Inspector Morose

I daily an R52 Mini. Of course I can live with faults, just not always the same faults that I parked it up with the night before.

I daily an R52 Mini. Of course I can live with faults, just not always the same faults that I parked it up with the night before.

I daily an R52 Mini. Of course I can live with faults, just not always the same faults that I parked it up with the night before.

I daily an R52 Mini. Of course I can live with faults, just not always the same faults that I parked it up with the night before.

One of these appeared a few years back at Sandtoft. I managed a drive of it for a shift, quite nice machine considering its age.

<runs away fast. Very fast>

Another of my FiL's old busses.

Just been out a supervised drive in this...

Astravan lwb.

Ooh, I’ll have to disagree with you there. According to the folk that built them
001 was the smiley front bus/dual purpose body seen on many lightweights and Daimler Roadliners in Canada.
002 was the square looking expressway coach
003 was the NBC abomination that was built down to a price and looked it, partially contributing to Willowbrooks demise.
008 was the Spacecar that looked cool but was so lightly built, it didn’t really have the strength to keep itself in one piece for long.
004-007 were export models built on various chassis.
After Willowbrook closed, it was started up again, usually rebodying used chassis with cheap looking and feeling bodies. After deregulation in 1986, they had a resurgence, rebodying many Leopard coach chassis into buses to make a cheap workhorse. In true Willowbrook tradition, the bodies were not exactly the best wearing of things.
 
As a side tale, we had a Leopard rebodied by them with their Warrior body (OKG158M). But it went further than that. We ran a good number of Bristol REs at the time and we talked with Willowbrook about having them rebodied. Now, our competition, WM Travel were having delivered a good number of Lynxes and so we asked if the Warrior could be restyled to look a bit more like them and the floor line lowered a bit. The redesign happened and our Leopard was the first of the redesigned Warriors with square windows and body built directly onto the chassis without body bearers. 
 
All well and good and we regularly went up to them to see progress. Then delivery. On the same day as the Leopard was delivered, VOSA had come in for their regular ‘pop in for a cup of tea’ inspections. As the Leopard had been fully refreshed by Willowbrook (along with a fresh MoT) we showed them it. It gained nine prohibitions without ever leaving the yard since delivery.
Over the next few months, problem after problem arose, ranging from water ingress from the wheel arch boxes, screens constantly cracking due to lack of support and horrendous internal reflections at night. We lost faith in them and cancelled our second Leopard rebody (ex-HHA196L, fitted with a two speed rear axle) and walked away from any further discussions about rebodying REs.
We started buying Leyland Nationals to completely replace the fleet soon after (egged on by our ‘friendly’ VOSA inspectors) and sold OKG on to Sussex Bus who had a number of other rebodied Leopards. I last came across it at Bournemouth, inside Mallard Road depot (it was a while ago) and did have thought about buying it back for old times sake. Then I remembered what an utter heap it was…

Okay, okay. I did write a bit about the class 140, the daddy of the pacer. Its an odd and rather convoluted tale so bear with..
https://mundaneonline992633965.wordpress.com/2021/09/
Thats where I put all of my writings on things public and transport, if you’re interested in a deeper peruse. It’s not well organised, one day I’ll sort it out so that it’s a bit better to navigate around. One day.

Okay, okay. I did write a bit about the class 140, the daddy of the pacer. Its an odd and rather convoluted tale so bear with..
https://mundaneonline992633965.wordpress.com/2021/09/
Thats where I put all of my writings on things public and transport, if you’re interested in a deeper peruse. It’s not well organised, one day I’ll sort it out so that it’s a bit better to navigate around. One day.

Okay, okay. I did write a bit about the class 140, the daddy of the pacer. Its an odd and rather convoluted tale so bear with..
https://mundaneonline992633965.wordpress.com/2021/09/
Thats where I put all of my writings on things public and transport, if you’re interested in a deeper peruse. It’s not well organised, one day I’ll sort it out so that it’s a bit better to navigate around. One day.

Okay, okay. I did write a bit about the class 140, the daddy of the pacer. Its an odd and rather convoluted tale so bear with..
https://mundaneonline992633965.wordpress.com/2021/09/
Thats where I put all of my writings on things public and transport, if you’re interested in a deeper peruse. It’s not well organised, one day I’ll sort it out so that it’s a bit better to navigate around. One day.

Okay, okay. I did write a bit about the class 140, the daddy of the pacer. Its an odd and rather convoluted tale so bear with..
https://mundaneonline992633965.wordpress.com/2021/09/
Thats where I put all of my writings on things public and transport, if you’re interested in a deeper peruse. It’s not well organised, one day I’ll sort it out so that it’s a bit better to navigate around. One day.

I’m staying out of this one…

Yup, basically a powered Lockheed setup, as used on various things from trucks to trolleybuses (Walsall goldfish bowls had a similar set up).
There were a number of hydraulic braked DMSs and this was related to hydrapak, a power management system being developed by the experimental department where every ancillary was to be fluid powered - doors, gears, brakes, even the windscreen wipers. A hydraulic powered alternator was also to be fitted to allow for it to be sited right by the batteries, reducing voltage losses.
But that's not all. One DMS was converted to two stage hydrostatic drive, replacing the conventional gearbox. It was hopeless, incredibly noisy and usually blew its high pressure lines every time it changed 'gear'.
Needless to say, that never entered service in that form.
After hydropak, came electropak. Basically the same idea but using electricity. Another dead end.

Yeah, the DMS saga was a bit of an odd one. Based on a chassis that was widely regarded by operators outside London, LT even had 5 on trial (along with 50 Atlanteans) before ordering their own special version. The design came from the recently appointed head, Ralph Bennett who had come from Manchester. During his time in the Lancashire City, Bennett had introduced the Mancunian double deck body, incorporating his ideas on design and layout. Bennett was a great believer in one person operation and automatic fare collection and it can be no surprise that, after leaving the North for the bright lights of London, that he pushed for these to be incorporated into the new bus. 
Not only was Bennett's ideas from Manchester incorporated into the new DMS, the designer was common to both - Industrial Designer (mainly for Greater Manchester) Ken Mortimer. While the body design was fairly fixed, the technical side was far from it. Faced with a fairly fixed specification, LTs engineers started to push for modifications to the chassis. Not only that but their inability to decide on how the new bus was to be overhauled led to constant flip-flopping over whether the body was to be capable of being separated from the chassis or not (rear engined bus chassis were usually more reliant on the bodywork for overall strength than the more traditional front engined bus, and vice-versa as nobody apart from LT routinely took bodies off chassis anymore).
The DMS entered service and was thoroughly disliked by most in what could be described as the biggest case of 'not invented here' there has been in the bus industry up to then. Fitters hated them, as they were not a Routemaaster and so somehow unfathomable, Stores hated them as they had to get used to the ebbs and flows of a new selection of spare parts and drivers disliked them as they had to do more than sit in the box at the front. 
One DMS of each body type (MCW or Park Royal) was bought in to experimental to see if the body could be separated for overhaul, even though they had decided (finally) that it didn't need to on pushing the button for the order. Surprisingly, the metal framed MCW body held up but the Park Royal showed signs of sag - LT experimental then decided that the DMS was 'a bad 'un' as it didn't do what they decided it didn't need to do in the first place.
Somehow (mainly because LT was in dire need of new stock), the DMS was taken for another 2000-odd buses, starving the rest of the industry of a bus that they wanted to buy but couldn't because LT was buying a bus that it didn't want. Not long after the last was delivered, LT decided to get rid and dealers like Ensign took them on, spruced them up a bit and sold them at a handsome profit to many ready customers around the world.
Would the FRM be better is it had been put into production? Possibly for LT but with another single customer bus, like the Routemaster was, AEC probably wouldn't have survived it as there was no hope of entering the rear engined race that late in the game. 

Go on then.

I’m staying out of this one…

I’m staying out of this one…

I’m staying out of this one…

No, it's a fucking pile of shite that should have been scrapped 35 years ago.
It's actually a Pacer, a Leyland National bus body on a freight chassis. Designed to be cheap (boy were they) and save branch lines (which they did). 
The most evil fucking thing ever invented, yes they were my local trains for over 20 years,if you've never traveled on one think yourself lucky.

Go on then.

Go on then.