Bus Shite

[Inspector Morose]

One of the last Trolleybuses to operate at Walsall was this - 862, one of the earlier batch of Sunbeam F4a with Willowbrook 70 seat bodies. This was luckier than most as it was saved and eventually found a home at the Black Country Museum in Dudley alongside another trolleybus, Wolverhampton 433.

In the '90s 862 was looking very shabby having not been repainted for over 20 years by then and so Midland Red North was contacted for a quote for an exterior re-panel and repaint. The lads at the Cannock paint shop jumped at the chance and with acceptance of their very reasonable quote, 862 was towed to Cannock.

After a few weeks, 862 was towed back out looking magnificent in its Walsall blue. One tradition was that the fleet number on the rear of the bus, the figure 8 was applied upside down as that was how it was when the bus was originally presented by WMPTE! 

Once back at the BCM, the interior was fully refurbished with a new lino floor (in red, as original), new seat upholstery, and all of the painted surfaces repainted in their original colours. Even the handrails were recovered in original plastic coating white while the lamp holders were re-chromed. Once finished, the bus looked resplendent once again and nothing like it did when withdrawn from service all those years ago.
 

[Inspector Morose]

Alongside Walsall 862 on the final procession at Walsall in 1970 was another 'goldfish bowl', 864. This bus, when new, had been loaned to Portsmouth Corporation for service trials on their trolleybus system in 1955.

After the Walsall system was closed down, 864 was bought by the National Trolleybus Association and stored in the open in the south of England. At some point, the storage yard was raided by thieves who smashed most of 864s windows and stole most of the copper wiring, contactors and motor. The future looked very bleak for the once-proud 30 footer but a form of salvation came in it being transported to the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft, made weather tight and used as a store at the rear of the depot building.

864 served its useful purpose for many years until 2016 when it was deemed to be in the way and cut up where it had stood for the previous near 40 years.

[Inspector Morose]

Last of the trio, on that final day in October 1970 was Walsall 872. This was the final bus bought new by the Corporation although second-hand vehicles from closing systems were bought later and pressed into service. Note the later spec double reduction rear axle fitted to this bus due to earlier half shaft failures on the previous batch.

On that final day, 872 was painted with 'Walsalls Last Trolleybus' down each side, in between the side windows. This proclamation was also illuminated, in true R Edgley Cox tradition, by a run of fluorescent tubes along the top edge of the wording. It was this bus that ran the final journey back to the depot at Birchills carrying Mr Cox and other dignitaries.

After its final turn had been done, it was purchased by the British Trolleybus Association and transported to its new home at Sandtoft. Here it stood, complete but non-operational due to its non-functioning hydraulic braking system for many years. In the late 1990s, it was transported to the Witton Transport museum in Birmingham where volunteers there slowly restored the interior of the bus. A brief visit to the Black Country Museum to attend one of its bi-yearly trolleybus rallies allowed 872 to reacquaint itself with its former stablemate 862 and after electrical tests, 872 ran for the first time in over 20 years.

During the early part of this century, 872 moved back north to Sandtoft where a concerted effort was made in restoring 872 back to good order and this was completed in 2013 where it became one of the many operational trolleybuses to be housed there.

[cms206]

In their infinite wisdom, in 1985 Clydeside management decreed that the ideal vehicle to operate the 40-odd mile service 4 between Glasgow, Kilmarnock and Ayr were three of the 1980 intake of Alexander-bodied Mk2 Ailsas; duly repainted and route branded for service 4, they were also reseated with dual purpose seating from withdrawn Seddons. Ailsas 96, 110 and 112 were transferred to Thornliebank and very quickly showed that they weren't ideal for the route.

They then recieved a partial repaint and partially mis-spelled rebrand for service 12 between Glasgow and Neilston.

By 1988 110 and 112 had returned to Paisley and were repainted in fleet livery, but retained their dual purpose seating  96 was less fortunate, having been destroyed by fire on the A760 in the latter half of 1987.

[Mrcento]

8 minutes ago, Amishtat said:

I doubt anyone on here would deny that they were strange, I certainly wouldn't. But seriously, must you drag these deplorable tricycles into every thread?  You have your own thread devoted to the revolting contraptions. Two hundred and forty seven pages of semi-literate drivel of interest to about seven people in the known universe and it's never off the first page. 

Also, and perhaps a point of sheer pedantry: A daily driver is, by its very definition, a vehicle which is or is capable of being driven daily. Your example fails to currently meet said criteria. Thanks to the efforts of Red5 this situation may change imminently but at the moment it is a static exhibit. Which, in my opinion, it should remain. I accept that you're aspie or whatever it is we call the cerebrally-lethargic these enlightened days but seriously, give the subject a rest or keep it within its boundaries. 

Sits back and awaits the inevitable flaming from the usual cabal of right-on coneheads. 

 

Do you feel better now you've got that off your chest?

Without wishing to derail the thread, It always interests me the sheer burning rage those cars receive from people of a certain age, right up to this day.

Whatever they symbolise, to you, that's a reflection on society and the government of the time issuing them, it's not the fault of the vehicles themselves. It seems like very misplaced anger. You might not like younger folk almost having them as toys and be ashamed at what they represented at the time, but that's also not on them any more than the car.

But i digress. That's not bus related, so i'll stop there.

All i would add, is the rest of your post, i doubt flaming from 'coneheads' would be for you telling LBF too keep that talk to his thread on that topic and not bring it to unrelated ones, but the rest of it?, You come across a total dick taking unnecessary swings. 'Semi literate drive', 'Cerebrally lethargic'? No need. Settle petal.

[Inspector Morose]

A final one for tonight (thank christ for that). Let me tell you the tale of the oddity of Walsall 342.
342 Started out as a perfectly conventional Brush bodied Sunbeam F4, delivered new in 1951. It was 27 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches wide and had a rear-loading platform, just like any other conventional bus or trolleybus of the day.
Then R Edgley Cox happened. The general manager of Walsall was a constant thinker of new ideas in increasing capacity, saving weight and therefore cost and many, many other things. Some of his solutions were bordering on the unconventional yet still had a sound basis. In the early '60s, Walsall 342 was withdrawn from service to serve as a testbed for some of his ideas. One idea was the lowering of platform height so passengers could board and disembark the buses quicker, saving time and therefore cost. To this end, the idea of putting a new, lower built chassis from a Dennis Loline was proposed. How much dismantling of 342 had taken place is unknown before the idea was stopped in its tracks by the unavailability of a suitable chassis frame. 342 was therefore prepared and re-entered service.

Only weeks later, the bus was withdrawn again. This time, the idea was to lengthen the bus to the new legal dimension of 30 feet allowing an extra row of seats to be fitted on both decks. To this aim, the body was removed from the chassis and cut just behind the drivers' bulkhead where an extra bay was constructed and inserted. For the chassis, the Sunbeam parts bin must have been raided as the new frames were from the longer F4a, similar to the 'goldfish bowl' Sunbeams delivered to Walsall in the latter part of the '50s. Maybe a complete rolling chassis was obtained for when 342 appeared back on the streets of Walsall, not only was it nearly 3 feet longer than before, the axles were from an 8 feet wide bus. With the body built to 7 feet 6 still, wheel arch extensions were fabricated and fitted to cover the exposed wheels.
The changes did not end there. To save even further weight (it wasn't just Colin Chapman of Lotus fame who strove for lightness, you know), all of the windows were remounted using white rubber into single sheet aluminium 'frames'. Brakes for the bus were of the power hydraulic type, saving further the weight of a compressor and associated air componentry. Strangely, against his idea of standardising on a forward entrance, the original rear platform and staircase stayed, roughly where Brush had put them.

For all of its ungainly looks, 342 ran until the very end of the trolleybus operation at Walsall and after service, was obtained by the British Trolleybus Society to sit alongside Walsall 872 at Sandtoft. Unlike 872, the restoration back to service has not happened as yet due to part availability of the braking system and the structure of those very lightly mounted windows.

[rml2345]

Given that they were usually quite sprightly and that their extra capacity would be useful, why didn't the Ailsa work out on the 4?

[Zelandeth]

6 minutes ago, rml2345 said:

Given that they were usually quite sprightly and that their extra capacity would be useful, why didn't the Ailsa work out on the 4?

If my admittedly very brief experience behind the wheel of an Ailsa is anything to go by the biggest shortcoming would be an extra gear or two on a sustained high speed run.  The one I drove was basically on the rev limiter by about 50.  Don't imagine that would have done reliability any favours.

Granted, not that it seemed to cause Bluebird any problems with the B10M based Alexander PS buses on the 307...they seemed to put up with spending most of the day bouncing off the governor on the A96 with little complaint.  Though that probably is more testament to how bloody dependable a mid 90s B10M was and is than anything else.

[Yoss]

51 minutes ago, rml2345 said:

Given that they were usually quite sprightly and that their extra capacity would be useful, why didn't the Ailsa work out on the 4?

I was wondering that. Sounds like a great day out. From an enthusiasts point of view anyway. 

[rml2345]

3 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

If my admittedly very brief experience behind the wheel of an Ailsa is anything to go by the biggest shortcoming would be an extra gear or two on a sustained high speed run.  The one I drove was basically on the rev limiter by about 50.  Don't imagine that would have done reliability any favours.

Granted, not that it seemed to cause Bluebird any problems with the B10M based Alexander PS buses on the 307...they seemed to put up with spending most of the day bouncing off the governor on the A96 with little complaint.  Though that probably is more testament to how bloody dependable a mid 90s B10M was and is than anything else.

That's a fair point but even when new a Gardner Olympian would've been all of about 45 mph flat out on standard gearing and much less happy about it. 

I wonder if the Hamworthy rear axle was the weak link? They did also combust on occasion as Andy CMS mentioned one of the 4 trio did. 

[cms206]

14 minutes ago, rml2345 said:

Given that they were usually quite sprightly and that their extra capacity would be useful, why didn't the Ailsa work out on the 4?

Having done some further digging, it appears that 96 was actually reseated at Western, possibly with seats from the V-reg Seddon T-types which ended up on Citylink at Ardrishaig (helpfully coded M... for Thornliebank); Clydeside did 110 and 112 with coach seats from withdrawn Y-type Seddons.

As to why the type wasn't a success, there are likely a number of factors; at the time the A77 was still single carriageway so a 50 limit wasn't an issue, but Thornliebank was traditionally a Fleetline depot and as such they were never allocated Ailsas until these three in 1986, and never had any others afterwards so likely weren't au fait with the breed and their foibles like Paisley or Johnstone were. Additionally, these were likely doing three or four round trips of 80 miles each per day and as Ailsas were never known for their economy, bringing them in for fuel mid shift was likely an issue due to the proximity of the depot to the route. They'd have been comfortable but certainly not quiet and likely not the smoothest either as they were fully auto too. Ultimately they lasted about eighteen months to two years at Thornliebank in total before returning west.

It's amazing that none of the trio caught fire actually on the 4; 96 caught fire on route 17 in October 1987, ironically a route it'd have done from new at Johnstone. 110 and 112 both saw further service, lasting until 1997 and 1999 respectively.

[AnnoyingPentium]

6 hours ago, Yoss said:

Hmm... so blue and orange is fine then is it? 

Worked for Barrs soooooooo yeah, if you want your buses to look like these feckers then sure, fire away.

[LightBulbFun]

14 hours ago, Yoss said:

The trouble is it was the 1980s and bold colours and diagonals were all the rage and as you say it really didn't work on a Routemaster. 

indeed, the issue I find is a lot of liveries never incorporate a relief band which think is of the upmost importance when putting together a Routemaster livery

especially such that when its not painted, you can still see where there WAS supposed to be a relief band around the bus, so any livery that does not have one just ends up looking half finished to my eyes

so much so its a bit of a pet peeve of mine when I see a Routemaster without a relief band (looking at you MTL London!), same goes for if someones made a half arsed attempt at replacing the indicator ears with some more modern/standard indicator unit, which also something that happened quite a lot with Routemasters in the 1980's-1990s with non LT operators 

 

2 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

On that final day, 872 was painted with 'Walsalls Last Trolleybus' down each side, in between the side windows. This proclamation was also illuminated, in true R Edgley Cox tradition, by a run of fluorescent tubes along the top edge of the wording. It was this bus that ran the final journey back to the depot at Birchills carrying Mr Cox and other dignitaries.

you cant just leave me hanging here without some pictures of that! 

I am also of course most curious how did they run the tubes? where they just driven from standard transistor inverter ballasts from a 12/24V source 

or did they get creative and drive directly off the 600V side of things with a suitable simple ballast resistor, as was commonly done on continental trams?

(where they used special fluorescent tubes with special conductive stripes applied to the tube to help starting, and relays to reverse the polarity every now and then so all the mercury did not migrate to one end leaving you with a tube thats only lit half the way up its length!)

as a side note sometimes when a fluorescent tube fails, depending on the exact control gear its running on, the tube itself can start to only conduct electricity in only 1 direction, when this happens the tube is said to be rectifying, (because it is literally acting as a primitive mercury arc rectifier) and because its now effectively running itself on DC this causes all the mercury to go to one end of the tube, which is why on the London Underground you often saw half lit fluorescent tubes  

(theres a bit of bonus train/lightbulb shite for you all )

[cms206]

On the subject of Clydeside Ailsas, a tale which came to me from two different sources which really showed the Bus Group up really as a handful of competing and quite... errrr... enterprising sister companies.

In the heady days of post deregulation Scotland, buses were pulled in from everywhere; Clydeside and Strathtay, as detailed elsewhere, went the Routemaster route, as did Kelvin. Eastern on the other hand, gathered Ailsas in large numbers; Alexander-bodied Mk1s from Clydeside and Central headed east, joined by Van Hool-McArdle examples from South Yorkshire PTE. With those VH-McA examples came a number of spare parts, including new and reconditioned back axles.

Eastern commenced a program to fit these back axles to their Mk1 Ailsas in an effort to quieten them down, as the back ends had a very pronounced howl as they aged.

Suddenly, a "contract" required "additional deckers of 79 seats" over the course of what eventually ended up being several weekends.

This "contract" entailed Clydeside staff being dispatched to Edinburgh to borrow an Ailsa or two, which were then driven back to the workshops at Gordon Street in Paisley, where the nice new quiet diffs were "allegedly" swapped with the loudest units from Clydeside's own KSD-Ws on Saturday backshifts before the buses were returned to Eastern on Sunday.

Eleven were done at Paisley before Johnstone tried the same trick and got caught...

[Mrcento]

2 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

If my admittedly very brief experience behind the wheel of an Ailsa is anything to go by the biggest shortcoming would be an extra gear or two on a sustained high speed run.  The one I drove was basically on the rev limiter by about 50.

Tayside ran them on the 32+33 routes in Dundee (City Centre to Fintry), they would frequently max them out down the A90 northbound, Downhill... The noise was biblical, especially on the Mk1's!, I can see why they'd not be ideal for long routes, They screamed their tits off at around 50.

Reliability never seemed an issue with them, though. Tayside ran them for 20 years like that.

The Mk1's did have a weak rear axle  (as you can hear on that Routemaster vid i posted up there, an Ailsa passes early on, howling), i believe the Mk2's had the axle off of a Volvo truck and haven't read of any issues from then on in there

2 hours ago, cms206 said:

Ailsas were never known for their economy, bringing them in for fuel mid shift was likely an issue due to the proximity of the depot to the route. They'd have been comfortable but certainly not quiet and likely not the smoothest either as they were fully auto too.

It's interesting they had theirs full auto. Tayside only even had one earlier version specced with the Voith auto (A Mk2, to test back to back) and the rest of the Mk1's and Mk2's were all SCG semi autos. The Mk3's all reverted to Auto though.

[Metal Guru]

5 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Tonight is Walsall trolleybus night! For the younger amongst us, a trolleybus is just like an ordinary bus but powered by an electric motor. Instead of batteries, power for the motor was drawn from two powerlines suspended over the roadway and was collected by sprung booms mounted on the roof of the bus.

For a time they were quite popular, with many towns and cities having trolleybus routes of their own. Some of the advantages were that they were faster than diesel buses (and could climb hills better), cheaper, as they used locally generated electricity instead of imported oil, and quieter with no petrol or diesel engine on board.

Sadly time marches on and it wasn't long before diesel engines became better and more powerful, the fuel became cheaper and with the nationalisation of electrical generation, the advantages of the trolleybus were wiped out. Given that the system of wiring needed careful maintenance too, the wholesale shift towards the more flexible motorbus started not long after the second world war. By the sixties, many systems had abandoned the trolleybus and by 1970 there were just three systems left; Teeside, Bradford and Walsall.

Walsall was an odd survivor. The corporation had been effectively taken over in 1969 by the newly formed West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. This included the trolleybus system of Walsall, even though there was no want for the new executive to actually continue with its operation. Still, for nearly a year they did just that making WMPTE the only PTE in the country (there were many set up around the country to run their respective public transport) to run a trolleybus system. None of the remaining trolleybuses was repainted into the new livery but the old fleet names and Walsall corporation crests were crudely painted over for their final few months in service. 

Here is ex-Walsall 867, one of the later batch of Willowbrook bodied Sunbeam F4a trolleybuses, known locally as the 'goldfish bowls'. These were built longer than the regulations for two-axle buses allowed at the time, in 1956, and the first built ran under a special dispensation until the law was changed later that year. This later batch F4a is also of note that it used a hub reduction back axle. The earlier batch had a standard axle but suffered from broken half-shafts due to the high torque of an electric motor.

The final day of operation for the Walsall System was 2 October 1970. Sadly 867 did not survive the cutters torch.

Last saw a trolley bus in Vancouver in 2016. Also in Milan in late 90s but that looked ancient and no idea if it’s still going.

[rml2345]

The MK1 and MK2 Ailsa both had the drop centre Hamworthy axle as they still held out hopes of low height orders from the SBG. However they were fussy about ground clearance and didnt buy any, so in the end Derby bought the only low height version (B55-20) and had it bodied by Alexander. By the MK3 Ailsa had given up on the idea of low height and a sturdy Volvo back end was used instead. 

[jamescarruthers]

Wow, this topic moves fast! Thanks for the replies to my mini bus questions about two pages ago.

[Eyersey1234]

Just now, jamescarruthers said:

Wow, this topic moves fast! Thanks for the replies to my mini bus questions about two pages ago.

No problem 

[cms206]

1 minute ago, jamescarruthers said:

Wow, this topic moves fast! Thanks for the replies to my mini bus questions about two pages ago.

You wait ages for a post about buses...

[Eyersey1234]

20 hours ago, cms206 said:

These two were my regular steeds at Riverside; N810 PDS had the heaviest clutch known to man and no right hand lock.

N221 MUS was a little honey; 77mph if you were brave enough, really gutsy engine for being the n/a 86bhp 3.9 non-turbo and beatifully light clutch. I liked it a lot.

I did drive our automatic Merc Varios, Dart SLFs and Volvo PS-types too but I generally drove the stick Mercs as I was a three pedal pilot when such things wete hard to come by.

What bodies did these small Mercs have? We had 709Ds and 811Ds with Plaxton Beaver bodies, though they had been replaced by Beaver 2 Varios and Mini Pointer Darts by the time I started at East Yorkshire. Our midis now are short Enviro 200s and E200 MMCs. 

[Eyersey1234]

9 minutes ago, jamescarruthers said:

Wow, this topic moves fast! Thanks for the replies to my mini bus questions about two pages ago.

As you probably gather, I work in the industry as does @cms206and a few others on here, any more questions feel free to ask 

[cms206]

30 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

What bodies did these small Mercs have? We had 709Ds and 811Ds with Plaxton Beaver bodies, though they had been replaced by Beaver 2 Varios and Mini Pointer Darts by the time I started at East Yorkshire. Our midis now are short Enviro 200s and E200 MMCs. 

810 was a Marshall C16-bodied 811D, 221 was a Wadham Stringer Wessex 2-bodied 709D.

We had three Beaver 709Ds, two Wadham Stringer Wessex 2 (... or UVG CitiStar - from memory one was a Wessex and one a CitiStar but they were outwardly identical) 709Ds, a Marshall C16 811D and a Mellor Duet 811D, plus a pair of automatic Beaver 2 Varios and a pair of frequently borrowed G-reg Alexander-bodied 25 seat 709Ds.

Other than that we had four MPDs and four Dart SLFs bought new supplimented by four ex Metroline DLD-class SLFs and a pair of ex Stagecoach B10Ms. Not a big outfit by any means and regularly "helped out" by the coach company next door with the loan of their ex Stagecoach B10Ms and Optare MAN.

It was a good gig spoiled by nepotism - the boss's son was effectively in charge and had never driven a bus, nor did he have any intention of going for his license.

[Leyland Worldmaster]

Boroline Maidstone had some Volvo Ailsa buses. Used on School Contracts sometimes, they were bloody awful from a passenger's perspective! 

Noisy, bouncy and most concerningly the lower saloon would always stink of diesel smoke... 

Much preferred the Leyland Titan 'Queen Mary' ex Southdown bus also used on School Contracts... 👍 👍 👍 😎 😎 😎 

 

[Metal Guru]

22 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

A pacer

Don’t think so. A pacer was a “proper “ train, this is just a bus body on railway bogies.

[83C]

6 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Don’t think so. A pacer was a “proper “ train, this is just a bus body on railway bogies.

Like this?

http://preserved.railcar.co.uk/LEV1.html

[Leyland Worldmaster]

10 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Don’t think so. A pacer was a “proper “ train, this is just a bus body on railway bogies.

This is the Prototype Railcar that spawned Pacer and Class 153 family... 

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Leyland Worldmaster
Unicorns.

[colino]

cms206, was your previous employer DJI, the place where everything was painted the same maroon, from the buses to the limos?  If so, do you know where the boy moved on to?

[cms206]

28 minutes ago, colino said:

cms206, was your previous employer DJI, the place where everything was painted the same maroon, from the buses to the limos?  If so, do you know where the boy moved on to?

I was with DJ June 2009-May 2013 (and Riverside on loan June '09-Sept '11), then back again October 2014 til July 2019.

To which boy do you refer? 🤣

[AnnoyingPentium]

Spotted a passing white double decker belonging to Marbill as my train was sitting in the Glengarnock station.