Bus Shite

[Pillock]

I put a load of train pics in the open forum from a quick trip to the GCR Nottingham, but there were also a few busses parked up too

 

Red bus.

 

Bus Recovery Shite

 

Why does the front end of this look funny?

 

ARTY FARTY SHITE

 

Some sort of odd one out game.

 

Airport National?

 

Inside a bus.

[busmansholiday]

Nottingham had it's own unique design for the front of its buses. Apparently the destination box was angled slightly downwards to allow intending passengers to read it easier as it approached their bus stop. The big black bumper is a car inspired idea to reduce damage to any pedestrians that may get in the way. Although being hit by around 10 tons of Atlantean doing 30 mph does nobody any good.

Rear shot of the Barton Plaxton bodied leopards reminds me I backed one of those into a wall once. The wall won.

Doubt the National is ex airport, two door ones were quite common.

Like the cab pic of the Barton Leyland Leopard, haven't played with one of those semi auto gear selectors for some years. Favourite trick if the bus wasn't performing well was to get it flat out in third then quickly slot it into second for a couple of seconds then into fourth. Two things could happen, either a big cloud of black smoke from the exhaust and it then went better or a big bang....

[Pillock]

The windscreen and headlamps look different to all the others on the NCT bus. I'm used to seeing their own design with the big bumpers, Iwas brought up on day trips into the city or sitting at my grandparents in Cinderhill watching traffic. Easily pleased me.

 

That almost looks like a facelift, never seen any others like it.

[busmansholiday]

It was the 1978 Motor Show exhibit that had some novel new features but the front was different then (and in different colours). That grill looks familiar but I cannot think what it's off.

[Inspector Morose]

There isn't, that's why. 666 was a one off for the motor show and featured such noveliteies as the alngular front, lcd number display, triple wipers (that'll please Dollywobbler) and other things. It lived a charmed existence right to the end of Atlantean operation at Nottingham and was named by NCT after an enthusiast who, I think, had a terminal illness at the time.

 

The wrecker was built from a Midland Red touring coach. One of several built to replace the cut down D7 tow buses around the company. I bought that same machine after I found it languishing at an operator in Tamworth. All the glass had gone and it was as rough as arseholes but it was bought just to save it from the cutters torch. I remember that the exhaust came up through the floor at the back and through a stainless steel silencer before exiting skywards. On full chat, it sounded glorious! Less glorious was the manual steering and early leopard brakes (IIRC this one was GHA326D). It also had the earlier style of gear change pedestal which was bloody huge and could take the tips of fingers off with ease.

It's time with me was short ( I only bought it to save it) and after a mild tidying up, it was passed on to a friend. It looks like little else was done but I'm glad it's survived.

 

The national looks to be a generic dual door 11.3m one. What is weird is that it's painted in the rare NBC blue livery. Everybody knows the National Bus Company buses in red or green but there was a third, very little used option in that blue. Off the top of my head, there were only three or four (if that) subsidiaries that used that colour, as this is Nottinghamshire, ithis one must be Midland General.

 

Anything else?

[Asimo]

haven't played with one of those semi auto gear selectors for some years. 

 

Reminds me of the notice about "not coasting in neutral" that was displayed where this weird child could see it.

I always wanted to ask the driver to coast in neutral just to see what would happen.....

 

Anyway, I like the way the front of the roof on this is done, a bit locomotive stylee?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1964-BEDFORD-VAL-CHINESE-6-RARE-COACH-FOR-RESTORATION-RUNS-DRIVES-/352153872588?hash=item51fe01a8cc:g:n8sAAOSwrblZpu1y

[CreepingJesus]

Presumably you'd fuck it up quite badly. It's an epicyclic gearbox, and those tend not to like the output shaft driving the works very much. Although saying that, there's plenty of mesh gear boxes that can't take coasting in neutral, because the oil pump runs slow and causes damage, so maybe there's that too.

[Inspector Morose]

Built to go under a low bridge. They has some similarly weird roofed Bristols as well.

 

Thinking of low bridge single deckers, what about this?

[wuvvum]

It was with Arriva but the last operator was Heyfordian at Bicester and that was their livery for all their Olympian school buses. No further trace since they sold it in 2015 so I guess we now know where it went. Here it is in service with them (different reg but definitely the same bus as they kept that plate and put the original one back on).

 

OX_Heyfordian_Bicester_8548VF.jpg

Heyfordian used to run my school buses in the mid-late '80s and I recall their livery being Autoshite colours.

[Inspector Morose]

My sister has sent me this picture she took whilst out walking her dog. It's in the back of a car scrap yard near Great Yarmouth and looks like one of the three Marshall bodied single deck Leyland Atlateans they had. Anybody know anything about it or why it's there (she says it's been there some time).

That looks like GEX740F. It was in preservation but looks to have fallen on hard times of late. Shame, I had a spin in it years ago and it was a rather pleasant thing to drive.

[davidfowler2000]

Presumably you'd fuck it up quite badly. It's an epicyclic gearbox, and those tend not to like the output shaft driving the works very much. Although saying that, there's plenty of mesh gear boxes that can't take coasting in neutral, because the oil pump runs slow and causes damage, so maybe there's that too.

 

No, they could take it. It was mainly because the compressors were shite and you had to keep the revs up if you didn't want to run out of brakes. And there was a wee bit of engine braking too.

[busmansholiday]

In the days before tacographs, when coaches were allowed in the outside lane and could do 70mph you could get a Leopard to go faster by knocking into neutral when going down hill. Irresponsible isn't quite the words the Greater Manchester Police used when one of the drivers from the NBC fleet in the next town managed to hit a ton going down Windy Hill on the M62 on his way to Blackpool. I well remember the warning letters we all received after this incident as our garage had just been summoned by the Traffic Commissioners over an episode on the M1 when one of our AEC's left their shitty Vauxhall for dead which they claimed was doing 85mph at the time.

[CreepingJesus]

No, they could take it. It was mainly because the compressors were shite and you had to keep the revs up if you didn't want to run out of brakes. And there was a wee bit of engine braking too.

Didn't think of that. Should have, mind you, the top end of Hope St used to be a cacophony of revs when I was a kid. Atlanteans and so on getting some air up. Doesn't happen now with 'intelligent' air management, does it?

[quicksilver]

B255RAJ

This 1985 LEYLAND Unknown Unknown on numberplate B255 RAJ was first registered on Saturday 1st of June 1985 near Middlesbrough. It had been previously registered under DF4065, 8548VF, JFG939, ASV603. This bus had 2 previous owners before the current keeper acquired it.It was painted red/cream previously.

 

 

I don't know where all those other registrations came from but they never belonged to that bus (or indeed to any bus). It was B255 RAJ originally with United/Arriva, then 2110 UK and later 8548 VF with Heyfordian and then reverted to B255 RAJ when they sold it. Just shows you can't always trust these online vehicle checkers and there's some right garbage in the system.

[Pillock]

I would imagine another bus has also been on 8548VF and the records have got merged. It'll be a Cazana problem, not Doovla.

[willswitchengage]

This is just better

 

[RoadworkUK]

^Track weapon^

[Yoss]

Bloody hell, that sounds like a class 50!

[Guest Hooli]

I remember bus/coach chassis being driven around Dorking like that. The drifts in the wet uphill around that left hand bend on the high street towards the A24 always impressed.

[Zelandeth]

While it's likely to be a year or three away yet, I'll hopefully have my own vehicle to add to this thread at some point.  At the moment it's still at the feasibility, number crunching and seeing if I can get away with it without the rest of my family killing me.  Will also definitely require a significant pruning of the fleet as obviously I'd need to keep my resources both in terms of time and finances more carefully focused.

 

I guess I am quite lucky though that while it will require a little reconfiguring of our back garden, removing one tree (which I *really* want shot of anyway as it drops never-ending torrents of pine needles and sap on the cars and is undermining both the driveway and the footpath), we do actually have ample space to park a coach here.  Given the level difference between our garden and our next door neighbour's (they're a good couple of feet higher), it shouldn't result in them losing any light or anything...they'll just have to get used to seeing a couple of feet of roof poking over the fence.  To be honest that house seems to have a new owner about every six months anyway...

 

I also desperately need to get back into working with these vehicles.  Getting to go out and about in whatever First had on hand on a given day was always one of the highlights of my old job.  Few things were more satisfying than getting through a full four hours or so of driving around town with not a single fault registered by their DriveGreen system.  Really do miss that...even if it was mostly just clapped out Volvo B10BLE's that I was out in.  Their Bluebird AARE (used as the driver trainer) was a horrible thing to be a passenger on - but conversely was actually a lovely thing to drive.  Do wonder what it would do without the limiter on as well...it's restricted to 56mph, but you hit that like a brick wall on the open road.  Bit sad that I won't likely ever get to drive that again, but glad I did at least as it's quite a rare beast.  Sadly I moved away just before the older AAFE on a Q plate arrived...Would have loved a shot of that thing.  Will *not* miss the BMC 1100 pieces of garbage though...those are quite possibly the most utterly horrible things I have ever had the misfortune to be near either as a driver or a passenger.  They truly have no redeeming features whatsoever!

 

What I'll be looking for though will be essentially an equivalent (albeit hopefully in somewhat better order!) than our old school bus which was what really started the interest as a whole. 

 

The vehicle in question is shown below - I'm assuming somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s based on the vehicles in the background.

 

 

By the time I first came across this coach in late 1997 she had lost virtually all of her brightwork aside from the front bumper, radiator grill and headlight surrounds, and was to be honest pretty obviously in the "oldest bus in the fleet for the school run" category.  That however didn't stop me in my early teens and encountering something of this era really for the first time, from being utterly captivated by the old girl.  In fairness as well...It's about the only school bus I know of that served our place at the time which never once broke down the whole time I knew it.  I think I last saw it in 2001 when it vanished, our default vehicle instead switching over to a late Volvo B58 Plaxton Supreme IV wearing the private plate GIB7513 (originally NSU640V), periodically with an early B10M based Van-Hool Alizee (waaaaayy too heavy body for the power unit) and a similar era Jonkheere of some description.

 

So my plans are - once I've figured everything out - and found one - to add as similar a coach as possible to my own fleet.  Imagine that'll be quite the journey to track down.

[RoadworkUK]

We had a few Duple Dominants, too, run by Partridge of Hadleigh and Hedingham of Halstead. The former also had a very natty-looking Duple Laser - clearly a visual update of the Dominant but a very effective one.

[Guest Hooli]

  Given the level difference between our garden and our next door neighbour's (they're a good couple of feet higher), it shouldn't result in them losing any light or anything...they'll just have to get used to seeing a couple of feet of roof poking over the fence.  To be honest that house seems to have a new owner about every six months anyway...

 

 

 

I've heard none of them can stand the neighbour on one side...

[Zelandeth]

I still reckon the Dominant II was one of the smartest looking coaches of its time.

 

Biggest headaches with them though are the horrendous tendancy they have to dissolve beneath the body panels - favourite areas being around the rear window and around the entry step. Don't imagine repairs are especially *difficult* in the grand scheme of things - but having helped out doing such repairs I know that just due to the size of the thing that the amount of work involved should never be underestimated. Especially as there's usually five times as much "stuff" to shift before starting work as there seems to be on a car. Especially as you don't want to be going damaging nigh on impossible to source trim and such.

 

I'd not say no to a Plaxton Supreme either to be honest... basically it's got to be dripping with chrome outside and have a dash that's covered in shiny veneer inside. As soon as the chrome vanished and everything got covered in carpet inside I lost interest. Hence why I can't remember any real details about the Van Hool of Jonkheere examples which we used to see from time to time on the school run. Too "modern and boring" to my mind.

[Six-cylinder]

New Bradwell, Milton Keynes this morning.

 

A quick internet check says Leyland, MOT expired 28 July 2017, taxed 1 Dec 2017, 10450cc.

[sierraman]

Presumably you'd fuck it up quite badly. It's an epicyclic gearbox, and those tend not to like the output shaft driving the works very much. Although saying that, there's plenty of mesh gear boxes that can't take coasting in neutral, because the oil pump runs slow and causes damage, so maybe there's that too.

In neutral it would stop oil supply to the gearbox, though it would still be turning, hence wearing the gearbox out quickly. Not just that but you'd be sat on the brakes potentially on a hill if you weren't using the engine braking, potentially depleting the air.

[atlantean]

No, they could take it. It was mainly because the compressors were shite and you had to keep the revs up if you didn't want to run out of brakes. And there was a wee bit of engine braking too.

I used to know a fellow bus preservationist nut who used to coast in "5th"  down long hills in a preserved Atlantean, his theory was that if you kept the revs at high (not flat out) then the air pressure was fine and the mismatch in speeds between the wheel and engine ends of the drive train was minimsed. He certainly used to get 50(ish) from an Atlantean that normally did 45 without any major issues. The real killer for old buses is thrashing them downhill IN gear, that tends to seriously destroy the engine (esp. Leylands).

[atlantean]

Go for it!

 

But a couple of points....    old buses can be (relatively) cheap to run, but everything is heavy, changing a tyre will cause you to sweat (especially the inner rears!) , springs are a sod.....  Ideally get involved with some established preservationists so you have bodies to help. Working on a bus on your own is a difficult, thankless task.

 

Be wary of old coaches (Duple Doms and Plaxton Supremes especially) they can rot and fall apart to an amazing degree. Always (always) look in the boot and side lockers first, see what state things are in down there. Have a look along he side at the base of the windows, is the rear end sagging?

 

In general buses tend to be more robust than coaches body wise, anything bodied by Alexanders is a safe bet. 

 

NU

While it's likely to be a year or three away yet, I'll hopefully have my own vehicle to add to this thread at some point.  At the moment it's still at the feasibility, number crunching and seeing if I can get away with it without the rest of my family killing me.  Will also definitely require a significant pruning of the fleet as obviously I'd need to keep my resources both in terms of time and finances more carefully focused.

 

I guess I am quite lucky though that while it will require a little reconfiguring of our back garden, removing one tree (which I *really* want shot of anyway as it drops never-ending torrents of pine needles and sap on the cars and is undermining both the driveway and the footpath), we do actually have ample space to park a coach here.  Given the level difference between our garden and our next door neighbour's (they're a good couple of feet higher), it shouldn't result in them losing any light or anything...they'll just have to get used to seeing a couple of feet of roof poking over the fence.  To be honest that house seems to have a new owner about every six months anyway...

 

I also desperately need to get back into working with these vehicles.  Getting to go out and about in whatever First had on hand on a given day was always one of the highlights of my old job.  Few things were more satisfying than getting through a full four hours or so of driving around town with not a single fault registered by their DriveGreen system.  Really do miss that...even if it was mostly just clapped out Volvo B10BLE's that I was out in.  Their Bluebird AARE (used as the driver trainer) was a horrible thing to be a passenger on - but conversely was actually a lovely thing to drive.  Do wonder what it would do without the limiter on as well...it's restricted to 56mph, but you hit that like a brick wall on the open road.  Bit sad that I won't likely ever get to drive that again, but glad I did at least as it's quite a rare beast.  Sadly I moved away just before the older AAFE on a Q plate arrived...Would have loved a shot of that thing.  Will *not* miss the BMC 1100 pieces of garbage though...those are quite possibly the most utterly horrible things I have ever had the misfortune to be near either as a driver or a passenger.  They truly have no redeeming features whatsoever!

 

What I'll be looking for though will be essentially an equivalent (albeit hopefully in somewhat better order!) than our old school bus which was what really started the interest as a whole. 

 

The vehicle in question is shown below - I'm assuming somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s based on the vehicles in the background.

 

0000052411352.jpg

 

By the time I first came across this coach in late 1997 she had lost virtually all of her brightwork aside from the front bumper, radiator grill and headlight surrounds, and was to be honest pretty obviously in the "oldest bus in the fleet for the school run" category.  That however didn't stop me in my early teens and encountering something of this era really for the first time, from being utterly captivated by the old girl.  In fairness as well...It's about the only school bus I know of that served our place at the time which never once broke down the whole time I knew it.  I think I last saw it in 2001 when it vanished, our default vehicle instead switching over to a late Volvo B58 Plaxton Supreme IV wearing the private plate GIB7513 (originally NSU640V), periodically with an early B10M based Van-Hool Alizee (waaaaayy too heavy body for the power unit) and a similar era Jonkheere of some description.

 

So my plans are - once I've figured everything out - and found one - to add as similar a coach as possible to my own fleet.  Imagine that'll be quite the journey to track down.

[sierraman]

I used to know a fellow bus preservationist nut who used to coast in "5th" down long hills in a preserved Atlantean, his theory was that if you kept the revs at high (not flat out) then the air pressure was fine and the mismatch in speeds between the wheel and engine ends of the drive train was minimsed. He certainly used to get 50(ish) from an Atlantean that normally did 55 without any major issues. The real killer for old buses is thrashing them downhill IN gear, that tends to seriously destroy the engine (esp. Leylands).

Or quick shifts between gears. Damages the bands

[Zelandeth]

Thanks for the advice folks. Thankfully I've had some experience helping out working on this sort of vehicle as an old friend of mine used to do restoration and conversion work on them. That's also where I first had a shot of driving one at their place.

 

Definitely hear what you say about buses versus coaches in terms of durability, sadly a bus just doesn't hold the same attraction for me. If I were to go for a bus though it would have to be a Volvo B10M with an Alexander PS body - or possibly the far rarer Scania K.113 based one...only been on one of them once, but I remember that it went like the proverbial off a shovel. Or an Alexander RH bodied Leyland Olympian - only if it's the Cummins L10 engined version though...just the bassline provided by the exhaust alone would sell that for me. Sadly I think my neighbours might have something to say about something that size!

 

A lot of the attraction of a 70s coach over a bus is the glamour of it I think as that's something that has been so totally lost these days. While I greatly enjoy getting to spend time around or driving older buses, so just don't feel quite the same despite to actually own one.

 

Plus it's fair to say there's a certain personal attachment to the Bedford Y-series based Dominant II...I fully know it's not the most logical choice...but let's face it...the whole idea is pretty mad to start with.

 

Getting to know folks down this neck of the woods involved in this field is definitely something I need to do though...sadly everyone I used to know is 450 odd miles north of here so kinda starting from scratch there.

 

I reckon the sheer scale and weight of stuff on buses and coaches is probably the biggest surprise to folks who've just got involved...hence why I need to make some contacts...and to keep training my other half who I'm slowly turning into a petrol (or in this case diesel) head...

[Inspector Morose]

Depends on how the restrictiors and quick releases are set up in the air feeds to the box. As they are a pretty unknown and much misunderstood part of those boxes, along with the correct operating pressure, they tend to get forgotten and missed out completely when they drop out during gearbox changes, hence crap gear changes on most things I've come across.

Re. Coasting a epicyclic. Just don't. There is a oil pump driven off a gear train inside of these that lubricates the internal gearing without a selected gear, the pump fails to turn and, well, you can guess the rest. Ever seen one seize? The central carrier drum can shatter, bursting the gearbox casing and spreading its innards across the road. It's a fucking big mess to clear up, I can assure you.

Compressors. Well if they are shagged out and it takes a lot of revs to build it up means you have a problem. A good leyland system should build itself up on tick over fairly well, especially if it has the later, slightly larger compressor as found on nat2s and tigers. Using a ton of air just to operate the brakes usually means excess travel in the brake components - possible causes are brakes not adjusted correctly and/or slack adjuster failure. Others could be leaks in the brake valve and brake diagrams.