Bus Shite

[SilverMachine]

10 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Restore both? Yeah, you're looking at the thick end of a few hundred grand for that Royal Tiger; want to chip in? Thought not and there is only so much money to go round to save these things for future generations.

i have recently offered my time and skills to a local bus preservation group! still waiting there response. although several of the local railway preservation groups are always asking for volunteers so may have to go see some of them instead there probably more interested in my machining and toolmaking background......

[Inspector Morose]

10 hours ago, SilverMachine said:

i have recently offered my time and skills to a local bus preservation group! still waiting there response. although several of the local railway preservation groups are always asking for volunteers so may have to go see some of them instead there probably more interested in my machining and toolmaking background......

Volunteering is a good thing to do. Machining and toolmaking might be better used at railways, you're right, but if you can weild a spanner, or are willing to try your hand at other things, like woodworking (bus and railway coach frames), you can soon be in demand with other groups, once your name is known within the circles. There have been many a second career (or second income) started by those who started volunteering with groups and found a niche.

I eventually did 18 years at the Black Country Museum, working on the trolleybuses and eventually had other owners bringing their buses down for me to work on them. All gone now; I don't thing the trolleys even run down there anymore, but do I regret the years of effort put in? Nah, it was fun and I learned so many new things. I even got a job at a motor museum from it!

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

I eventually did 18 years at the Black Country Museum, working on the trolleybuses and eventually had other owners bringing their buses down for me to work on them. All gone now; I don't thing the trolleys even run down there anymore, but do I regret the years of effort put in? Nah, it was fun and I learned so many new things. I even got a job at a motor museum from it!

I'd have thought the BCM was worthwhile? Can you share who has the benefit of your skills?

[Inspector Morose]

The BCM has moved a lot more corporate these days, it's still bloody good and forever expanding but it just isn't that concerned with the minutae of stuff, more giving an experience to the public (folk pay well for that these days) rather than slavish historical accuracy.

Stuff I learned while I was there helped on the car museum, of help was the then director of the BCM and I were on good terms and he pointed me in directions to learn about the museum industry.

The bus and trolleybus stuff got used in my day job of the time(and future). I used to go to Sandtoft quite a lot and helped on the restorations and running of the various stuff there. It's all experiences at the end of the day, and the more and varied of those, the more interesting life becomes.

I've sort of become one of a few  fonts of knowledge on the Leyland National, appearing in a dvd on the subject and being on panels of experts at talks. Again,of little real use but all very interesting (unless you're busmansholiday).

[SunnySouth]

I was rather expecting that the toasted King Alfred Olympic might have ended up staying largely as it is - eerily the front end of it, whilst very obviously crispy, survived to a just about recognisable degree, and of course the rest of it has melted. I thought perhaps they might have rebuilt the front end but left the remainder alone, as a sort of ‘telling its story’ museum curio.

I understand the obvious desire to restore it, but in reality it’ll be little more than a replica by the time it’s finished. I very much hope that the oily bits and chassis components can be reused, but I also very much doubt it - the building which went up in flames was sufficiently hot to melt several other vehicles beyond the point of recognition, so I’d be amazed if much is left of the mechanicals that aren’t knackered - but I’d be happy if I was wrong! I hope it doesn’t soak up too much funding from the rest of the fleet.

[Inspector Morose]

Luckily, the insurance company has paid out and allowed them to keep the remains to rebuild so money is less of a concern. TBH, looking at the previous rebuild from Irish bog state, it was more recreation anyway so it was never the exact vehicle that roamed the mean streets of Winchester anyway. 

Buses, coaches, trains, anything public transport is rebuilt and modified over its lifetime so its debatable how much of many preserved vehicles are actually the original material so that argument, although quite a legitimate one, can’t really be applied here.

As I’ve said before, it’s such a well known bus, it’s restoration is well documented as a ‘that’s how you do a full restoration of a bus properly’, and its importance i the history of not only local but the wider bus industry trends and ideas of the time, it will be rebuilt yet again. What percentage that Royal Tiger will donate probably will be tiny, just the unobtanium odds and sods that would have perished in the fire will probably all that it will contribute to that. What its greater value is to the SCBM are the many parts as spares for their own restored Coronation bodied Tiger from the same batch - I would hazard a guess that this was part of the sweetener for them to take the rebuild of JAA on.

[lisbon_road]

26 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Luckily, the insurance company has paid out and allowed them to keep the remains to rebuild so money is less of a concern. TBH, looking at the previous rebuild from Irish bog state, it was more recreation anyway so it was never the exact vehicle that roamed the mean streets of Winchester anyway. 

Buses, coaches, trains, anything public transport is rebuilt and modified over its lifetime so its debatable how much of many preserved vehicles are actually the original material so that argument, although quite a legitimate one, can’t really be applied here.

As I’ve said before, it’s such a well known bus, it’s restoration is well documented as a ‘that’s how you do a full restoration of a bus properly’, and its importance i the history of not only local but the wider bus industry trends and ideas of the time, it will be rebuilt yet again. What percentage that Royal Tiger will donate probably will be tiny, just the unobtanium odds and sods that would have perished in the fire will probably all that it will contribute to that. What its greater value is to the SCBM are the many parts as spares for their own restored Coronation bodied Tiger from the same batch - I would hazard a guess that this was part of the sweetener for them to take the rebuild of JAA on.

I don't know how it works, but the supporters group for King Alfred seem extraordinary.  I am very happy that they are sorting JAA and I suppose we have to accept that not many parts are original.  There isn't a lot of choice after all.  I just feel lucky to see their vehicles, though I must admit that the last Winchester rally I went to was very poorly attended.  I don't know why.

[martc]

An Excursion bus built on a GAZ 51 chassis by the Central Autorepair Workshops in Sochi. Here the comrades are on an excursion to Lake Ritsa in Abkhazian.

[martc]

[martc]

Talking of trolley buses -

A YATB-3 double-decker trolleybus, produced at the Yaroslavl Automobile Plant, photographed in 1939, dunno where, somewhere in the USSR is a near as I can get.

[martc]

Northumberland Street, NuT, when it was still part of the A1.

[martc]

Nothing is new under the sun as this is in 1937 and we're in Osaka. This is electric, but battery powered. It ran on a 12km route (from Tenjinbashisuji to Namba and back) and after 3 return trips the batteries where removed and replaced with a freshly charged pack. Nakajima ran a similar fleet.

[martc]

Another charabanc outing. This one is on a Lancia chassis we're in Sarmiento and it's 1930.

[martc]

Don't let the sun put you off, we're in Glasgow, it's 1964 and St Enoch's station is in the background.

[martc]

Eccles bus station. Another lady in a mac.

[SunnySouth]

From the FoKAB (Friends of King Alfred Buses) Insta feed, the afore mentioned toasted Olympic.

Fair play to them for launching a very substantial appeal, they are a relatively tiny organisation and I hope they receive a well deserved enthusiastic response!

Will this make the Olympic Britain’s most expensive preserved bus?

[SunnySouth]

1 hour ago, martc said:

Nothing is new under the sun as this is in 1937 and we're in Osaka. This is electric, but battery powered. It ran on a 12km route (from Tenjinbashisuji to Namba and back) and after 3 return trips the batteries where removed and replaced with a freshly charged pack. Nakajima ran a similar fleet.

Well bugger me! Exactly how they should  have designed modern EVs, easily exchangeable battery packs and the electric equivalent of a petrol station - pop in, swap them over, carry on. How much better would the electric revolution have been if they’d done that?!

What’s that you say?? Oh, they did?? In Japan. 90 f*king years ago. FFS 🙄

[MT606]

45 minutes ago, SunnySouth said:

Well bugger me! Exactly how they should  have designed modern EVs, easily exchangeable battery packs and the electric equivalent of a petrol station - pop in, swap them over, carry on. How much better would the electric revolution have been if they’d done that?!

What’s that you say?? Oh, they did?? In Japan. 90 f*king years ago. FFS

yeah but they got a bit sidetracked a few yrs later though eh

[Cookiesouwest]

Was in the pub for lunch, when this turned up at the petrol station next door

 

[martc]

3 hours ago, SunnySouth said:

Well bugger me! Exactly how they should  have designed modern EVs, easily exchangeable battery packs and the electric equivalent of a petrol station - pop in, swap them over, carry on. How much better would the electric revolution have been if they’d done that?!

What’s that you say?? Oh, they did?? In Japan. 90 f*king years ago. FFS 🙄

Taxis in China use a similar system where discharged batteries are exchanged for charged ones in a matter of minutes. You would need an unprecedented level of international co-operation for this to work, even charging ports differ from country to country - most of the world uses a 'type 2', the US of course doesn't and neither does Japan both of these have their own type. 

 

[MT606]

was at an event this weekend and found this lurking behind some buildings......if anyone remembers the kids gameshow called 'fun house' hosted by Pat Sharp, the interior is like that but without the hot blonde twins shaking their pompoms about .....

 

[Inspector Morose]

Ex WMPTE NOC456R, a Metro Cammel bodied Fleetline. It was converted into an exhibition bus by WMT to promote the Employee buyout not that long after they became a private company. Air assisted power steering was retrofitted as a way to modernise the Fleetlines a bit to make them a bit more tolerable compared to the Metrobuses flooding into the fleet. Problem was, it was utterly hopeless and soon gained many nicknames from drivers, such as threppeny bit steering to Auto-veer. The irony was that Daimler offered proper hydraulic power steering for the Fleetline but WMPTE was too tight to pay for that option.

Wondered what happened to it…

[artdjones]

9 hours ago, martc said:

Talking of trolley buses -

A YATB-3 double-decker trolleybus, produced at the Yaroslavl Automobile Plant, photographed in 1939, dunno where, somewhere in the USSR is a near as I can get.

"Dmitry Matveyev in his work “The English Guest” tells us that in the summer of 1937, two three-axle AEC 664T trolleybuses from the English Electric Company were imported to the USSR. Based on the delivered models, the Yaroslavl Automobile Plant created 10 new double-decker trolleybuses, which were called YATB-3."

 I thought it looked very English. Apparently, that's Moscow.

[mk2_craig]

Karsan E-jest, 

RHD model now being demonstrated in the UK on the back of selling some to Japan. It’s probably shorter than some cars. 

https://www.route-one.net/news/first-stock-karsan-e-jest-electric-microbuses-for-uk-arrive/

[Noel Tidybeard]

On 27/04/2025 at 19:20, Inspector Morose said:

1939 AEC Matador converted to a bus recovery vehicle by Salford City Transport but passed to South Yorkshire PTE.  By the time I photographed it, it had passed to SYPTE enthusiast and erstwhile bus operator Isle Coaches of Owston Ferry. After a few more owners, it was restored to Salford livery and the bodywork modified again, losing the built up front wings.

 

that's a shame as without the wings it's just "another matador"

[SilverMachine]

22 minutes ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

that's a shame as without the wings it's just "another matador"

yes i think the light upgrades that have been removed were probably quite useful too!

[catsinthewelder]

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, catsinthewelder said:

the cut-n-shut Routemaster  

[Yoss]

13 hours ago, mk2_craig said:

Karsan E-jest, 

RHD model now being demonstrated in the UK on the back of selling some to Japan. It’s probably shorter than some cars. 

https://www.route-one.net/news/first-stock-karsan-e-jest-electric-microbuses-for-uk-arrive/

Looks very much like what I saw in Sibiu, Romania a couple of weeks ago. 

[Leyland Worldmaster]

Loads here, innit: