Bus Shite

[Out Run]

1 hour ago, LightBulbFun said:

at 1:27 in you can get a good view of one in @dollywobbler's video on a Leyland national  

 

That’s the one! Awesome badge.

[martc]

2 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

 

'C'mon ladies, scream if you wanna go faster'

[Inspector Morose]

More pictures? Well, why the hell not.

This time it is down to Salisbury for the end of the Series 2 Bristol VRT running day. (Catchy title, huh?). As a series 2 VRT owner at the time, I thought it was a good idea to go and make myself known just in case there were any spares going cheap. Oh yes, and take some photos.

 

[Inspector Morose]

Oh yes, I had a VRT.

Say hello to my NOB. It was the earliest WMPTE VRT left intact and so on selling my shortened Ford, I partnered up and bought this from an operator in Anglesea. The day before picking it up he managed to reverse it into his single deck sized garage and reshape the rear so he generously knocked £100 off the bill. We bought it back and rallied it for a while as it was before pulling it apart for rear end treatment and getting it back to WMPTE spec. Sadly over exuberance with my later purchase of other vehicles and the cost of their storage and restoration caused me to become totally brassic and forced to sell the lot to satisfy numerous bills. Lovely people bus preservationists were, I still to this day receive threats and slander for having the temerity to put my life before buses and bail. I don't do preservation any more.

 

[Inspector Morose]

I'll end tonight with some random buses in Manchester (and Bury).

 

[clayts450]

I am just loving all these photo compilations - keep em coming folks.

[busmansholiday]

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

Lovely people bus preservationists were, I still to this day receive threats and slander for having the temerity to put my life before buses and bail. I don't do preservation any more

Been there, got the T shirt, had it autographed, know what you mean.

[jon.k]

What a great lot of photos. What is the weird dart thing with a leyland badge one from the bottom, please?

[jon.k]

Or the one above that for that matter!

[Inspector Morose]

Both Leyland Swifts. The more Dart looking one was one of two (that I know of) Wright Handibus bodies delivered to Stevensons - supreme collector and operator of the bus worlds waifs and strays. The one above had a body by that well known builder G C Smith.

[Inspector Morose]

Fancy some more tomorrow? Be warned, it’ll probably contain Nationals.

[quicksilver]

They're both Leyland Swifts. J32 SFA has a Wright HandyBus body like those on Darts but taller and even uglier, and F907 PFH has a Whippet body by G.C. Smith of Loughborough, better known for mobile libraries.

[busmansholiday]

9 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

The one above had a body by that well known builder G C Smith.

Arrr, yes, good old GC Smith, builders of kwality* bus bodies (and mobile libraries). At least that's a bus not a coach / welfare body with the full height rear opening and no way of closing it from ground level. Fortunately somebody accidentally* set fire to our pair.

[clayts450]

57 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Fancy some more tomorrow? Be warned, it’ll probably contain Nationals.

Yes please. Love a National, me. I lived in a London Country area growing up. I'm always drawn to photos of any Nationals looking for Surrey reg marks to see if they're ex LCBS. 

A fair few of those ones in your post were ex-LT by the looks of it.

[clayts450]

This made me laugh

It was not uncommon for Nationals to lean to one side a little (not quite as precariously as the one above) like that in service, especially the older ones.

You needed a step ladder as a passenger just to onboard  ! Why did they do this ?

[Yoss]

2 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

I'll end tonight with some random buses in Manchester (and Bury).

 

 

Ex Southampton CityBus. Not only have they not bothered painting them, those are the original CityBus fleet number decals. Never knew where they went, or when really, I never really noticed them disappear. This was only a batch of four. After they were unable to buy any more Atlanteans they bought a single Dominator, 277 (the last Atlantean was 276) and three Olympians with slightly different bodywork, 278 - 280 for evaluation. Strangely despite the Dennis being rather troublesome they then bought the above batch of four. 

 

And the Salisbury shots look very familiar too. I seem to end up there quite regularly (was there Monday). Admittedly I usually drive, the bus service from Southampton isn't great, but there's a car park just behind the bus station so I used to walk through there a lot. It's gone now of course, like everything else. I have some pictures upstairs of the last day of the LH's at Salisbury. 

[catsinthewelder]

5 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Many spare days were spent in Sheffield soaking up Northern Bus with their heady mix of REs plus the other oddities running around (Warning this is a big post).

 

 

Loving the photodump tonight,  please could you enlighten me as to what these 4 are?  Especially the one that looks like an over inflated Freight Rover.

[Magic]

3 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

I'll end tonight with some random buses in Manchester (and Bury).

Family owned firm local to me, spent many a school trip on one of their coaches. Then diversified into buses for a while when deregulation happened. Sold the bus bit to Stagecoach in the mid '00s and went back to the core coach tours business.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

Fancy some more tomorrow? Be warned, it’ll probably contain Nationals.

Hell yes...

[Inspector Morose]

53 minutes ago, clayts450 said:

This made me laugh

 Why did they do this ?

Lack of an anti-roll bar on the front of the earlier ones allowed them to lean at angles that would make a 2cv blush. The suspension was designed with lots of travel but later ones from around 1976 on would have an anti roll bat fitted along with dual shock absorbers at the rear. Most earlier ones had the dual rear shock mod but HHA was one that missed out for some reason. This was the second time I’d done this with a National, this is the other time:

With a roll bar fitted the lean was greatly reduced but it did mean you could lift one front wheel off the ground if you parked the opposite rear wheels in a deep pothole (see photo of KHT118P in the Metrowest post).

We did have at least one ex LCBS National LPB214P but this was the time when LT were shedding Mk1 like they were going out of fashion. They were cheap, very well looked after (the ex-Bexleybus ones were a bit grotty though) and could easily be upseated although we never did apart from one after accident damage. Another good home to buy from was Ribble as although they had been worked hard, they were kept in very good order with quality rebuilds at mid life on the earlier ones. One ex-Ribble, PTF746L,  was as original spec as they came but it was like new underneath and on top and was one of the best motors we bought.

The WMT Nationals were still with WMT as we had been bought by then and we were used as a low cost unit to operate the Black country routes. Fleet strength at the end was 76 with over 50 being Nationals.

[Inspector Morose]

1 hour ago, catsinthewelder said:

Loving the photodump tonight,  please could you enlighten me as to what these 4 are?  Especially the one that looks like an over inflated Freight Rover.

In order: 

1. Leyland DAB artic - using the drivetrain from a Tiger in a bespoke chassis. This was Sheffields second try at artics and was reasonably successful. One oddity was that the rear axle steered so sitting right at the back meant you got the sensation of going in the opposite direction to the rest of the bus every time you went round a corner.

2.  Renault/Dodge 50 (or was it 75? I can’t remember) with I think a Northern Counties body. Seemingly quite popular with SYT at the time as they had loads with numerous bodies.

3. leyland Leopard with Plaxton bus body. This was the second body on this chassis. The first was a Willowbrook Spacecar coach body but this was removed on this and other members of the same batch (from an NBC fleet in the south I think) and all were rebodied with this type of body for dealer Stuart Johnson. This one was sold to Compass bus who were taken over by SYPTE and so it became an odd man out in their fleet.

4. Dennis Domino/Optare. Dennis’ first attempt at a midibus chassis and a little too over engineered for the job. Basically it was a Dominator double deck chassis narrowed and shortened to midi size and powered by a transverse Perkins engine driving through a Maxwell gearbox. Only SYPTE and Greater Manchester ever bought them. The body was the first products by Optare after the original Roe had been closed down by Leyland. The design was so that as many body parts could be exchanged with other vehicles in the fleet. Practical? Yes but pretty? Well, maybe not.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

Lack of an anti-roll bar on the front of the earlier ones allowed them to lean at angles that would make a 2cv blush. The suspension was designed with lots of travel but later ones from around 1976 on would have an anti roll bat fitted along with dual shock absorbers at the rear. Most earlier ones had the dual rear shock mod but HHA was one that missed out for some reason. This was the second time I’d done this with a National, this is the other time:

With a roll bar fitted the lean was greatly reduced but it did mean you could lift one front wheel off the ground if you parked the opposite rear wheels in a deep pothole (see photo of KHT118P in the Metrowest post).

We did have at least one ex LCBS National LPB214P but this was the time when LT were shedding Mk1 like they were going out of fashion. They were cheap, very well looked after (the ex-Bexleybus ones were a bit grotty though) and could easily be upseated although we never did apart from one after accident damage. Another good home to buy from was Ribble as although they had been worked hard, they were kept in very good order with quality rebuilds at mid life on the earlier ones. One ex-Ribble, PTF746L,  was as original spec as they came but it was like new underneath and on top and was one of the best motors we bought.

The WMT Nationals were still with WMT as we had been bought by then and we were used as a low cost unit to operate the Black country routes. Fleet strength at the end was 76 with over 50 being Nationals.

I know a certain Olympian which will do that when parked when it feels like it due to one of the levelling valve bodies having gone porous!  It's 50/50 whether she does it - but means in the museum that you have to be bloody careful when you park her up in the shed to make sure you leave a good couple of extra feet to either side in case she decides to have a lean...especially after the repaint was done!

Decided to have a really bad day for it one day when there was a show on and she was out on display...I kept going out and starting her back up every couple of hours and getting things levelled again when the lean got to looking too obvious.  Haven't seen the bus since 2014, so they might have fixed it by now...

[cms206]

12 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Both Leyland Swifts. The more Dart looking one was one of two (that I know of) Wright Handibus bodies delivered to Stevensons - supreme collector and operator of the bus worlds waifs and strays.

Stevensons had four - J31/2 SFA and J34/6 SRF.

Never understood why they were even built considering that in 1992 Wright were still building the arguably better* looking Consort on Swifts and Roadrunners.

[cms206]

Doing a little more scanning myself today as I've got a couple of hours spare.

FSU 820T was being operated as a non-PSV by 1989 with Bannockburn AFC, but had been new to Strathclyde Regional Council in December 1978. It was a McLay-bodied 42 seat Leyland 550FG.

[cms206]

9 hours ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Regarding the one a teacher parked into their own car thanks to the dogleg gearbox, it looked exactly like this :

That could even be the one, yellow Rochdale council livery, ambulance on the top.   We had that for a period inbetween various other rentals before we got a puke green P reg LDV.

I couldn't place the bodybuilder on that but it's apparantly Customline; has the look of a weird Keillor/Leicester Carriage Builders crossbreed.

Was it owned by the school or by the council? I might be able to pin down which one it was.

[cms206]

7 minutes ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Council owned. 

Narrows it down to either E746 or E747 XVR; the P-reg Convoy is likely to have P653 KNF.

[cms206]

Western Scottish ordered six Volvo Citybuses for delivery in 1987, though in the event two were diverted to Fife Scottish as their E909/10 KSG. E864-867 RCS were delivered to Western and carried a multitude of liveries; they worked hard and eventually ended up being some of the earliest Megabus deckers on the network.

Some photos of their earlier days; they were renumbered early on from V164-167 to V964-967.

[cms206]

An assorted selection to finish today, as I'm on a backshift and I really need to get ready for work... all West of Scotland, up to about 1990. A few do not appear all they seem.

[Saabnut]

The busses are good but the recovery units are great!

[catsinthewelder]

The background shite is amazing too, brown Hyundai Steller taxi 😎

With the other recovery rigs being converted from buses the shorter one has me confused.  It looks too heavy duty to have been built as a bus.  Is it a Scammel with bodywork from a bus?