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8 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Well, the first Atlantean PDR1 (not the first rear engined double decker built but I might come back to this in a bit) didn't have a bustle but had the engine compartment built into the body. On testing this prototype with operators (another was built but not registered and was used for in house testing) it was found that the 0600 engine was using the body as a giant sounding box making the travelling on it a very noisy experience for the passengers - not what you want passengers to take from a 'bus of the future'.

The first modification was to cut large grilles into the engine cover to try an let some of the noise out but this was barely any better. Obviously a better solution was needed so after it's use as a demonstrator ended, the prototype Atlantean was pulled in to the works and the rear was completely rebuilt with what would become the familiar bustle in an attempt to move the noise of the engine outside the bus. After this rebuild, the bus never carried another passenger but was used, along with its unregistered twin, for further refining of the bus following feedback from operators.

The resultant Atlantean PDR1/1 was a much simpler design, with a conventional chassis, leaf springs and the engine (in the now familiar bustle) mounted outside of the passenger saloon.

Daimler, on developing the Fleetline basically copied the concept of the Atlantean bustle and all but using a drop centre rear axle, Gardner engine allowing it to me more palatable for those wanting a low height vehicle and/or a Gardner engine.

There were exceptions with first generation rear engined buses. Most obviously was the Bristol VRT whose ECW body had the power-pack built into the bodywork but whether it was the quieter Gardner engine or Bristol thought that their passengers were made of hardier stuff; the internal noise levels were not deemed to be an issue.

The other exception was not a rear engined bus but could not be classified as one of the new generations of chassis. This was the Guy Wulfrunian - a front engined, front entrance low height bus with disk brakes, air suspension (independent on the front) and a combined heating/engine cooling system that dispensed with a conventional radiator. The hulking great Gardner engine was mounted between the driver and the front platform and with so little space available, apart from a thin metal cover, there was little in the form of insulation. Having driven one of the surviving examples for a good number of miles I can tell you that Leyland were right on the money in encapsulating the engine and moving it outside of the passenger space!

Oh yes, I was going to mention the first rear engined double deckers, wasn't I? Well, these were two experimental buses (The Leyland Lowloader) built by Leyland to solve the Lowheight problem. Usually to have a lowheight bus, the upper deck was a compromise with a sunken side gangway serving rows of four abreast seating. This was due to the chassis height not being low enough for a regular bus body within the restricted height limits. Bristol were first to come up with a better solution with the Lodekka but Leyland went a different way, moving the engine on to the rear platform and making the chassis more of a giant rear engined skateboard allowing the body to be of a more normal layout. Obviously the space on the rear platform could not contain the usual 0600 engine so a smaller 0350 engine was used instead. To regain the power deficit, a turbo was fitted to the engine. This combination of a small engine with a turbo made the powerpack quiet enough for it not to be that much of an issue, it only becoming a problem on the next development of the concept (The PDR1 Atlantean which is where we came in).

This idea of a queter running, smaller turbo engine has also allowed newer generations of chassis builders to get rid of the bustle and along with much better insulation has made travelling at the rear of one of these not the noisy experience of old.

That does sum up Atlantean vs VR nicely. We had both here in Southampton. It's true, you could hear Atlanteans miles away, literally. On a quiet morning I could hear them leaving Lordshill a full four minutes before they arrived at my stop. I could hear every gear change and intermediate stop as the engine note changed. The engine is practically outside, that fibreglass housing has no real soundproofing. 

The VR was a much better put together bus (our Atlanteans had East Lancs bodies which were just about the cheapest you could buy and they looked like it) and much quieter from outside. But inside, despite the racket going on outside, the Atlantean was a quieter more comfortable place to be. The VR seemed much hotter inside too, not helped by the brown vinyl seats. 

I used Atlanteans every day (apart from the year and a bit we had Routemasters, but even then I fancied an Atlantean occasionally) and the only two places I sat, if available, were the upstairs front seats or downstairs at the back. For a while I was on nights and would catch one home just after 6am and would always sit by the engine. It was a really cosy place to be and you could have a little nap on the way home. I only missed my stop a couple of times and only by a couple of stops, still walking distance! 

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31 minutes ago, Yoss said:

our Atlanteans had East Lancs bodies which were just about the cheapest you could buy and they looked like it

Yep, they supplied a batch of L reg ones to Sheffield (one actually is preserved), that had three line registration plates on the back. Except that Sheffield plod pointed out that this was illegal (tractors  and bikes only for this) so they had to change them all (yes, I've a pic !).

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2 hours ago, Yoss said:

That does sum up Atlantean vs VR nicely. We had both here in Southampton. It's true, you could hear Atlanteans miles away, literally. On a quiet morning I could hear them leaving Lordshill a full four minutes before they arrived at my stop. I could hear every gear change and intermediate stop as the engine note changed. The engine is practically outside, that fibreglass housing has no real soundproofing. 

The VR was a much better put together bus (our Atlanteans had East Lancs bodies which were just about the cheapest you could buy and they looked like it) and much quieter from outside. But inside, despite the racket going on outside, the Atlantean was a quieter more comfortable place to be. The VR seemed much hotter inside too, not helped by the brown vinyl seats. 

I used Atlanteans every day (apart from the year and a bit we had Routemasters, but even then I fancied an Atlantean occasionally) and the only two places I sat, if available, were the upstairs front seats or downstairs at the back. For a while I was on nights and would catch one home just after 6am and would always sit by the engine. It was a really cosy place to be and you could have a little nap on the way home. I only missed my stop a couple of times and only by a couple of stops, still walking distance! 

What was it with East Lancs? All of my experiences with vehicles carrying this bodywork have been interesting*. 

Always seemed to be something rattling like fuck. And leaking like fuck. And who styled them? 

Ralph Bennett styled the Mancunian and Londoner bodies for PRV. 

And these are still impressive examples of industrial design. Compare these two with contemporary ELC stuff! Awful! 

And don't get me started on their Alexander clone body... 🤓🤓🤓

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Few more pics from between about 1969 and 1972, West Riding this time. We'll start in Wakefield Bus Station with 132, A Plaxton Derwent bodied Leopard

132_a.thumb.jpg.1e65fc6582b95e67c846a4a3157f0544.jpg

Bristol FLF 543,

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Leeds B.S., and Roe bodied Guy Arab 842,

842_a.thumb.jpg.784731b81c47f31ab462e431b5f2c4c8.jpg

and finally a working Wulfronian, 912. Note the angle of that o/s front wheel.

912.thumb.JPG.4a5be5ac48790e8b9b77f77a6a697a9e.JPG

 

 

 

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Did someone mention Southampton Atlanteans?  In the last years, they always reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Lancaster bombers that had just made it back over the channel with bits shot off.  252 or 1252 somehow managed to look a bit better, and was the oldest for quite a while.  It made it into preservation but not for very long. 

G10999.jpg

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1 hour ago, willswitchengage said:

another oddity in what at the time was the strangest fleet in the country. O405s anyone?

Imported into the country as basic shells then finished here as TWM wanted a minimum UK content. Think it was Wadham Stringer who were going to finish them off but the job went tits and they ended up being finished off by MB's UK importers at Wentworth, just off J36 of the M1.

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On 9/14/2021 at 6:11 PM, lisbon_road said:

Did someone mention Southampton Atlanteans?  In the last years, they always reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Lancaster bombers that had just made it back over the channel with bits shot off.  252 or 1252 somehow managed to look a bit better, and was the oldest for quite a while.  It made it into preservation but not for very long. 

G10999.jpg

And that's about a five minute walk from Lisbon Road!

I wish I'd got more pictures of them in their later years, though that livery wasn't at all photogenic. But some of the additions to hold them together were comical. The little strips of aluminium that were riveted to a window frame, bent around the pillar then riveted to the next window frame were quite subtle and the the fact they would do a whole bus made them look almost like they were meant to be there. 

Less subtle were the bits of sheet ally that were bent to fit between the top of the upstairs front bulkhead and the panel just underneath the front windows. And riveted on of course. But left in bare ally. 

Best of all were the pseudo tree deflectors. Lots of buses have them now but these were made of bits of old Leyland Lynx handrail. You could tell as they had that sort of diamond pattern on them. They would be welded on just under the front  window and bent to go over the fibreglass roof 'dome' and attached to the first roof strut thing. But they only seemed to be fitted to the buses that also had the internal reinforcements too. Coincidence? 

I really should go and dig out some of my Atlantean pics. 

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48 minutes ago, lisbon_road said:

Yoss, to show that they could look good, here's 252 on the running day for the end of Atlanteans.  There was one in Barbie if I remember rightly; I'll see if I can find it sometime. 

G13399.jpg

I've always wondered what those items either side of the Destination Display are? Is it Ventilation or something else? 🤔 

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2 hours ago, lisbon_road said:

Yoss, to show that they could look good, here's 252 on the running day for the end of Atlanteans.  There was one in Barbie if I remember rightly; I'll see if I can find it sometime. 

G13399.jpg

I was on it that day too. It was one of Phil Blairs at the time I think. We did a painful trip on the 14 as it refused to change down gears and we struggled up Cobden Ave at walking pace in top with a nice burning rubber smell filling the back of the lower saloon. That was a good day with a nice convoy for the last run that ended up at Lordshill coincidentally at the same bus stop that the Routemasters finished at 16 years earlier. I have very similar photos from both events. I know I mock them but it is with fondness really and CityBus did well to keep them going until 2005.

1 hour ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

I've always wondered what those items either side of the Destination Display are? Is it Ventilation or something else? 🤔 

Yes, they're just little chrome vents but where the air went I don't know. Perhaps they just ran air in between the inner and outer panels in a vain attempt to stop the frames rusting. 

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Right this took a lot of a finding. I have no cataloguing system, just several boxes of packets of photos. I know roughly which packets to look in as they changed over the years as I used different developers. Trouble is Southamptons last Atlantean was February 2005 right in the middle of the winding down of the RMs in London so I've had a lot to go through but here we are. 

270 was the only real service bus that day, the others were all preserved*. 

IMG_20210918_171510_edit_903882736257390.thumb.jpg.47a09b9f1f98ff9a8b6bffca02cf57fe.jpg

IMG_20210918_171617.thumb.jpg.083e05c497686cab7ea206638af69ce3.jpg

IMG_20210918_173017.thumb.jpg.ac9d08fc1d67ecdfb6f807ee7e8ac8bb.jpg

 

This is the convoy at the end at Lordshill and as I said I have a very similar picture of the RMs that I was going to compare it with. Now I know exactly where that should be, I have a proper album for those but there is a blank space where it should be as I've obviously taken it out to copy it, probably on here about 50 pages back, and not put it back. But anyway, here are the Atlanteans. 

IMG_20210918_173111.thumb.jpg.abf2b8cc0d2e4660779ab26500ae3a81.jpg

IMG_20210918_173218.thumb.jpg.65e16c2cb08ffda7a955f2e5f31c8cdc.jpg

 

And back at Portswood depot, also now demolished and turned in to a Sainsbury's. 

IMG_20210918_173301_edit_904472153231258.thumb.jpg.610ddd3eb212c159c7c0ea55a2c48b16.jpg

IMG_20210918_173419.thumb.jpg.3e51254fd951c48ae9d7111bafb88015.jpg

 

* By preserved I mean bought for a couple of bags, if that, a few months previously, wether any still exist I don't know. Maybe 268 as he was stripping that down and doing a lot of bodywork. He was keeping it at Flexford where I had my bus until about four years ago but then we all had to move and I've not seen it since. 

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27 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

The Willowbrook Val had the ALR Harrington Legionnaire identity transferred onto it whilst the then owners pretended it was the real deal. DVLA have since cottoned onto it and voided the original ALR registration. It was on the system as 'untaxed' for years after the coach was broken up, but now no longer shows on the DVLA system. 

im curious about that as I just did a little digging, as you know I like a good DVLA mystery!

and it looks like ALR453B or from what I can tell more likely something pretending to be that Vehicle was put through an MOT where then it was robbed of that number which is now on retention (not void As far as I can tell)

and was thus was given the age related VRM RCA501B which is showing Untaxed since Feb 2020

image.thumb.png.e0677d5b26fcc314d17a58e5a739b218.png

 

registration marks Voided by the DVLA due to shenanigans or the such like, will tend to still show up on 3rd party tools and the MOT checker, but not the main 1st party checker, much like cars given a CoD

a couple examples of sadly Void registration marks include PPL787 and JNJ135L (now HKH330C), where as registration marks on retention will not show up on most 3rd party tools and neither of the DVLA or DVSA tools (but some 3rd party websites will still tell you what the last vehicle the plate on retention was last on)

 

of course the DVLA are the DVLA and they may of handled things differently with regards to this coach, but sadly from what it looks like outside is someone has just applied for the V5c of ALR453B just to transfer the mark to use elsewhere I guess because of the Italian job connection

which this Flicker comment section seems to say as well (seems ALR453B was rung onto another coach, and then robbed of its number plate!)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10631124@N07/37511098030/

 

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8 hours ago, Remspoor said:

My father was a bus driver at Barking. He drove on the last day of the RTs.... just saying.😉

Here he is wearing the more traditional LT uniform

 

I was there that day. Remind me when the days get dark and I cannot play outside with cars to scan my slides from that day.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/30/2021 at 10:24 AM, Eyersey1234 said:

East Yorkshire Caetano Levante 3 bodied Scania Fleet number 2 seen at Grayson in Birmingham awaiting an air conditioning service. I left Hull with it at 5am to bring it down. 

IMG_20210930_081258.jpg

Not Ice on the Destination Display seems to show the A\C needs service or repair... 🤓

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6 hours ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

Not Ice on the Destination Display seems to show the A\C needs service or repair... 🤓

🤣 The blind is fine it's the camera on my phone, for some reason it cuts out destination displays a lot 😂

 

Though we have had problems with the air con on most of the coaches, seems its the fans in the roof that are at fault, apparently its a common problem with Levantes. 

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