Bus Shite

[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:

 

[sierraman]

On 06/05/2025 at 13:42, Cookiesouwest said:

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

 

Northern Bus in Sheffield used to use those up until the mid 90’s. They were practically antiques by that point. 

[Inspector Morose]

Going back to bus recovery vehicles a second. I knew I'd find the pic eventually. Yup, a national bodied Matador.

[EyesWeldedShut]

18 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Going back to bus recovery vehicles a second. I knew I'd find the pic eventually. Yup, a national bodied Matador.

That is absolutely fantastic - how many man hours went in transferring the coachwork over? Maybe best not to ask [edit] Apprentices maybe?

[Inspector Morose]

16 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

That is absolutely fantastic - how many man hours went in transferring the coachwork over? Maybe best not to ask [edit] Apprentices maybe?

I'd assume it was an apprentice special. Apart from the roof and windscreen, there actually isn't a great deal of standard national in there.

The best bit for me is the headlight being set lower on the body and a proper blank panel in the place where they would have been. A lot of work has going into that.

[83C]

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

 

The best bit for me is the headlight being set lower on the body and a proper blank panel in the place where they would have been. A lot of work has going into that.

It does look a bit like how they adapted the National panels to suit the Leyland-DAB artics. Almost a shame the Matador conversion didn’t use a similar radiator grille:

 

[SunnySouth]

10 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

I'd assume it was an apprentice special. Apart from the roof and windscreen, there actually isn't a great deal of standard national in there.

The best bit for me is the headlight being set lower on the body and a proper blank panel in the place where they would have been. A lot of work has going into that.

Presumably the original National got twatted and the front end was recycled thus?!

[quicksilver]

1 hour ago, SunnySouth said:

Presumably the original National got twatted and the front end was recycled thus?!

More likely it was built with new bits from the parts stores, back in the days when bus companies had such things. With a big fleet of Nationals, they'd have had enough spare parts stashed away to make that without cannibalising a bus.