Bus Shite

[Inspector Morose]

2 hours ago, artdjones said:

I remember coming back from Tewkesbury on OAX8F around 1978. The driver had large sideburns and drove very hard. After a little while there was an impromptu stop to allow my two younger brothers to deposit the Knickerbocker Glories they had eaten in the Tewkesbury Wimpy onto the grass verge.

All that batch, apart from 9F, was re-engined from Leyland 600s to 680s. Bloody rapid machines - up to about 72mph...

[busmansholiday]

19 hours ago, artdjones said:

I remember coming back from Tewkesbury on OAX8F around 1978. The driver had large sideburns and drove very hard. After a little while there was an impromptu stop to allow my two younger brothers to deposit the Knickerbocker Glories they had eaten in the Tewkesbury Wimpy onto the grass verge.

I didn't have sideburns so it wasn't me driving it (I have driven those RE coaches though back in the day).

[Metal Guru]

Saw a not in service bus this morning with BUS LIGHTYEAR on the destination board. 
Probably a very old bus driver’s joke but made me laugh anyway.

Not as good as the  famous Woking 925.

[holbeck]

On 05/09/2026 at 15:45, Inspector Morose said:

Posted, just because. Nice, isn't it? Leyland engine too.

Sadly, it was destroyed in the Bicester fire last year.

As a child in the 70s, I lived along the route of the 73 that went from Gloucester to Cardiff.  Seemingly every other bus was one of the above. 

[artdjones]

1 hour ago, holbeck said:

As a child in the 70s, I lived along the route of the 73 that went from Gloucester to Cardiff.  Seemingly every other bus was one of the above. 

Red and White had 32 REs of that shape, and that would be an ideal route for them.

United Automobile used to do a Tees-Thames service with them using a two man crew, which did a round trip daily, so a 600 mile trip for the coach. One of their drivers said that when they were out new, some of them were well into their second time around the clock after one year.

[Inspector Morose]

Keeping with the Bristol RE theme, a number of high floor REs, fitted with ECWs dual purpose were painted NBC white. While some were equipped with ECWs' gorgeous coach seats, giving an almost coach like experience for the passenger, most had the bus dreived dual purpose seats. This tended to devalue the 'white coach' image to the public, especially when something very bus shaped turned up to whisk you to London or Leicester, perched on nothing more than bus seats with headrests.

For extra misery points, this RE was re-engined from Leyland 0680 to Gardner 6LX, meaning lethargic, if economical, progress.

[Dyslexic Viking]

Something rare has come up for sale in Norway, and I have never seen a bus built on a Ford Trader before.

 

More pics in link.  https://www.finn.no/mobility/item/475761285?ci=1

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Keeping with the Bristol RE theme, a number of high floor REs, fitted with ECWs dual purpose were painted NBC white. While some were equipped with ECWs' gorgeous coach seats, giving an almost coach like experience for the passenger, most had the bus dreived dual purpose seats. This tended to devalue the 'white coach' image to the public, especially when something very bus shaped turned up to whisk you to London or Leicester, perched on nothing more than bus seats with headrests.

For extra misery points, this RE was re-engined from Leyland 0680 to Gardner 6LX, meaning lethargic, if economical, progress.

Is that a National Express badge?

[sierraman]

16 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Keeping with the Bristol RE theme, a number of high floor REs, fitted with ECWs dual purpose were painted NBC white. While some were equipped with ECWs' gorgeous coach seats, giving an almost coach like experience for the passenger, most had the bus dreived dual purpose seats. This tended to devalue the 'white coach' image to the public, especially when something very bus shaped turned up to whisk you to London or Leicester, perched on nothing more than bus seats with headrests.

For extra misery points, this RE was re-engined from Leyland 0680 to Gardner 6LX, meaning lethargic, if economical, progress.

Northern Bus in Sheffield used to have them.

[artdjones]

5 hours ago, sierraman said:

Northern Bus in Sheffield used to have them.

They would have kept on in production for much longer, but Leyland didn't want to keep making them. They knew that the National was much better*. Plus, they wanted to recoup their investment in the National, including a new factory. From 1976 production was mainly for Northern Ireland. The state bus company there would take nothing else, so Leyland had to acquiesce or lose the contract.

[sierraman]

14 minutes ago, artdjones said:

They would have kept on in production for much longer, but Leyland didn't want to keep making them. They knew that the National was much better*. Plus, they wanted to recoup their investment in the National, including a new factory. From 1976 production was mainly for Northern Ireland. The state bus company there would take nothing else, so Leyland had to acquiesce or lose the contract.

These were at least 20 years old at this point. 

[artdjones]

44 minutes ago, sierraman said:

These were at least 20 years old at this point. 

They were very good, though. I think other operators would still have bought them, but they weren't as resolute as Ulsterbus, or didn't want to order so many vehicles.

[FakeConcern]

I recently bought a Spot On toy Routemaster bus that has been hand re painted and I've been thinking I could restore it in the East Kent livery I remember from my childhood in Herne Bay in 1960s until 1971.

This is it

Does anyone know if East Kent actually used these as an image search hasn't told me the answer?

Just to give an idea of scale (1/42), here it is next to some cars

Anyway if anyone knows about East Kent in the 1960s, I'd be interested.

[High Jetter]

8 minutes ago, FakeConcern said:

This is it

Did the tow-rope come with it? 😀

[Inspector Morose]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

They would have kept on in production for much longer, but Leyland didn't want to keep making them. They knew that the National was much better*. Plus, they wanted to recoup their investment in the National, including a new factory. From 1976 production was mainly for Northern Ireland. The state bus company there would take nothing else, so Leyland had to acquiesce or lose the contract.

As the late, great Roy Walker once said, 'Almost but it's not quite right'. 

The RE was an old design; indeed, it was the first design of rear engined single deck chassis that came out in the 1960s, beating the Swift, Panther, Seddon RU, and Daimler Roadliner into production. For some of its life, it could only be sold into the state owned Tilling fleets, as Leyland et al kicked up a right fuss about a state owned manufacturer being able to compete with them ('you can't have a monopoly, WE want it - won't somebody think of our shareholders? wah, wah, wah, etc.). Later on Leyland managed to gain a major shareholding in Bristol, along with most other major bus and coach manufacturers of the time. 

This led to the situation where Leyland had multiple rear engined bus designs competing with each other in sales on the home market. What was badly needed was a complete rethink and rationalisation. What Leyland did, under the leadership of Dr Albert Fogg, was to start a design of a replacement from first principles; a totally clean sheet design (codename FPB7), in modern parlance. The National was the result of this and Leyland pushed this as the future.

What helped was that the National Bus Company came in on the FPB7 project early on. This pleased Leyland as they had a ready market for the bus with the ageing Leopard to cater for NBCs coaching requirements. At this point, the RE and the AEC Swift, the Leyland Panther, and the Daimler Roadliner were dropped as home market products. However, they were still available to the overseas market where body-on-chassis vehicles were still commonplace.

Enter one Werner Heubeck. He was the manager of Northern Ireland's Citybus and Ulsterbus operations. He liked the RE. It was cheap, could be rebuilt after damage easily, and was economical to operate. The specification was basic and rudimentary, but that cut the costs of operating in what was a fairly volatile territory at the time. He wanted more REs. Leyland said no, but he could have Leopards. Werner went to Lancashire and met with Leyland's management. He wanted Northern Ireland to be reclassified as an overseas territory so that he could order more REs. His masterstroke was to book a flight to Germany and carry the plane ticket in his pocket. At the impasse between the parties, Werner produced the plane tickets from his pocket and said that if Leyland wouldn't give him what he wanted, he would be flying straight to Germany and get Mercedes to supply them instead. Faced with the loss of a fairly chunky order, the Leyland men caved, and Werner got his way, ordering REs up until Bristol's closure in 1983.

Would he have ordered Mercedes? Probably not. They were not in any way, shape or form suitable for operation in Northern Ireland, but the threat of going overseas was a big enough bluff to scare the Leyland salesmen into giving him what he wanted all along.

Although NI was a big market for the RE, other overseas customers took as manym if not more in later years too, notably New Zealand, where the forward mounted gearbox of the RE helped the bus meet the stringent axle load regualtions in force at the time in NZ.

[Inspector Morose]

26 minutes ago, FakeConcern said:

I recently bought a Spot On toy Routemaster bus that has been hand re painted and I've been thinking I could restore it in the East Kent livery I remember from my childhood in Herne Bay in 1960s until 1971.

This is it

Does anyone know if East Kent actually used these as an image search hasn't told me the answer?

Just to give an idea of scale (1/42), here it is next to some cars

Anyway if anyone knows about East Kent in the 1960s, I'd be interested.

 

[FakeConcern]

2 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Did the tow-rope come with it? 😀

Yes it did and I still have it if you want to buy it.

1 hour ago, Inspector Morose said:

 

Thanks for that, I have only watched the beginning so far, but it looks like they didn't use the same bus as the Spot On model so I may have to change my plans. 

[Inspector Morose]

On 07/09/2026 at 22:42, High Jetter said:

Is that a National Express badge?

Oh, such an innocent and simple question that has the potential to lead to a laborious and lengthy answer!

The simple answer is no, it isn't, but it was the symbol of the National Bus Company, a state owned bus operator that combined the UK fleets of the Tilling Group and British Electric Traction (as well as a few other comparative minnows). After coach deregulation in the 1980s and bus deregulation (40 years ago this October), the symbol was kept by the newly formed National Express Company who used it well into the 2000s on their coaches.

What became National Express was actually the first application of the NBC corporate livery, better known to most on buses as NBC poppy red or NBC leaf green (yes, I know there was blue too. And Yellow, but shh, it's complicated enough for me to try and explain to normal folk, okay?). National coach was to be a single identity across the newly formed NBC that unified the coaching operations of all of the subsidiary companies within the larger NBC. The coaches would still be run by the various bus companies, as before, but the appearance to the travelling public was to be one of a single company. The design consultant for the whole NBC corporate identity was Norman Wilson, a commercial graphic designer who had established his abilities in the rebranding of Croda International and United Cattle Products.

Initially, silver was to be used, but this was thought to dull too quickly and look shabby after a short period of time and also promote rust on the bodysides of the coaches. A bold colour was thought to be needed to stand out, so white was chosen as the base. A Typographer at heart, Wilson used a slightly modified Akzidenz-Grotesk font for the National name along the side, along with the 'double N' symbol he had designed as the ident for the whole organisation.  Initially, the double N symbol was to always point right, but when put on the nearside of a coach, it looked as though it was pointing backwards, with all the negative connotations that would lead to. This was altered after two vehicles had been painted so that the symbols would always point forward on the bodysides but point right on the front and rear.

Initially, no other fleet name was to be used apart from the National branding. This caused uproar within the constituent companies within the NBC at the loss of local identity. Wilson relented and allowed a minuscule light grey fleet name to be included, using the same font as the legal lettering (Futura, by the way), underlined by the colour of the buses that the subsidiary ran (leaf green or poppy red). This didn't have the desired effect in placating the companies, so Wilson made the fleet name larger, losing the underlining, and moved it to a position just above the front wheelarch.

Wilson and his team made sure the livery and typeface looked as good as possible across many coach body designs; he made layouts for many coach bodies and types, and these were used as the template for the whole fleet. The choice of white was not popular either. Wilson's reply? "Well, they'll just have to wash them more often". He was a firm believer in using design to solve problems; in this case one of unifying a large and sprawling bus and coach operator and I think his uncompromising approach achieved the goal it set out to meet.

Anyway, you've suffered long enough of my utter wibble. Have some pictures of white coaches.

[High Jetter]

39 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Oh, such an innocent and simple question that has the potential to lead to a laborious and lengthy answer!

Thank you for taking the time & trouble to comprehensively reply. Interesting stuff.

[Inspector Morose]

Did you know that Optare bodied a Ford R1115?

No, nor did I.

But they did. Twice.

[83C]

7 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

One of my old steeds. We had 444 & 445 (J244 LGL & J245 LGL) at Tanat Valley, I seem to remember 445 was the slightly better of the two. I took 445 on a local football club special to Tenby in 2009, the return was punctuated by the usual requests to stop so yet another member of the team could have an extended chat with Uncle Huey.

[Eyersey1234]

52 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Did you know that Optare bodied a Ford R1115?

No, nor did I.

But they did. Twice.

The front of that looks like a Leyland Olympian or Titan

[83C]

8 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

The front of that looks like a Leyland Olympian or Titan

SOP from Optare, find the cheapest old guff from everyone else's parts bins and wadge it together before having the gall to say it was something they 'built'.

[Inspector Morose]

6 minutes ago, 83C said:

SOP from Optare, find the cheapest old guff from everyone else's parts bins and wadge it together before having the gall to say it was something they 'built'.

To be fair to Optare, the front moulding was technically theirs, as it came with the rest of the parts bins from the defunct Roe.😁

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Did you know that Optare bodied a Ford R1115?

No, nor did I.

But they did. Twice.

What is that? Roe bodied stuff was good, IIRC.

[Inspector Morose]

8 hours ago, High Jetter said:

What is that? Roe bodied stuff was good, IIRC.

I think they were exhibition units for Leeds City Council but I'm not 100% sure. Optare were just starting out and took on any work it could, just to bring some money in after starting back up at the old Roe works that had been closed down under Leyland. If standard bus parts could be used to save costs, so be it, hence the Roe/Olympian front mouldings on the front of the ford.

The bus designs were just a continuation of the old Roe designs on the Olympian, although the first bus body built by Optare was a South Yorkshire PTE special design on a Dennis Domino chassis (C41HDT). 

These two also seemed to be the last two Ford R series coach chassis to be sold, although probably not the last to be registered as operators had a  tendency to store coaches on occasion for their busy season so that they gained a newer registration (and also to save costs on tax, etc). 
 

Using a bus or coach front moulding  on pantechnicons and horseboxes  was not an unusual practice as it saved time and cost for the bodybuilder, and gave whatever lorry a relatively stylish front for little effort. Coachbuilders just used to buy a complete Duple or Plaxton front end and incorporate it into the design and many examples could be seen throughout the years. The oddity here was that it was a bus bodybuilder that built the entire thing, using the front end from one of its own designs.

[quicksilver]

20 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

Oh, such an innocent and simple question that has the potential to lead to a laborious and lengthy answer!

The simple answer is no, it isn't, but it was the symbol of the National Bus Company, a state owned bus operator that combined the UK fleets of the Tilling Group and British Electric Traction (as well as a few other comparative minnows). After coach deregulation in the 1980s and bus deregulation (40 years ago this October), the symbol was kept by the newly formed National Express Company who used it well into the 2000s on their coaches.

What became National Express was actually the first application of the NBC corporate livery, better known to most on buses as NBC poppy red or NBC leaf green (yes, I know there was blue too. And Yellow, but shh, it's complicated enough for me to try and explain to normal folk, okay?). National coach was to be a single identity across the newly formed NBC that unified the coaching operations of all of the subsidiary companies within the larger NBC. The coaches would still be run by the various bus companies, as before, but the appearance to the travelling public was to be one of a single company. The design consultant for the whole NBC corporate identity was Norman Wilson, a commercial graphic designer who had established his abilities in the rebranding of Croda International and United Cattle Products.

Initially, silver was to be used, but this was thought to dull too quickly and look shabby after a short period of time and also promote rust on the bodysides of the coaches. A bold colour was thought to be needed to stand out, so white was chosen as the base. A Typographer at heart, Wilson used a slightly modified Akzidenz-Grotesk font for the National name along the side, along with the 'double N' symbol he had designed as the ident for the whole organisation.  Initially, the double N symbol was to always point right, but when put on the nearside of a coach, it looked as though it was pointing backwards, with all the negative connotations that would lead to. This was altered after two vehicles had been painted so that the symbols would always point forward on the bodysides but point right on the front and rear.

Initially, no other fleet name was to be used apart from the National branding. This caused uproar within the constituent companies within the NBC at the loss of local identity. Wilson relented and allowed a minuscule light grey fleet name to be included, using the same font as the legal lettering (Futura, by the way), underlined by the colour of the buses that the subsidiary ran (leaf green or poppy red). This didn't have the desired effect in placating the companies, so Wilson made the fleet name larger, losing the underlining, and moved it to a position just above the front wheelarch.

Wilson and his team made sure the livery and typeface looked as good as possible across many coach body designs; he made layouts for many coach bodies and types, and these were used as the template for the whole fleet. The choice of white was not popular either. Wilson's reply? "Well, they'll just have to wash them more often". He was a firm believer in using design to solve problems; in this case one of unifying a large and sprawling bus and coach operator and I think his uncompromising approach achieved the goal it set out to meet.

Anyway, you've suffered long enough of my utter wibble. Have some pictures of white coaches.

I've always loved the irony of Black & White being an NBC coach operation and that name appearing on coaches with plenty of white but no black.

G100JNV was one of those Yugoslavian knock-off Merc 0303s and was operated by United Counties. A very strange thing for a former NBC fleet to buy and not a great success by all accounts.

[Austin-Rover]

I spotted this in Manchester yesterday. It was well stocked with passengers, too! 

The later descendants of Manchester's 'standard' that made it through to the late 90s are very much the buses of my youth. 

 

[D.E]

Soest, today:

[busmansholiday]

On 10/09/2026 at 11:44, quicksilver said:

I've always loved the irony of Black & White being an NBC coach operation and that name appearing on coaches with plenty of white but no black.

Black & White back in black and white days.

The far end coach, a Harrington bodied Leopard is in the old colours, the one next to it is a Daimler Roadliner, I'm sure @Inspector Morose will have some anecdotal comments.

IIRC I took this at what is now the Pear Tree services on the outskirts of Oxford around 1971.

 

 

 

Edited to add that the middle Plaxton one still has the old Black & White Motorways shield above the windscreen.