Bus Shite

[cms206]

Was planning to run our Irish Volvo Tiger through to Lathalmond but the gaffer's in a cunt of a mood so I may not bother.

[DVee8]

Any of you bus/coach types out there able to help with any info?

My FIL and family owned a bus company from 1907ish till around 1986.Started as General Omnibus then Atkinson Coaches.Based in Chester le Street Co Durham Northeast England.

We are looking for photos and any other info.

FIL was the 3rd generation running it along with his 2 older cousins.Fil and cus No1 ran the coach side repairs and driving,cousin No2 ran the office side of things,except he forgot to pay the taxman,so everything went tit up.

FIL likes to sit and tell stories from back in the day about digging buses out of snow drifts and the miners strike.

[cms206]

Was planning to run our Irish Volvo Tiger through to Lathalmond but the gaffer's in a cunt of a mood so I may not bother.

Gaffer calmed down. I'll be there with a bus.

[atlantean]

Its a preserved bus that hit the bridge, an E reg'd Leyland PDR1 Atlantean that had been restored to original condition

Had several texts about this today, haven't spoken to the owner yet, so don't want to mention any details at this stage, other than it appears that a preserved Atlantean was returning from an MOT, and made a wrong turn which took it straight into a low bridge.

Quite upset about  this as I was involved in looking after this vehicle when it first entered preservation. Given the facilities and expertise at Lathalmond, I wouldn't  write it off just yet.

[Richard]

The weather was a bit meh but a good day was had and the monsoon held off until just after chucking out time. I only really got one bus photo today.

 

P1050780 by RichardB5, on Flickr

 

I've actually stayed in Magherafelt for work when I was fitting crane weighers to recycling lorries at Toomebridge.

[cms206]

Thats a GR14 pic of my new buggy, fella! Will look better when I get a couple of days to attack it properly. Looks none too shabby for a working bus anyway.

[Guest mat777]

The Alero was launched at a time when Optare didn't do a 7.1M Solo or a Slimline version of the 8.8 or 9.2M Solos - they didn't come along until 2005 or thereabouts.

 

The Alero was an inhouse design which used Iveco runnning gear, I believe they might have been front wheel drive too. There was certainly no step in the bus until you got to the back end of the thing and the floor was flat so there was not a propshaft to the back. Inside they were well kitted out. Two were purchased for a local bus route near me in Bedfordshire, inside they were very nice and they had CD players so the drivers on the route would be going around with the radio playing late at night. The driver used to sit in front of the door and would have to spin round to sell tickets. What I can remember of them is that they didn't have move along - they were stick box examples rather than automatics.

 

However typical Optare style over substance afflicted them, and they pretty soon started to break down with predictable routine. In the end Arriva who ran the service gave in and just put smaller low floor Darts on the route, the Aleros got sold on to some minor operator somewhere. They are quite common on eBay as 'camper conversion or limo/party bus' fodder but again I'm not aware of many still in daily service with anybody.

 

 

I can tell you where most of them ended up - in Liverpool!

 

I regularly see them in either green or bright yellow - and when I first saw them I thought they were some sort of special heavily modified Chrysler Voyager (from the back there is a bit of similarity when being passed by one on your bike).

They certainly are a most odd-looking device, whats with the weird wheels too?

[Felly Magic]

They were rear wheel drive, they had a drop box to lower the driveshaft, which ran through holes in the chassis frame. Made very badly from plastic, most survivors are now those tacky limo things

[Grundig]

 

Duple Dominant - late 70's ?

[Felly Magic]

Yup, on an AEC Reliance chassis

[Ghosty]

I know of an Alero in private hands, it sits on the pavement outside someone's terraced house! It replaced one of those Citroen Relay-based bus things (6 wheels, half Relay, half big box of seats). Relay had a taxi plate iirc, the Alero is proabaly too big for one!

[cobblers]

There's an alero near my mams parked up outside someones respectable semi, with the usual "Executive Travel Airport runs and Hen Parties" chrome vinyl signwriting on it, they're really strangely proportioned things in the flesh. At work we get sent loads of dashes and repair and were struggling for old core parts until I spotted they were just LDV parts and that we can just get them from the scrapyard up the road to refurb.

 

Anyway this thread is top stuff cos it puts faces to names of obscure electric stuff I fix every day so KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! 

[Jim Bergerac]

The council here had a couple of 52 plate Aleros until at least very recently. They used them to run old folks to the day centre and so on. Last time I saw one it sounded like a bag of spanners and looked as rough as it was running. When they first got them I remembering thinking what odd things they were.

[Richard]

A Butty Bus, yesterday.

 

P1050784 by RichardB5, on Flickr

[Felly Magic]

Argh a Toyboata Coaster Caetano Optimo, fire, brimstone, thermonuclear device.....Only ever drove one of these twice, and Jesus wept, the handling was awful. The one I drove was the wide body, but it still had the same narrow track, which no doubt over emphasized the wallow on bends

[Grundig]

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-29064682

[Felly Magic]

Optareshite strikes again. I wonder if it was a failure of the electronic throttle?

[Pillock]

There's worse places to crash a bus, most of the residents wouldn't have minded.

[RedSparrow]

Shit!

[Richard]

Something similar happened near here with a 7.5 tonner, it didn't get anywhere near as far as that though.

[Junkman]

Yup, on an AEC Reliance chassis

 

They built buses with chassises as late as the late 70s in Britain?

[cms206]

They built buses with chassises as late as the late 70s in Britain?

As late as 2002 when the Volvo B10M was pensioned off... or whenever that and the Olympian ceased production at Irvine.

[rml2345]

Most buses built in the UK are still on a separate underframe of some sort. The proper conventional chassis was still common in the '90s.

[Felly Magic]

Dennis were still building the Javelin until fairly recently which was a complete chassis, and the Merc Vario has only just died. 

[Partridge]

Were the Varios any good?

[Felly Magic]

Well I hate the damn things

[Grundig]

They built buses with chassises as late as the late 70s in Britain?

 

Vanhool bodied the B10m chassis too, so it's not just a British thing  

[cobblers]

Speaking of bus shite, one of our customers at work has bodged a bus together with an 80s DAF engined something but with a Volvo engine in it but running the DAF fuel pump or something. Then they put a Voith box on it, but they need me to make the shift points on the gearbox infinitely adjustable with some kind of megabodge on the gearbox ECU because the engine stalls before it changes back down to first gear. I'm just going to overclock the whole ECU so it thinks the bus is going slower than what it is and changes a bit higher RPM.

 

The whole thing owes them £1800, I can't wait to see it, I'm working off chinese whispers at the moment so I've not got much of an idea what it actually is.

[willswitchengage]

Alexander-Dennis still markets both the Dart and Trident chassis, although they're mostly sold as inegral products these days.

 

I kind of imagine coachbuilding will be nonexistant soon with the recent influx of better foreign products.

[Felly Magic]

Plaxton have just flogged a batch of coaches to mainland Europe surprisingly