Any bus pervs want some large passenger vehicle jazz mags?

[pogweasel]

Found 44 old copies of "Buses" in the cupboard under the stairs.

They are the small "Ian Allen" type - proper under the counter hardcore material, dating from the 70''s.

Anyone want before they get launched??

[Albert Ross]

Aye, I'll entertain 'em if you're on the way up the A1 to this shithole. I am free first 2 weeks of August, might not be doing owt then. Can meet up for a cuppa.

[pogweasel]

I'm coming your way tomorrow night as it happens, if you fancy a furtive late evening meet to hand over this grot

[Albert Ross]

Will they be in a plain brown wrapper? I can meet you in a dogging layby at J37 A1. Head eastbound into Doncaster for about 8 yards after the roundabout. What sort of time are you thinking?? I reckon it's the A635....might be terribly wrong!

[pogweasel]

Start time for tomorrow night is 23:30 but I'll probably be up around 23:00.

 

Mmmm, the joy of nights.

[Albert Ross]

I will PM you my number. I may or may not be "en shite" dependent on what has fuel in or wakes the neighbours up................

[Richard]

A dogging layby.

 

[Albert Ross]

Pocket size bus pron has been handed over. Its rate good! Cheers Mr Pog!

[pogweasel]

A pleasure to meet you squire!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Any 'BUSKKAKE' material?

[Albert Ross]

Gonna get the best pics and lay them out 'crescent wank' stylee when the mrs goes out. Theres a few with leyland national items in!

[Formula Autos]

Gonna get the best pics and lay them out 'crescent wank' stylee when the mrs goes out. Theres a few with leyland national items in!

If you're 'into' Leyland Nationals in a big way, you might like to visit the factory just outside Workington. You can't go in, sadly , but apart from the Eddie Stobart signs outside (it's one of their warehouses/distribution centres now) it's pretty much as Leyland Daf left it - even down to the hut on the gate. Just being there might send you into a frenzy of bus-lust.

 

When I was a kid in the '80s you could see the rows of newly built buses lined up in the compound as you passed on the A595. Always intrigued me, that factory. Apparently for a time they also built some panels from Nationals that were sent somewhere to be included in the building of trains - a sort of National on rails, apparently.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Apparently for a time they also built some panels from Nationals that were sent somewhere to be included in the building of trains - a sort of National on rails, apparently.

Pictured here, being a roaring success:

[Formula Autos]

Apparently for a time they also built some panels from Nationals that were sent somewhere to be included in the building of trains - a sort of National on rails, apparently.

Pictured here, being a roaring success:

When I'd heard it was some panels, I imagined it was some from the sides - looks like they sent virtually the whole bus.

 

Thanks for the photey - I often wondered what these things looked like.

[hammy]

The Leyland National trains were almost entirely built to bus specification, and then mounted on basic bogies built by BREL. The first prototype looked like a double ended bus.

 

 

The later versions had a revised front, like a modified Mk2 Leyland National, and were often paired up into two car units.

 

 

I'm interested to here the Workington Factory is still in situ, I thought it was demolished when Volvo Bus closed the site in 1991 and moved production of vehicles to Scotland.

[Inspector Morose]

There was an intermediate type of single car railbus with proper Mk2 fronts (and also a bit longer. They looked like this:

 

That one survives after being sold northern Ireland in the ulster folk and transport museum just outside Belfast. it is also got modified to run on their 5ft 3 inch gauge opposed to our 4ft 8 inch

 

The redesigned front came about after finding the standard front end would not pass the front loading requirements. IIRC a batch were sold to BR as class 141. They had a terrible reputation and had to be re engineered at Leylands expense with different gearboxes etc. Some were later sold on to Iran after service over here.

[AnthonyG]

What was the point of the above - a very cheap way to build rail coaches or something?

 

Seems exceptionally pointless to me - it's not as if BR did not enough capacity to build their own coaches back in the 1970s.

[pogweasel]

Pointless, but very cool. I like the idea of a bus and a train being essentially the same thing.

Now, these 'guided busways' are a kind of a bus/train combo, but not properly.

It should be perfectly possible to construct a vehicle which can be a bus AND a train, they build unimogs & land rovers that can run on the rails and the road, so why not.

[Inspector Morose]

If Autoshite did railbuses...

 

There has been a few attempts at dual mode buses/trains but all came to nowt due to the added cost and complexity for something that would be used on lightly trafficked and so unremunerative routes.

[Inspector Morose]

It was a standard bus front so where the indicators should be on the bus, red lenses were used instead to mark it as the rear of the train when going the other direction. Obviously the standard headlights were used at the leading end.

[hammy]

What was the point of the above - a very cheap way to build rail coaches or something?

 

Seems exceptionally pointless to me - it's not as if BR did not enough capacity to build their own coaches back in the 1970s.

It was supposed to be a cheaper standard variation of the DMU units, as Leyland were churning out a one bus fits all bus, they made a one bus fits all train. Designed to be a bus on rails for inner city work and poor rural line running.

[martc]

The awful bus-train hybrids are known as Pacers (or Nodding Donkeys) and are still used in some parts of the country but being rapidly replaced.

 

They are universally hated by the drivers, gaurds, permanent way staff and passengers. They are noisy, smelly, hot, unreliable, uncomfortable (still retain the thinly padded bus seats) and with a combination of soft springs and a single axle (no bogie) both nod like a donkey and cause the rails to splay with the downward force of the bounce. It beggars belief that when they ran the first prototype they thought "yes that'll do, we'll buy the lot".

 

BR needed stock to replace the aging DMU's. The Pacers and Sprinters were the result - the Sprinters are far more successful and still very useful. The Pacers were built to a budget (47p each) and were "designed" for lightly used rural branch lines. The irony is that the damage they caused to these routes has meant that they have had to be replaced with the more expensive Sprinters and of course being totally crap most have now been scrapped several years earlier than expected. Therefore any money saved on building them has had to be spent by replacing them prematurely - 'tis ever so.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

They .... (still retain the thinly padded bus seats)

I was just complaining about this in the Grumpy Old Man thread last night - only my complaint was about travelling on a Railbus/Pacer which had lost its bus seats and finding it less comfortable as a result.

[martc]

I was just complaining about this in the Grumpy Old Man thread last night - only my complaint was about travelling on a Railbus/Pacer which had lost its bus seats and finding it less comfortable as a result.

.

 

Perfectly true - I travelled on a newly refurbished Class 144 (the type which they tried to make look less bus like) about 10 years ago - the new seats were/are terrible. They look like "proper" train seats but are narrow, hard and the leg room is abismal.

 

Overall the Pacers are about as grim as you can get but you can be sure that if any survive into "preservation" there will be plenty of people with rose tinted specs saying how good the used to be.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

I think they get a rough deal. Yes, they're noisy and bouncy, but they're not dashing from London to Manchester at 150mph. They were perfectly adequate (with bus seats) for crowded commuter routes with dozens of stops and people getting on and off constantly.

 

Just before I stopped using the trains, they introduced some fancy new ones (just looked it up, class 175 I think). Bit of a culture shock getting one of those in the morning and coming home in a fifty year old 101