Bus Shite

[Leyland Worldmaster]

On 1/6/2023 at 7:36 PM, quicksilver said:

SWT was never part of Stagecoach and became a First company. I think that National had some sort of accessibility mods so various other operators borrowed it to try out. The Renault is a PR100, a RHD version of their standard French city bus. Not a successful demonstrator as it did the rounds but resulted in selling a grand total of three, all to Luton Airport and probably only to support local industry and not on their own merit as it's just down the road from Renault's UK HQ in Dunstable.

I think I have an issue of Buses Magazine that reports these as bodied by Northern Counties. 

They must have been delivered CKD as they don't appear to have any NC parts! 

[Dyslexic Viking]

Arendal Norway 1981

[busmansholiday]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185727665867?hash=item2b3e3b46cb:g:USwAAOSwNlVjuLAO&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoCpv1eVRzGMJtc%2FjHelSBFgkau1XfWOiDFsOYOWPaN5LzypHgIy1shqqlRnRofO3o2odM5gezHhTXmUtx1oUhtijK3QyW3wdS%2FzSLSrwR8owIeaNAvHup%2Ff9v8OFWpE%2FeI1iAaPAiqEN11GQxn7MxFTpwOOgeui9eSGNVQt5g%2B0nlwq52bmkjPbyMFrvv7

@Yoss

 

 

[MiniMinorMk3]

Trollies by Newcastle Central Station, 1956

and one on Northumberland Street, 1961

[Yoss]

13 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185727665867?hash=item2b3e3b46cb:g:USwAAOSwNlVjuLAO&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoCpv1eVRzGMJtc%2FjHelSBFgkau1XfWOiDFsOYOWPaN5LzypHgIy1shqqlRnRofO3o2odM5gezHhTXmUtx1oUhtijK3QyW3wdS%2FzSLSrwR8owIeaNAvHup%2Ff9v8OFWpE%2FeI1iAaPAiqEN11GQxn7MxFTpwOOgeui9eSGNVQt5g%2B0nlwq52bmkjPbyMFrvv7

@Yoss

 

 

That's quite a find, and quite a price too. The only one of those I've ever known in preservation is 335, this is one of my pictures taken on a running day circa 1985, so nice and up to date. 

Not the most attractive buses, with the slab sides and the top deck windows are too narrow but good solid things nonetheless.

I've no idea where 337 has been the last 40 odd years but it looks surprisingly original, it just needs that ghastly seat moquette replaced. It might have had maroon vinyl throughout or it may have had the part vinyl part moquette seats downstairs. This was a combination Southampton used at least from the slightly newer Regents right through to the penultimate Atlantean. The last Atlantean, 276, oddly turned up with full moquette upstairs and down. I guess the vinyl upstairs seats was because they were more cigarette resistant in the days of smokers. 

 

Edit: this was the best pic I could find of the classic SCT seat from a book I have upstairs (not everything is on the Internet it seems).

Thats the rear facing bench seat on the front bulkhead of a Southampton Regent V. The forward facing seats obviously had two moquette inserts, one for each passenger. The same moquette was used from about 1963 right through to the coach seated Olympians in around 1987. You can't see it here but it is sort of black based with maroon and white speccles. 

[martc]

Barras Bridge, 1975.

What's the coach? It looks like it has over complicated front windows.

[808 Estate]

22 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185727665867?hash=item2b3e3b46cb:g:USwAAOSwNlVjuLAO&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoCpv1eVRzGMJtc%2FjHelSBFgkau1XfWOiDFsOYOWPaN5LzypHgIy1shqqlRnRofO3o2odM5gezHhTXmUtx1oUhtijK3QyW3wdS%2FzSLSrwR8owIeaNAvHup%2Ff9v8OFWpE%2FeI1iAaPAiqEN11GQxn7MxFTpwOOgeui9eSGNVQt5g%2B0nlwq52bmkjPbyMFrvv7

@Yoss

 

 

How the fuck can you drive that on a car licence?

[High Jetter]

Carefully?

[catsinthewelder]

Technically you can (with less than 9 passengers who aren't paying) because it's over 30 years old but I believe getting insurance to do this is really tricky.

[Yoss]

4 minutes ago, catsinthewelder said:

Technically you can (with less than 9 passengers who aren't paying) because it's over 30 years old but I believe getting insurance to do this is really tricky.

Not especially. I had two RMs from 2001 to 2019 and the  insurance went up from about £200 to £300 a year in that time which is reasonable given the 18 year time span. I only have a car licence but maybe it helped that it's an old fashioned one, or maybe not. Obviously it was a specialist preserved bus insurer. I think they were called Towergate at the end. They went through several changes of owner/name in that time but kept the same Northamptonshire address. 

Breakdown cover was only £80 a year too for roadside and recovery which is a lot cheaper than AA or RAC want just to cover your car. 

[Leyland Worldmaster]

How about a trip to the Rhine Valley! 

https://youtu.be/kBKxecS-vms

[SunnySouth]

Absolutely gutted to see this happened over the weekend:

 

Six little cnuts broke into Reliance Busworks' yard and set about smashing windows on various vehicles, including some which will be nigh on impossible to replace. They also trashed a car parked in the yard, and left a water hose running inside it. The CCTV suggests it was kids. I won't comment any further for fear of being ever so slightly offensive...

A GoFundMe page has been set up and, it has to be said, the support so far is immense, so hopefully the business will continue.  Any donations, even just a tenner, will of course help. Link is here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/reliance-bus-works-destruction-fund?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer

 

This one is particularly heartbraking:

[Crackers]

23 minutes ago, SunnySouth said:

A GoFundMe page has been set up and, it has to be said, the support so far is immense, so hopefully the business will continue. 

If they're insured (both premises and vehicles), surely their financial risk is little-to-nothing except for a hiked premium?

[SunnySouth]

2 hours ago, Crackers said:

If they're insured (both premises and vehicles), surely their financial risk is little-to-nothing except for a hiked premium?

Lots of possible insurance scenarios I would imagine; certainly their initial comments very much suggested that they would be needing to find the money to fund repairs. The same situation has occured many times with cars in burnt out commercial garage premises etc, it seems quite a complex area!

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, Crackers said:

If they're insured (both premises and vehicles), surely their financial risk is little-to-nothing except for a hiked premium?

It all depends exactly on how the policy is set up.

Firstly a lot of them will value vehicles in the yard just as a car policy would based on the "book value" rather than any reflection of the time, money and effort that may have been invested in them.  So it's entirely likely they would look to declare at least some of them as total losses.

Plus it's likely to be a "claim it back after the event" setup so they'd need to fork out in the short term to get things sorted out.  Which if they are a little independent organisation may simply not be an option on this scale.

16 hours ago, 808 Estate said:

How the fuck can you drive that on a car licence?

There's a rule which allows any PCV over 30 years old to be driven on a normal car license on a couple of provisos.  Firstly is that you can't carry more than 9 passengers, the second is that you can't be driving for hire and reward, you must be over 21 and have had your license a minimum of two years, and you of course need to make sure you have insurance in place.  When I last looked at this about ten years ago that was the biggest headache I found as most places that would cover the coach in question wanted me to have a full category D license.

Not sure their claims of MOT exemption are correct though, I was under the impression that commercial vehicles and PCVs still required a regular test irrespective of age and use case.  Prepared to be proven wrong there but that was my understanding at least.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Zelandeth
Forgot a couple of points.

[Saabnut]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

It all depends exactly on how the policy is set up.

Firstly a lot of them will value vehicles in the yard just as a car policy would based on the "book value" rather than any reflection of the time, money and effort that may have been invested in them.  So it's entirely likely they would look to declare at least some of them as total losses.

Plus it's likely to be a "claim it back after the event" setup so they'd need to fork out in the short term to get things sorted out.  Which if they are a little independent organisation may simply not be an option on this scale.

There's a rule which allows any PCV over 30 years old to be driven on a normal car license on a couple of provisos.  Firstly is that you can't carry more than 9 passengers, the second is that you can't be driving for hire and reward, you must be over 21 and have had your license a minimum of two years, and you of course need to make sure you have insurance in place.  When I last looked at this about ten years ago that was the biggest headache I found as most places that would cover the coach in question wanted me to have a full category D license.

Not sure their claims of MOT exemption are correct though, I was under the impression that commercial vehicles and PCVs still required a regular test irrespective of age and use case.  Prepared to be proven wrong there but that was my understanding at least.

This is a very grey area. Commercials pre 1960 are exempt from plating (MOT). All vehicles over 40 years are Historic Tax class, so free though not strictly exempt. Buses as you say above. But here is the big BUT....

There is a long standing and little known classification of a "Heavy Motor Car" that has a minimum weight. So, if using a commercial vehicle (be that goods or people) as a motor car, it should be classified as such and hence be exempt from MOT.

Test this out at your own risk, I am not an expert in anything, never mind traffic law.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, 83C said:

It can be summed up as thus:

If a 40+ year old PSV/HGV is used for hire and reward in any way, it must be MoT’d and taxed as per any normal commercial vehicle. 

If it is not used in any way for hire and reward, it can be classified as MoT/tax exempt. 

https://www.gov.uk/historic-vehicles/vehicles-exempt-from-vehicle-tax

That is fscking terrifying...bad enough that there are so many potential death trap cars flying around "because they're exempt" - but the thought of 10+ tonne lumps of metal being subjected to the same level of completely absent scrutiny is frankly terrifying.

I guess as all of the vehicles I'd been driving in those categories were technically owned by an actual bus operator and could be hired out they were just treated exactly as any other bus in the fleet from a testing perspective.

Buses are a hell of a lot more of a handful to look after than your average classic car and clearly have the potential to do orders of magnitude more damage if something goes awry.  Especially those old enough to lack safety measures like brakes which require air pressure to release...

[SunnySouth]

31 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I guess as all of the vehicles I'd been driving in those categories were technically owned by an actual bus operator and could be hired out they were just treated exactly as any other bus in the fleet from a testing perspective.

Sadly, as we saw just before Christmas, at least one major bus operator has decided against that idea after decades of embracing it!

[SunnySouth]

Not quite as interesting as Yoss' Southampton Atlanteans and wotnot, but continuing the south coast theme here's a couple of quick shots of the current equipment in Portsmouth, taken in Hilsea layby today.

Still plenty of rattling Streetshite's about, but First down here have had a recent fling with ADL E200s. Two of them here, in 'Star' livery for two of Pompey's flagship routes and in the local generic 'Solent' colours. I like the Solent livery, it's pretty cheery

The current depot building was formerly Southdown's Hilsea West depot, with the main Hilsea Depot building being across the road. That went a good few years ago now, replaced with a 'half arsed art deco' style block of flats named Southdown View. Nice touch with the name, but it's less pleasing to look at than its predecessor! 

[EML]

[Remspoor]

Watched this on YT. An ex Uk bus which has been converted in to a "hostel".

Everything is in Dutch however they never talked about what bus it was or much about it's previous history. Only if was from 1976.

 

The registration in the video is no longer issued. However, on the website for the bus tours it showed the bus has a new number. BL-RN-08

The usual website I check Dutch registrations also came up with a blank. I then had an idea. Maybe it was because the vehicle is a bus. This is the result.

https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/

This also says the registration  and APK (Dutch MOT) has expired some 11 months ago. As to the history? 

1st registration 01/07/76

1st owner in The Netherlands 02/01/02

and a comment in this section

There are 2 links in this section https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/#images

to photos of the bus.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15186074@N00/6140967657/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

https://www.flickr.com/photos/45220772@N06/51658553356/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

The commnet here

Quote

An unexpected surprise was to see this driving through the streets of Utrecht during a protest. It was new in 1976 to Yorkshire Traction where it carried the registration LWG 847P. In its later English life it worked in the south of England, operating with Southern National where it seems to have spent its time in Dorset. It was imported to the Netherlands in 2001.is that this was

Still cannot find any more about the poor thing

[catsinthewelder]

Looks like a Bristol VR, there used to be a row of them outside my secondary school getting the kids back to Brandon and Bowburn.

[martc]

Praed Street, W2, 1977, - the above is captioned 'Daimler Dennis test bed'. Is that what it is? What was it testing?

[Remspoor]

22 hours ago, catsinthewelder said:

Looks like a Bristol VR, there used to be a row of them outside my secondary school getting the kids back to Brandon and Bowburn.

Certainly is a VR. But one of several variants.

[Inspector Morose]

1 hour ago, martc said:

Praed Street, W2, 1977, - the above is captioned 'Daimler Dennis test bed'. Is that what it is? What was it testing?

Dennis bought this Daimler and fitted it with the Gardner 6LXB engine and Voith automatic gearbox they were intending to use for their upcoming Dominator double deck chassis. It's basically a bus sized test mule. Apparently it went rather well.

[Inspector Morose]

On 13/01/2023 at 20:54, Remspoor said:

Watched this on YT. An ex Uk bus which has been converted in to a "hostel".

Everything is in Dutch however they never talked about what bus it was or much about it's previous history. Only if was from 1976.

 

The registration in the video is no longer issued. However, on the website for the bus tours it showed the bus has a new number. BL-RN-08

The usual website I check Dutch registrations also came up with a blank. I then had an idea. Maybe it was because the vehicle is a bus. This is the result.

https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/

This also says the registration  and APK (Dutch MOT) has expired some 11 months ago. As to the history? 

1st registration 01/07/76

1st owner in The Netherlands 02/01/02

and a comment in this section

There are 2 links in this section https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/#images

to photos of the bus.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15186074@N00/6140967657/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

https://www.flickr.com/photos/45220772@N06/51658553356/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

The commnet here

Still cannot find any more about the poor thing

It's an ultra-low height VR, built to 13' 5" height. There were three variants of the body. The full height at 14' 6", the normal low height at 13' 8" and this one. You can tell by the way the beading buts up against the windscreen frame - in NBC days that was where the white stripe was, on full heights the stripe was full width above the screen, on low heights there was just a thin white band and these had no room for any white stripe at all.

Although it's only by 8cm, this is still above the normal bridge height for double deckers in most of Europe. A VR was exported new but ran on low profile tyres to bring it under the 4m height rule.

[busmansholiday]

5 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Dennis bought this Daimler and fitted it with the Gardner 6LXB engine and Voith automatic gearbox they were intending to use for their upcoming Dominator double deck chassis. It's basically a bus sized test mule. Apparently it went rather well.

It certainly did go well. They repainted it an orangie / brown after its tests in London. I remember it in Sheffield. Allegedly at the time the union's refused to operate rear loaders (Regent Vs and PD3s) after the evening peak (they were the only vehicles with manual boxes) but this was auto and went so they were happy with it. The management though took the "it's a rear loader, so if you'll crew that, you can crew our rear loaders". You had to ride on it during the day.

[busmansholiday]

On 1/13/2023 at 8:54 PM, Remspoor said:

Watched this on YT. An ex Uk bus which has been converted in to a "hostel".

Everything is in Dutch however they never talked about what bus it was or much about it's previous history. Only if was from 1976.

 

The registration in the video is no longer issued. However, on the website for the bus tours it showed the bus has a new number. BL-RN-08

The usual website I check Dutch registrations also came up with a blank. I then had an idea. Maybe it was because the vehicle is a bus. This is the result.

https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/

This also says the registration  and APK (Dutch MOT) has expired some 11 months ago. As to the history? 

1st registration 01/07/76

1st owner in The Netherlands 02/01/02

and a comment in this section

There are 2 links in this section https://www.voertuig-zoeker.nl/personenauto/bristol/2-axle-rigid-body/-/BL-RN-08/#images

to photos of the bus.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15186074@N00/6140967657/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

https://www.flickr.com/photos/45220772@N06/51658553356/?ws=169||||||k-image-list||BL-RN-08

The commnet here

Still cannot find any more about the poor thing

 

30 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

It's an ultra-low height VR, built to 13' 5" height. There were three variants of the body. The full height at 14' 6", the normal low height at 13' 8" and this one. You can tell by the way the beading buts up against the windscreen frame - in NBC days that was where the white stripe was, on full heights the stripe was full width above the screen, on low heights there was just a thin white band and these had no room for any white stripe at all.

Although it's only by 8cm, this is still above the normal bridge height for double deckers in most of Europe. A VR was exported new but ran on low profile tyres to bring it under the 4m height rule.

It's ex Tracky 847,  LWG847P.  Tracky bought low height VRs as well as a unique batch of low height Metrobuses because of the low bridges around here. It was previously registered 86-YD-92 and has been in Holland for some time.

[martc]

Train, cars, lightbulbs and buses. Where to post? Here due to the many buses. Waters St, Liverpool.

[martc]

Bus terminal, Focsani, Romania, in the '70's.