thats something you have seen or heard about? and if so if you know any more details about it? I am still a little bit unsure about it because on my example (that was very kindly given to me by photonicinduction a few months back) the lamp has an admiralty number on it (mine is sadly missing an end cap) so I do still wonder was it really made for London transport? so yeah given the new information I thought I would bring it back up incase it jogs anyones memory

speaking of Routemasters dragging this up from the eBay tat thread as Im sure it was meant jokingly however I happened to just now be passing the time reading RML histories on Ian Bus stop as you do, and it turns out someone really did make an RML out of spare parts! I'd love to find out more about that, for example how much of the bodywork was from which Routemaster etc!

Awesome stuff! I personally quite like the condition of RM2023, its a good representation of how badly MTL looked after their poor Routemasters! and weird seeing the Metrobus on the 26, the current 26 is a local route to me, so its quite funky to see, even more so when none of the rest of the blinds match of course to the current route 26