Leeds City Transport – Daimler Fleetline – 101 LNW – 101

Leeds City Transport - Daimler Fleetline - 101 LNW - 101

Leeds City Transport (West Yorkshire PTE)
1964
Daimler Fleetline CRG6LX
Roe H41/29F

In June 1978 West Yorkshire PTE transferred five Fleetlines 101 – 105 from Leeds to Calderdale. 101 was a 1964 Commercial Vehicle Motor Show exhibit which was unique amongst the batch with a single piece curved windscreen and twin headlamps. It is shown here at Skircoat Moor in Halifax shortly before entering service there. One or two points to note, a relatively low seating capacity of 70 when 77 was more normal for this size and layout; note apparently no opening windows in the lower deck (can’t remember this). I do remember the heavy steering and abysmal demisters – this could also affect many other early Fleetlines. The transfer was in the interests of standardisation but this batch had the original “heavyweight” chassis whereas the Halifax buses had the later simplified rear sub frame hence different rear engine mountings – another problem area in early Fleetlines.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Ian Wild


14/01/16 – 16:30

The various early attempts made to ‘prettify’ the boxy shape of the Orion inspired body designs on the first generation Fleetlines and Atlanteans never seemed to come off. Here on this attempt by Roe the lower front panel and curved windscreen seem totally out of context to the remainder which is totally angular. Of the early rear-engined body designs only the Glasgow Alexander version seemed to be designed as a whole and didn’t look like a botch-up. The Bolton East Lancs Atlanteans were pretty good too where the body design seemed to be geared to suit the very attractive livery. It will certainly not be remembered as a high point in British bus bodywork design.

Philip Halstead


14/01/16 – 17:50

I remember 101 well, Ian. My work records show me as having driven it on three occasions at Halifax during 1979. The first was on the 5th January when my conductor Dave Maude and I had it for the first half of a split duty. It is recorded as having been booked off for “No Heaters, No Demisters, Heavy Steering and Slipping Flywheel”.
I well remember this occasion as we had struggled to operate a trip to Sowerby with a full standing load of school children for Ryburn Valley High School who unfortunately all insisted on breathing throughout the journey, misting then frosting up our windscreen, Dave having to constantly reach over with bits of paper towel in a vain attempt to provide visibility ahead. Then on the next trip around the 517 Queens Road Circular it became so cold inside that the windscreen froze over on both sides and any attempts to scrape off the ice were thwarted by it immediately freezing over again. We had to finally stop and abandon any hope of continuing the journey for quite a while until I think eventually we were causing such an obstruction that a sympathetic motorist lent us the remains of his de-icer spray and we were just about able to find our way back to Garage in a series of starts and stops.
We also had four more of the batch (102-105), but these had the more conventional flat fronts. They too – like all early Fleetlines – had very heavy steering, but the bodies seemed to be very solid and rattle-free in comparison with the ex-Halifax Northern Counties-bodied Fleetlines, which I thoroughly disliked.

John Stringer


15/01/16 – 06:28

Reading the comments above, I am surprised that no one thought of specifying heated windscreens. I seem to recall them on Hants & Dorset Bristol MWs in the early sixties, which certainly did not have to cope with the more severe weather found in Yorkshire.

David Wragg


15/01/16 – 06:30

101 was the Roe exhibit at the 1964 Earls Court show. Originally finished in traditional Leeds livery plus gold lining out. It was originally fitted with forced ventilation on both decks but following complaints from the public opening windows were fitted in the upper deck.
Like many of LCTs rear engined fleet 101 wore at least three liveries The original the later one man reversed livery and the Metro livery seen here.

On the subject of seating capacity Leeds had no thirty footers with more than 70 seats the largest 33ft deckers only seated 78 The first 30ft types with more than 70 seats were ordered and delivered to the PTE.

Chris Hough


15/01/16 – 14:44

It is not strictly true to say that the first 30ft deckers delivered to Leeds with more than 70 seats were ordered by the P.T.E.
Leylands 221-291, 5221-5291 NW, Daimlers 502-531, 7502-7531 UA and A.E.C.s 910-923, 3910-3923 UB delivered between 1958 and 1960 seated H39/32R when they entered service.
They were altered to H38/32R between August and October 1960 following a National Agreement on standing capacity which meant that buses with more than 70 seats were restricted to a maximum of 5 standing passengers whilst those with not more than 70 could carry 8 standing passengers.

John Kaye


15/01/16 – 17:06

David, the earliest buses I came across with heated windscreens were the final (1969) batch of Plaxton/Roadliners at PMT where we certainly had problems with heaters and demisters (tell me an undertaking that didn’t). You can’t believe the difficulties in getting hot water to flow round 60 feet of pipework.

Ian Wild


16/01/16 – 06:07

Ian. Thought on Roadliners screens were prone to jumping out which only makes demisters the preferred option

Roger Burdett


16/01/16 – 06:12

In that case, Ian, I must have made a mistake. Certainly the Marshall-bodied AEC Reliances of Aldershot & District had such screens around that time, but as regards the Hants & Dorset MWs, put that down to old age!
I can imagine the difficulties in getting heat around vehicles as they grew longer and engines moved from end to the other. More a case of needing a plumber than a mechanic.

David Wragg


16/01/16 – 06:12

Roe never seemed to quite get the “hang of” being able (or could be bothered?) to match-up the top and side profiles of curved windscreens with adjacent body-work, whether single or double-beck – the impression, to me, is of something just cut into bodywork designed for something else. I hope the near-side windscreen wiper was re-fitted before it entered service. And, John, a double-deck on the 517/8 – that was a bit optimistic as regards loadings wasn’t it? with a conductor you must have outnumbered the passenger.

Philip Rushworth


17/01/16 – 06:33

Yes Philip, if I remember rightly there were occasions when we carried nobody at all for the whole round trip, and if not then there were never more than two or three. The service by then was interworked with other routes and this particular AM trip just happened to slot in nicely to a crew operated double-deck working.
Commencing on 9th November,1925 this fairly short circular route served a densely populated area and in its heyday(as the 25 Inner Circle – same number both ways)had been operated by double deckers on a 20 minute (three peaks)or 30 minute (off-peak) frequency, and running throughout the evening. Renumbered 7 (clockwise) or 8 (anti-clocwise) on 24th October 1955 the timetable remained pretty much the same throughout the 1950’s and 60’s. On 29th September 1968 it was combined with the Beechwood Road route becoming cross-town routes 17/18) and converted to OMO single deck operation. The evening service was withdrawn on 27th May 1970. From 20th November 1972 the Beechwood Road section was incorporated into the 3 Hungerhill Estate service, so the 17/18 now reverted to just a Queens Road circular again. On 4th December 1972 it was diverted to also serve Richmond Road, by which time it ran hourly each way. Renumbered 517/518 by WYPTE it was reduced to just four trips per weekday from 12th January 1981, and was withdrawn altogether from 26th October 1986 when the newly created Yorkshire Rider diverted alternate Wainstalls journeys via Queens Road as route 524.

John Stringer


17/01/16 – 06:34

Notably the first C H Roe customer to ask for an Alexander type double curvature windscreen was the then General Manger at Great Yarmouth.
By the time this bus was transferred to Halifax the same man was Engineering Director of the PTE and prior to that he had been General Manager of Halifax and Todmorden.

This shot shows how Roe didn’t put a taper in the front end, unlike Alexander who did: www.flickr.com/photos/johnmightycat/

Stephen Allcroft


17/01/16 – 12:22

That would be the late Geoffrey Hilditch then. A Bus Engineer through and through, the likes of which the Bus Industry will never see again.

Stephen Howarth


17/01/16 – 17:12

Lincoln also bought a batch of Atlanteans with this style of bodywork.

Chris Hough


28/09/20 – 05:33

Reading through all the comments its clear there are some very serious and knowledgeable people that know which brake pads go on which buses.
I am an enthusiast in my own way. I used to be a conductor for Leeds City Transport from 1967 to 1969. Mainly rear loaders (layman’s term) but during that time I remember OMO (one man operated) buses arriving which I was told had been on trial in Leicester I think. At the time these buses were absolute luxury and I remember going to various depots looking for overtime and being thrilled on the front loaders and being a conductor on them. Equally brilliant were the single decker’s which did the inner ring road route. I’m now approaching 70 and can tell anyone and everyone that even after spending 22 years in the Royal Navy and seeing most of the world, being a bus conductor was the proudest job I ever had.

Mike Booth

Leeds City Transport – Daimler Fleetline – UNW 174H – 174

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UNW 174H

Leeds City Transport
1969
Daimler Fleetline CRG6LXB
Roe H45/33D

Representative of the concurrent Leeds double deck orders in 1969/70 are these two buses photographed in Leeds in April 1970. On the left is Roe H45/33D bodied Daimler Fleetline CRG6LXB UNW 174H, No.174 delivered in September 1969. Standing alongside is similarly bodied Leyland Atlantean PDR2/1 UNW 404H, No.404 which arrived in January 1970. Though seemingly identical to the man on the Leeds, rather than the Clapham omnibus, I wonder how these two types compared in terms of road performance and mechanical reliability.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Roger Cox


01/12/21 – 07:22

Sheffield had similarly contemporaneous batches of vehicles. Whatever the comparative merits, or otherwise, of the competing marques, the Sheffield PDR2/1 Atlanteans were mountain goats whereas the CRG6LXB Fleetlines struggled up the many steep hills. I saw it regularly with Atlanteans on the Outer Circle and Fleetlines on the Hemsworths going up Scarsdale Road.

David Oldfield


03/12/21 – 06:08

What a smart pair of buses! Handsome designs and elegant livery. I only knew the southern fleets, save for the high speed Scotland-London coaches which thundered down the A1 through Stevenage, through the night, which were black and white, if memory serves. Circa 1952-3 (Western Scottish?)
What a platform these pages provide for us all!

Victor Brumby

Leeds City Transport – Daimler CVG6 – YNW 555 – 555

Leeds City Transport - Daimler CVG6 - YNW 555 - 555Leeds City Transport - Daimler CVG6 - YNW 555 - 555

Leeds City Transport
1957
Daimler CVG6
Weymann H33/27R

Photographed in April 1970 in the dignified livery of Leeds City Transport is Daimler CVG6, Weymann H33/27R, YNW 555, No. 555, one of a batch of twenty delivered in September 1957. This bus remained in service to pass to WYPTE on 1 April 1974.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Roger Cox


10/10/18 – 05:21

Like many municipalities, Leeds Corporation got full value out of its vehicles, in this case, at least 17 years. Of course, with the impending threat of having to hand over its vehicles to the WYPTE, it might well have just decided not to replace the older ones at that stage!
Do we know when it was finally withdrawn?
One of my two trips to Leeds was to travel its tram system, with its Felthams, in 1957/58, I think. I was shocked at its closure soon afterwards, which seemed illogical with so much of it on reserved track and no employee mentioned impending doom on my visit. Does anyone know what changed to shut it down in such a short timescale?

Chris Hebbron


11/10/18 – 05:32

Volume 4 of “Leeds Transport” actually reports that 555 was withdrawn on 30/09/1971 and went to a Barnsley dealer for scrapping November 1972.

Dave Towers


12/10/18 – 06:50

Thanks for that correction, Dave, which I entirely accept. Not possessing a historic Leeds fleetlist, I did find a site that listed this batch of Daimlers as passing to the PTE, but now cannot find it. I understand that these Daimlers had air operated brakes and gearchange, which mercifully shielded unwary drivers from the decidedly painful (I speak from experience with the Halifax examples) affliction known as “Daimler knee”.

Roger Cox


23/10/18 – 05:48

The Leeds Tramway was earmarked for closure from the very early fifties. This was despite a good deal of pro tram sentiments among the public.
These and a similar batch bought a year earlier were Leeds fist buses with tin front.

Chris Hough


06/06/21 – 06:39

Yes as Chris said the Leeds system was earmarked for closure in the 1960’s but events brought the sad end earlier than expected on the 7th November 1959. Its quite amazing the number of photographs, both black and white and colour, of the system that are still around. It must be said that a great debit is owed to the National Tramway Museum and the LTHS and collectors such as Robert Mack, Keith Terry and Jim Soper and no doubt countless others.

David Walton


01/09/22 – 07:19

Recently I have been looking at the Leeds and District Transport News back issues for the 1950’s and Daimler CVG6 and CVD6 are both referred to at different times as having the name Victory. I think this could be a mistake, the CVD6 could be rightly given this term, but not the CVG6. What does your readership know about this.

David Patrick Walton


04/09/22 – 06:52

Why not the CVG6…please explain, David? Surely the chassis was what mattered, not the engine. Incidentally, there were CVA6’s, too, although not in Leeds.

Chris Hebbron


05/09/22 – 07:04

Does David not understand the Daimler naming system?
COG Coventry Oil engine Gardner. Pre-war. AEC engines also available.
CWG Coventry Wartime Gardner. Wartime. AEC engines available.
CVG Coventry Victory Gardner. Post-war. AEC/Daimler available

David Oldfield


06/09/22 – 05:26

I would suggest that the “naming” suggested by David Oldfield referred to the model coding system rather than the naming of the chassis as such.
The Daimler CWA6, CWD6 and CWG5 models were all known as “Wartime Daimlers”.
Thus the Daimler CVD6, CVG5, CVG6 and CVA6 became known as “Victory Daimlers” in the early post-war years to reflect the new Daimler chassis introduced after the war, irrespective of the engine fitted, but I have not heard the name Victory being applied to anything new after about 1948/9.

John Kaye

Leeds City Transport – AEC Swift – JNW 952E – 52

Leeds City Transport - AEC Swift - JNW 952E - 52

Leeds City Transport
1967
AEC Swift MP2R
Roe B48D

Leeds bought several batches of AEC Swifts between 1967 and 1971. Prior to these appearing the fleet was 90% double deck with around 15 saloons most of which were AEC Reliances some with centre entrance bodies with the later ones being dual door for one man operation.
Seen here are a quartet of the first two batches of Swifts parked outside the old Bramley depot which was a former tram depot.
Three of the Swifts have Roe bodywork of an attractive style while the fourth carries an MCW body which had forward sloping window pillars and a slightly stepped waistrail. Further saloons in the shape of both Swifts and single deck Fleetlines would appear before the last Roe bodied Swifts entered service in 1971. All of the buses seen here carry their original dark green with light green windows livery that was basically reversed when it was decided to paint one man operated buses in a different style to the rear entrance fleet. All of the Swifts passed to the PTE and had a largely normal life span. From the left they are 52 JNW 952E, 74 MNW 174F the solitary MCW example seen here and 54 and 56 from the same batch as 52.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Chris Hough


05/09/13 – 14:30

Leeds City Transport plus Roe bodywork is pretty much as one might expect, since the factory was within the boundary. MCW? However did that idea get past Committee???

Pete Davies


05/09/13 – 14:30

A matter of personal preference I know Chris, but I thought that the traditional Leeds City Transport livery as shown here was the very best – corporate and completely dignified, inside and out. The various batches of Swifts each had fascinating characteristics, often considerably different and interesting (challenging even) in their own ways. The first fifty as shown in the picture had semi automatic transmission while the final batches of fifty and twenty had the option of fully automatic or, if drivers like me preferred, manual override so as to allow “normal” gearchanging of a sort. In fairness though the fully automatic mode on these was normally very predictable and well behaved. All things considered, the final twenty (1051 – 1070) with luxury seats were the best of the lot and were a delight to drive and to ride in. Passenger flow in the last seventy was really excellent and they were ideal for one person operation. Rumour had it, we shall never know on what foundation, when the last twenty were on order that they would be of 12 metres length – its a good job that they weren’t, as some of the corners on the inner city routes would have been literally impossible – the turn from the nearside lane of East Parade into Park Lane (Headrow) being one certainty. Thanks again for a really nostalgic picture Chris.

Chris Youhill


06/09/13 – 08:21

Peter Leeds had a long history of dual sourcing bodywork between Roe and MCW although the Swifts were the first saloons.
Chris I too preferred the original liveries seen here although the doors were a little eccentric since the exit door was half the width of the entrance. The Park Royal examples were much better in having both doors of normal width. The Roe 1971 batch had fronts derived from the Leeds two door decker design and as you say were a joy to ride on. I recall that they were replaced on the Ring Road service with Duple bodied Tigers which were also a pleasant ride. One thing that has always struck me about the MCW bodied Swifts was their apparent narrowness at the front compared to the Roe examples.

Chris Hough


06/09/13 – 08:22

By 1967/8 MCW had been Leeds’ ‘backup’ supplier of bodywork for the best part of two decades. It was widely believed that it was possible to get more advantageous quotes from suppliers by multi-sourcing.

David Call


10/09/13 – 06:33

You are right Chris, and the MCW do appear narrower and even allowing for slightly different camera angle its very strange indeed – but must somehow be just an illusion ??
The Tigers were truly superb vehicles, mechanically and bodily, and the luxurious brown patterned moquette seats were the finest. They did indeed replace the Swifts on the Ring Road service entirely, and I think on most other single deck routes from Headingley Depot – memory not clear, although it should be, on the last point but its getting now to be a long time ago – I eagerly took redundancy from the forthcoming “circus” on October 25th 1986. On joining South Yorkshire Road Transport after that I encountered daily more Tigers but with OPO adapted Plaxton luxury coachwork – these really were the bees knees for stage carriage work, and one of them still enjoyed a working radio – the others having been silenced because of arguments arising on private hires and excursions – and whenever I had number 22 on bus services (often) the passengers were able to enjoy Radio Two.

Chris Youhill


10/09/13 – 16:30

Like Chris, I have a great deal of affection for the TRCTL11 Tigers. [A shame there were no TRCTL12s – AEC men will know what I mean.]

David Oldfield


10/09/13 – 16:30

Going off at a bit of a tangent here, but at Halifax we had some of the Tigers to which Chris refers. They became regular performers on the ex-Hebble Rochdale service, along with its later alternative variant via the incredibly narrow and tortuous lanes around Mill Bank and Soyland. They certainly romped along compared with ex-West Yorkshire Leopard coaches which we also had at the time, though they always gave me the impression of not being quite so durable. They were also without any doubt the worst buses I have ever had to drive in snow and ice.
However, I would question Chris’s views on their bodywork. They had Duple Dominant Bus bodies, and were apparently built in stages, the works giving priority to coach production and fitting ours in as and when they had a bit of spare time. Our chap whose job it was to monitor the construction of the PTE’s buses paid a visit to the works and found their basic steel frameworks had been assembled and then dumped outside in the yard with inadequate (or possibly no) rustproofing to suffer the worst of the salty Blackpool sea air. They were already rusting away and a strong request was made (in no uncertain broad Yorkshire terms I can well imagine !) to get them treated straight away. This was apparently carried out, but apparently not very well, and they began to suffer corrosion problems from quite an early stage in their lives. There were two batches, and I think it was the first batch of seven Y-reg ones (which went to Leeds) which suffered the worst, but one of our A-prefix ones was subject to quite a major rebuild later and became the only one to carry the white, blue and yellow First Calderline livery, and the last to survive.

John Stringer


11/09/13 – 08:30

But John, they were Duples. The reason that the firm folded was because of the appalling quality and finish. Your story helps explain why the metal frames were so prone to rust and corrosion. The fit and finish left a lot to be desired on the 320/340 bodies at the end (1989). I know of at least one Western National 340/Tiger where the panels were coming adrift after a few months and I drove a 320/Scania where I thought that the engine cover had counterbalancing until I was told it was rusted metal “sloshing” about in the cavity. How are the mighty fallen. Duple were at the top of their game when they moved to Blackpool and had an honourable history with the Continental and Commander but seemed to lose the plot after that. The Dominant was an Elite rip off – but with a metal frame. Somehow it never worked – despite the Continental being a successful metal-framed model. MCW had exactly the same corrosion problems despite the MCCW metal frames being the best of their time.

David Oldfield


11/09/13 – 16:30

Following on from Davids comments. It is interesting that the PTE/Yorkshire Rider never went for the National (one batch only) and Calderdales last pre low floor saloon were Plaxton bodied Volvos.

Chris Hough


12/09/13 – 08:30

John and David – I can only say that I amazed to hear of such structural inferiority in the Duple Dominant bodies, but naturally don’t doubt it for a minute on hearing such reliable reports. All I can say is that, in their “youth”, the Headingley PTE Tiger ones were superbly comfortable and free of any rattling or body noise and movement – as the saying goes “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” !!

Chris Youhill

Leeds City Transport – AEC Swift – MUB 193F – 93

MUB 193F

Leeds City Transport
1968
AEC Swift MP2R
MCW B48D

Pictured in Leeds in April 1970 is Leeds City Transport No.93, MUB 193F, an AEC Swift MP2R bought in May 1968 with MCW B48D bodywork that emulated the forward sloping side pillars of contemporary Alexander designs. A curious feature was the narrow width of the centre exit door. I believe that here was a total of thirty such buses, which were intermixed with deliveries of Swifts with Roe bodywork, also of B48D pattern, some of which arrived in 1967. Swifts continued to feature in the Leeds purchasing programme until 1971. The Swift MP2R was powered by the AH505 8.2 litre engine, and the first Leeds batches, of which No.93 is an example, had the semi automatic Monocontrol transmission. Later examples were fitted with fully auto gearboxes. I am sure that other correspondents with much a greater knowledge than mine of the Leeds system can give details of these buses in service.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Roger Cox


26/06/19 – 09:48

The narrow exit door was also a feature of the Roe bodied Swifts delivered in 1967/68.
The biggest batch of Swifts were the 50 delivered in 1969 were bodied by Park Royal and had full size centre doors The last Swifts came in 1971 and had Roe bodywork. In addition to the Swifts Leeds also bought thirty single deck Fleetlines with Park Royal bodywork these were identical to the fifty Park Royal bodied Swifts

Chris Hough


28/10/20 – 05:36

I think there were 5 variants of these.
51 – ? were AEC Swifts with MCW bodywork, vertical window pillars, lights in the roof line and narrow doors, bus seats MUG 4xxF reg.
? – 100 were AEC Swifts with Roe bodywork, they were the slanting window ones as the pic above, coach seats, narrow rear door MUG 1xxF reg.
Not sure of the split I think 51 – 85 were MCW, 86 – 100 were Roe 1966-8.
1001 – 1050 AEC Swift, Park Royal bodies, wide rear doors, dest display at side. bus seats SUB 4xxG 1969.
1201 – 1230 Daimler Fleetline Roe bodies, wide rear doors, bus seats, dest and route no at side, reg UNW 2xxH introduced 1970.
1051 – 1070 AEC Swift Roe body wide rear doors, only route number at side. coach seats AUB 1xxJ introduces 1971.
Please let me know if I have any of this wrong.

Ken


01/11/20 – 06:07

According to buslistsontheweb.co.uk the 51-100 split was rather more complicated than that:
51 (GUM 451D): Roe body, 1966 (exhibited at Earl’s Court).
52-60 (JNW 9xxE): Roe body, 1967.
61-75 (MNW 1xxF): MCW body, 1968.
76-85 (MUG 4xxF): Roe body, 1968.
86-99 (MUB 1xxF): MCW body, 1968.
100 (MUG 100F): same as 86-99.

Peter Williamson

Leeds City Transport – AEC Reliance – KUA 46 – 46

Leeds City Transport - AEC Reliance - KUA 46 - 46

Leeds City Transport
1964
AEC Reliance 2MU2RA
Roe B41D

Seen in April 1970 is Leeds City Transport No. 46, 46 KUA, an AEC Reliance 2MU2RA with Roe B41D bodywork, one of four, Nos. 44 – 47, 44 – 47 KUA delivered in 1964. These followed an earlier order for six similar vehicles in 1962, Nos 39 – 43, 839 – 843 CUM. I understand that all these Reliances had quite a short life of around 8 years or so with Leeds.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Roger Cox


03/12/18 – 07:13

I can’t comment on the others, but 45 and 47 went to Aberdeen. I have a view of each from the late Arnold Richardson’s collection.

Pete Davies


04/12/18 – 06:33

All four were new in August 1964 and withdrawn in December 1970.
44 and 45 went to Aberdeen on 30th June 1971, being followed on 7th July by 46 and 47, retaining the same fleet numbers.

John Kaye


05/12/18 – 07:46

Oh dear, that destination box doesn’t look comfortable, balanced up there.

Petras409


11/12/18 – 07:43

These Reliances really came too late. They were in effect an update of the standee single deckers 29-38, to the same 30ft. length when 36 ft. had become available. Getting 41 seats into the shorter length, with dual doors meant they had poor access/exit and tight seat spacing. As with many AECs of that design they were not comfortable, or liked by passengers or drivers. Just two years later, the first 36 ft. Swifts with wider doors, easier steps and 48 better spaced seats arrived. They may not have been great, but they were better. In a year or so there were 50 Swifts in operation and 39 to 46 were consigned to relief work and then sale.

Andy Buckland


13/12/18 – 05:53

Several of these also ended up in Scotland with Greyhound of Arbroath.

Chris Hough


07/01/19 – 07:12

I’ve sometimes wondered what was so wrong with the AEC Swift and the Leyland Panther that caused many operators to not get on with them, prematurely retire them (especially London’s AECs) and overall have bad experiences, while the conceptually similar Bristol RE seems to have commonly led a full life with its original operators.
It’s not as if they did not incorporate standard components in use elsewhere.

Bill


12/01/19 – 08:23

In the absence of a more comprehensive reply from someone who knows more, I will say that one of the differences between Bristol’s approach and the Panther/Swift approach was the position of the driveline and its effect on weight distribution. In the Panther and Swift the engine and gearbox were at the extreme rear of the overhang, whereas the RE had the engine further forward, with the gearbox in front of the rear axle.

Peter Williamson


16/01/19 – 07:27

The Panther also had a much weaker frame causing bending and breaking. Even in preservation I can think of a couple where following you can see the curve.

Roger Burdett


17/01/19 – 07:09

The radiator for the Swift was not at the front, as in the Panther or the RE, but tucked away behind a panel in the bodywork behind the offside back wheels.
Although this arrangement probably insured against air locks in the cooling system, it restricted the flow of cooling air over the surface of the radiator and could result in the engine overheating.

John B


18/01/19 – 06:30

My Foden which has the Rad in the same position still airlocks so concur John B comment.

Roger Burdett


18/01/19 – 06:32

In the Bristol RE the drive went forward from the engine to the gearbox located in front of the rear axle, and then back again to the differential. This gave a prop shaft of decent length to accommodate the suspension travel of the rear axle, something that competitive designs (the worst being the Seddon RU) lacked. Contrary to popular belief, the RE did not pioneer this layout. The Rutland Clipper of 1954 used a similar arrangement.

Roger Cox

Leeds City Transport – AEC Regent V – XUM 894 – 894

Leeds City transport AEC Regent V

Leeds City transport
1957
AEC Regent V
Roe H60R

Yet another example of a Regent V with a Regent III radiator. If I remember Leeds city Transport buses were nearly all semi automatic or had clutch less gearboxes of some description probable to help them off to quick start from the bus stops.


894 is the last of a huge batch which were ordered as tram replacements. The next batch numerically were fitted with 8′ wide bodies.

Terry Malloy


The last batches of post-war LCT buses to have full three pedal “clutch and gearbox” transmission were the Crossleys, the Leyland PD1s, the sixty Leyland PD2s (NNW batch), the six “standee” single deckers (2 Guy, 3 AEC Reliance and 3 Leyland Tiger Cub) – so rather more than is generally realised !!

Chris Youhill


Hi everyone,
I meant to post this link a while ago, finally got around to it.
www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=39972
It shows the first delivery of these vehicles to Torre Road Depot.

Terry Malloy


I think the reason for preferring clutchless transmissions, in common with several other municipal operators, was the need to retrain large numbers of tram drivers in a very short time. Far fewer people owned cars in those days, and many of those tram drivers would never have driven a motor vehicle.
What about the PD2/11s (UUA batches)? I know some of them were specials with pneumo-cyclic transmission, but I didn’t think they all were.

Peter Williamson


The last manual gearbox double deckers were the sixty “NNW” Leyland PD2s. All subsequent double deck vehicles being semi automatic of one kind or another. Thereafter all AECs and Daimlers were either three pedal pre-selector or two pedal “monocontrol.” All Leylands were two pedal pneumo-cyclic with the exception of the batch of ten “RNW”s (301 -310) which were three pedal pre-selector, and were the only ones made other than the London Transport RTLs and RTWs. Passionately wishing to drive one of the latter, I booked a piece of teatime overtime out of Bramley and persuaded a bemused but helpful shift foreman to let me take 307, one of the only two remaining at the time – a great experience !!

Chris Youhill


31/07/12 – 05:43

The clutch you are referring to was a gear changing pedal (NOT A CLUTCH) they were known as preselctors, I used to love to drive them brings back memories going up Churwell Hill in the old girls, (52/53 Morley)

Roger Hopper


07/11/12 – 16:47

Snivelling out of Bramley Chris? You’re very lucky one of the PD1s wasn’t compulsory for you! When we had these at Torre Road Garage (301 – 310) we used to complain bitterly that they wouldn’t “Pull” up hills. Scott Hall Road 69 & 70 routes used to see old Hunslet MK3s flying past us. The regular Bramley drivers (used to PD1s & PD2s used to use a form of “double declutching” on these and other preselector buses – preselecting neutral between gears. Don’t know if this helped or not. Perhaps the Bramley mechanics knew how to tune them up properly as I never heard of any complaints about lack of power when the Bramley drivers got hold of them.

Bill Midgley


08/11/12 – 07:16

Most interesting memories Bill, thank you, and I had forgotten or was never aware that the “RTL”s had been at Torre Road. On that one joyous occasion that I drove 307 I found it went very well – unless I was mesmerised by the wonderful concerto of gurglings, compressed air hissings and tick over wobblings so as not to notice, and of course there were virtually no real hills on that particular piece of work, the entire outward journey from Bramley in the west to Barnbow Factory in the east being “private.” The Bramley practice you mention of “double de-clutching” is completely unorthodox, baffling, and quite un-necessary, and surely can have no advantage at all – in fact it entirely defeats the object of faultless gear changes for which the system was invented !!

Chris Youhill


08/11/12 – 11:12

Ah, but it must have been harder to fiddle a CVD or CWD like. The gearchange was not an H-gate but a quadrant, so the neutral position was not between the gears. Having said that, the sheer driver-crippling vindictiveness of the change pedal has entered the annals of bus folk-lore!

Stephen Ford


10/11/12 – 10:20

Chris, these buses were new to Torre Road Garage and serviced the 69 Moortown and 70 Primley Park via Scott Hall Road services. The crews were on the TRG Rota – the precursor to getting a “Regular” on a main route.
At TRG, these were :- Dewsbury Road – Moortown – Middleton, Morley – Meanwood, East End Park Circular (included Moortown-Whitkirk & Leeds – Bradford), Lawnswood – Beeston, Half Mile Lane & Compton Road – Horsforth. Nearly everyone wanted to get onto Lawnswood because it had the best duty sheets – usually two “dinnertimes” in a late week. I worked out of TRG from 1958 – 1960 and had a “Regular” on Dewsbury Road before I went off to Headingley. When I first started, I was the youngest conductor on LCT being eighteen and two weeks! Ah! Those were the days – or maybe not!

Bill Midgley


06/01/15 – 05:42

Here’s a Pathe News clip of one of the Monocontrol Regent V’s being driven by a one-legged driver. //www.britishpathe.com/video/monocontrol-bus-aka-revolutionary-bus/query/leeds+buses

Chris Hebbron


07/01/15 – 06:26

Chris the one legged driver was John Rafferty the long time chairman of the council transport committee. The film was shot at Torre Road depot.

Chris Hough


08/01/15 – 06:43

Breath-holding shots of Alderman Rafferty climbing unaided into this Roe half-cab using his one leg and his crutch.

Joe

Leeds City Transport – AEC Regent V – ENW 980D – 980

Leeds City Transport AEC Regent V

Leeds City Transport
1966
AEC Regent V
Roe H39/31R

Perhaps this snippet about Leeds City Transports AEC Regent V fleet number 980 which has been preserved and is stored at the Keighley Bus Museum may be of interest. 980 spent most, if not all of its service life at the Headingley depot along with the remainder of the batch 974 – 983. I don’t know the technicalities but it was fitted with some kind of modified exhaust system which gave a totally different tone to the norm, especially when pulling hard. As it passed its home depot on the routes northwards out of Leeds it was instantly recognisable by the unique sound alone. The tone was uncannily like that made by a water craft when the exhaust dips below the surface and accordingly amongst enthusiast staff 980 enjoyed the nickname “The motor boat”. Very happy days indeed.

Copy contributed by Chris Youhill

The exhaust sounds like an example of the famous AEC “straight through” exhaust – common on Regent IIIs, less common but not unknown on Regent Vs.

My passions are AECs and bodywork by Burlingham, Roe and Weymann. What a fine photograph of a beautiful bus. I am actually very concerned about the future of a similar bus ex Sheffield B fleet number 1330 registration number 6330 WJ which has been in the limbo of being half restored at Sheffield, South Yorkshire. An almost identical 2D3RA of 1960 vintage.

David Oldfield

I know the Mark IIIs wonderful barking “straight through” sound that you mean – this magnificent recital was fitted to most if not all of the Leeds City Transport “PUA” registration batch, of which 674 was undoubtedly the finest as it bellowed its way through the City Centre usually on services 42/66 from Harehills to Old Farnley/Leysholme Estate.

However the “motor boat” sound produced uniquely by 980 was quite different and was somewhat muffled and refined, perhaps best described as gentle “under water” bubbling. What priceless memories we are lucky to enjoy.

Chris Youhill

Work is well underway on the above vehicle…this site will be kept informed of developments in due course.

Mick Holian

Leeds City Transport always seemed to have a well turned out fleet of interesting vehicles, but seeing and hearing one of their many Regent Vs was to many of us the icing on the cake. Whether it was a handsome Roe-bodied example, or one of the plainer (but slightly more imposing?) MCW ones with exposed radiators, it didn’t matter. To the ear they were just the same – gorgeous! Perhaps best summed up as the mechanical sound effects of a Routemaster, coupled to the exhaust system of a decent sports car?! They were once a common sound booming their way up The Headrow past Lewis’s. If you were lucky enough, sometimes a skilled driver with a tuned ear would ‘hold’ a bus on its exhaust bark for quite a distance up the gentle incline. Bliss!….and a damned sight better than todays droning Volvo B7TLs!

Brendan Smith

Mention of the PUA registered 1952 AEC Regent IIIs brings to mind the Roe advert which adorned Leeds timetables for many years 669 was used until the nineteen sixties when it was replaced by a dual doored AEC Reliance in 1967 this was replaced by 131 the first of Leeds 33 foot Fleetlines the last Leeds bus to appear was a 1968 Daimler Fleetline with Roe dual door body. A small batch of these AECs carried very shapely Weymann bodywork.

Chris Hough

The six handsome Weymann “PUAs” were numbered 649 – 655 and they were a pleasure to behold from outside, and when on board you could enjoy some of the last Leeds buses to have the “warm” light beige window surrounds – I always thought that the subsequent silver ones were harsh and a retrograde step.

Chris Youhill

I have quite a collection of LCT photos click here to view. Some of them should bring back an odd memory or two!

David Beilby

25/09/11 – 07:18

Some of these AEC’s had a short spell with Tyne and Wear PTE (formerly Newcastle Transport) I believe they had been let down with a delivery of new vehicles and the AEC’s were brought in as a stop gap. They were used on the 18/19 Walker Circle route and were still in their LCT livery, but the panel around the radiator grill had been painted yellow.

Ronnie Hoye

25/09/11 – 09:00

I think that the L.C.T. buses that went to Tyne and Wear initially went to OK Motor Services but were not used by them. Tyne and Wear also painted the first panel on either side in their yellow livery.

Philip Carlton

25/09/11 – 09:03

They did look interesting in Newcastle didn’t they ?? The one in this picture though, 980, travelled even further north and served with A1 Services of Ardrossan in another fine green livery before being “repatriated” and is now approaching restoration to perfection standards at Keighley Bus Museum.

Chris Youhill

25/09/11 – 15:20

Further to my comments about LCT Buses in Newcastle, ironically, not long before the arrival of the LCT buses, Newcastle had decommissioned their own Park Royal bodied Mk V AEC’s, some were low bridge variants for the No 5 Ponteland/Darras Hall route, I also seem to remember some other foreigners from Edinburgh and Leicester were in Newcastle at the same time.

Ronnie Hoye

26/09/11 – 15:06

The PTE in Newcastle suffered a severe vehicle shortage and purchased a small number of ex Leeds AEC Regents and at least one Roe bodied PD3/5 all had PTE Yellow applied to their bonnets In addition the PTE loaned buses from Plymouth (MCW bodied Atlanteans) Lothian (Alexander bodied PD2s) Bournemouth (Atlanteans with Newcastle style MCW bodywork) Leicester (PD3s with East Lancs bodywork0 and Southend (Fleetlines with NCME bodywork)

Chris Hough

29/01/12 – 17:48

Yep about half a dozen Regent V”s and the PD3/5 along with all the other exotic birds were allocated to Byker depot and we had a trip out to photograph them. To add to the interest the restored Newcastle Leyland PD2 (in blue livery) and some ex Standerwick Bristol VRLL”s for the ferry services were also on shed. Newcastle was a very interesting place at that time. I am told that the Regents subsequently went to the magnificent OK motor services but not sure if they were ever used (possibly cannibalised for parts?)

Tony Greig

Leeds City Transport – AEC Regent V – 952 JUB – 952


Photograph by “unknown” if you took this photo please go to the copyright page.

Leeds City Transport
1964
AEC Regent V 2D2RA
Roe H39/31R

In the early days of Tyne and Wear PTE they suffered some severe vehicle shortages, to fill the gaps buses were bought borrowed or hired in from wherever they could get them. Among the intake that came from Leeds was at least one PD3 and several AEC Regent V’s, all Roe bodied, one of the Regents is seen here standing between two Leyland Atlanteans. I think the Leeds buses must have been bought because the livery has been altered, where as the other stop gaps remained in their original unaltered liveries and displayed ‘On hire’ stickers in the windscreen. Both the Atlanteans have been re-painted in one of the ‘new’ experimental liveries for the PTE. Several layouts were tried before they eventually settled for something not a million miles from where they started.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Ronnie Hoye


05/10/12 – 07:28

Slightly bizarre yellow front doesn’t detract from the timeless design. Interesting bus sandwich with a standard Alexander Atlantean on the left and a Met-Camm Alexander clone on the right. [See dome and light lay-out for details.]

David Oldfield


05/10/12 – 08:00

I’ve often been perplexed by how the phenomenon of severe vehicle shortages occurred. Both Tilling and BET, and presumably all municipal operators of any substance, had clear and established vehicle replacement programmes designed specifically to ensure shortages didn’t happen. In the 1960’s, unlike the early postwar period, there was adequate vehicle and body supply, and there was no reason why operators would be faced with a fleet problem that couldn’t have been foreseen and planned for. Reorganisation, such as the establishment of a PTE, might, I guess, have introduced new policies and direction, but the number of vehicles needed wouldn’t suddenly have changed, even if the owners, (and livery, of course), had. Takeovers, such as West Yorkshire’s takeover of Samuel Ledgard, could have introduced vehicles unfamiliar to or unwanted by the new owners, but didn’t create an insuperable overnight problem. Yet Yorkshire Woollen had sudden shortages, Ronnie refers here to Tyne & Wear’s difficulties, and there were others too. Can anyone explain, please?
A small point: many correspondents have expressed their reaction to the liveries introduced by PTEs and other new operators, but the two-tone green of Leeds, splashed with bits of orange here and there, presumably only a temporary arrangement, is nevertheless a bizarre sight. But an interesting posting. Thank you Ronnie.

Roy Burke


05/10/12 – 13:23

Couldn’t agree more, Roy. Only “know” about Sheffield – which I believe was principally an attack of the far too frequent British Leylandism combined with Bus Grantism. The Bus Grant created a big demand and later Baroness Thatcher created a bigger one by abolishing it – the operators rushing to get orders in before the money dried up. BL couldn’t cope with the rush, but there was a knock-on effect – neither were spare parts being produced in adequate numbers. Operators, therefore, could neither get new buses nor spares to keep the old ones going. Hence the shortage, and also the cannibalisation of otherwise serviceable vehicles for spares.

David Oldfield


05/10/12 – 13:25

Ronnie, as far as I recall none of the Leeds vehicles which served in Tyne and Wear, whether bought or loaned I’m not sure, were ever repainted other than the “identity” coloured panels at the front.

Chris Youhill


05/10/12 – 13:26

I understood that these Leeds buses were in fact acquired from OK Motor Services. Was there some Leylands too?

Philip Carlton


05/10/12 – 13:27

The ex Leeds AECs actually arrived in Newcastle from OK Motor services. At the time the delivery time for new vehicles from British Leyland was very poor which was one of the reasons for the success of the MCW Scania Metropolitan. In addition to the bought in ex Leeds buses Tyne and Wear borrowed from a wide variety of local authority fleets from as far afield as Edinburgh and Plymouth.
As well as Atlanteans from Bournemouth and Plymouth there was also Alexander bodied PD2s from Lothian, Leicester PD3s and Southend Fleetlines!

Chris Hough


05/10/12 – 13:28

A bit of research has provided the following info: Leyland 284 sold to O.K Motors 03/76 then to Tyne & Wear 04/76
AEC Regents 937/944/946/950/952/958 Sold as above 12/75 and to Tyne & Wear 04/76

Terry Malloy


05/10/12 – 13:29

In this view, the amended livery on the Leeds Regent looks to me to be approaching orange, rather than yellow. Is is the film, is it the conversion from slide or print into a digital form, or are my eyes being troublesome again? Anyway, green and orange bus from the Yorkshire area . . . Where have I encountered that before? (But the green’s then the wrong shade for Halifax!)

Pete Davies


05/10/12 – 13:31

There were a number of factors involved in vehicle shortages in the 1960s.
Many of the buses built immediately after the end of WW2 were coming to the end of their useful lives, so the same problems that occurred between 1945 and 1950 recurred – exacerbated by a vastly reduced number of body builders and, by 1966, the rationalisation of chassis builders under the on going development of the Leyland empire.
By the start of the PTE era double decker chassis choice was reduced to Atlantean (and the AN69 was firstly delayed and then swamped by orders from, particularly, SELNEC), Fleetline (again swamped by LT and SELNEC orders) and VR and most non ex- Tilling companies had no experience of the type.
Leopards, Reliances, Swifts and Fleetlines were the only single deck choice for many fleets – especially after many poor experiences with Panthers.
The Bristol RE did make inroads, though the Leyland empire had no great lover of the type and was focussed on the development of the still to come National.
The Metro-Scania in single and double deck form was basically experimental, the Seddon RU had just appeared and the days of the Metrobus, Dominator and the inroads from abroad were for later in the 1970s.
In the 1960s and early 1970s the industry was still very traditional. Bodies were still mostly hand built out of “traditional” materials and most body builders offered customers the ability to amend standard designs with regard to detail, sometimes with major design changes. Build times were long, delays from chassis builders caused irregular work flows and problems with new materials led to factory returns for repairs making problems worse.
Chassis building was even more chaotic. As the number of makers reduced, the pressure on Leyland, Southall and Coventry became immense. The freeing up of Bristol chassis and the availability until the late 1960s of the Guy Arab didn’t really help as their traditional operators needed to replace their fleets and, where there was capacity, most operators were loathe to move away from traditional suppliers with whom they had a good relationship, had built stocks of spares and did not want to learn different practices in the workshop and on the road.
Again, chassis were hand built, were individually delivered on the road rather than in bulk on trailers, and the range of variables was legion. In 1965 Leyland offered no fewer than 7 versions of PD2s, 9 versions of PD3s, 4 (pretty much unwanted) versions of the Lowlander and seven versions of the Atlantean.
Some of the variations were minor, others major. The average order was for between 10 and 20 vehicles so production line continuity was rare and the problem was made worse by supply chain problems, industrial disputes and the obtaining of “bulk” orders from major operators from time to time made things worse.
One example from the 1960s:
Stockport had a planned fleet replacement programme to clear the fleet of vehicles bought between 1940 and 1951. Starting with an order for 10 PD2s with East Lancs bodies in 1962, the order was repeated in 1963. A range of detail changes was made to the bodies without problems. 15 more came in 1964 but the chassis was changed to replace the St Helens front with an exposed radiator. A repeat order in 1965 again was trouble free. Each order was placed around 12 months before expected delivery.
By 1965 it was becoming obvious that delays at both chassis and body builders were growing so orders were placed for 30 vehicles half for delivery in 1966 half in 1967, again for identical PD2s with East Lancs bodies.
No vehicle was delivered in 1966, the chassis were very late and the 1967 chassis were arranged to be made at the same time. This led to knock on problems at East Lancs, which didn’t have the capacity to cope so the second batch were built at the Neepsend associate – reputedly not to the standard of the Blackburn product.
The delay in delivery had fortunately been flagged up early so, in 1966, orders were placed for the 1968 intake and only 6 months later for the 1969 deliveries.
It should be stressed that Stockport advised all tenderers at the outset that it had an on going replacement policy and it was intended to invite tenders each year from 1961 to 1968 so the industry was warned well in advance. The hard fact is that design, build and work practices just didn’t adapt to the situation. Add in the need for widespread replacements and the recipe for shortages was complete.

Phil Blinkhorn


05/10/12 – 17:34

So, the Leeds Regents came to the Newcastle area via OK Motor Services, and too quickly even for OK to paint them maroon!

Pete Davies


05/10/12 – 17:35

It should also be remembered that reliability was also a constant problem at the time many of the rear engined types were not easy to keep on the road indeed at one point West Midlands PTE went to the press about the poor build quality and after sales at BL.
Geoff Hilditch prevailed upon Dennis to build the dominator due to BL intransigence over keeping the Fleetline in build which had the effect of resurrecting Dennis from PSV oblivion. It is an interesting thought that if Leyland had done what the industry wanted and not what Leyland wanted they may still be building buses.

Chris Hough


05/10/12 – 17:37

Re David Oldfield’s comment, the 1968 Transport Act created both the Bus Grant scheme and, amongst others, Tyneside PTE, the set up date of this being January 1 1970. In common with other PTEs the Executive started work some months before actually taking over the day to day running of transport in its area and inherited orders for vehicles from its constituent parts.
Few if any of these orders would have been placed after the 1968 Transport Bill, which became the 1968 Transport Act, was published, given the already long delivery times. Some PTEs chose to extend those times by retrospectively changing specifications to meet both with the terms of the Bus Grant, which was effective for any vehicle registered on or after September 1 1968, and also any early standardisation they wished to implement.
Lead times for the available chassis, ordered at the time the Bill was published in 1967, was around 2 years. This increased further as the new decade dawned as LT and the PTEs decided to make hay by rapidly replacing older vehicles with heavily subsidised and standardised new vehicles.
As we all know 3 new PTEs were set up between 1972 and 1974 and the original PTEs were expanded to take in further operators. Tyneside became Tyne and Wear.
History immediately repeated itself, this time against the background of the 1974 three day week which badly delayed both chassis and body manufacture and a range of industrial disputes, not to mention that some of the new and very reluctant constituents of the PTEs had deliberately run down their orders and had also not spent ratepayers’ money on new Certificates of Fitness for vehicles which the new PTEs would withdraw at the earliest opportunity.
Thus by 1975/6 many operators of all kinds were faced with severe delivery delays and some PTEs started or were enhanced on a less than enviable basis with severe vehicle shortages.
The industry certainly does not learn from history. When the end of the grant scheme was signalled under Thatcher there was a rush to register vehicles before the last date and the manufacturers were faced with an embarrassing order glut, followed by a massive dearth – which led to the demise of many long established names and all but the death of a once strong indigenous industry.

Phil Blinkhorn


06/10/12 – 07:48

I agree entirely with Chris Hough’s final sentence.
Leyland had put right virtually all the unforgiveable (for a major manufacturer in the latter half of the twentieth century) major faults in the Mark 1 National, and the National 2 was a civilised and reliable vehicle, either Leyland or Gardner powered. Then arrived the unspeakable Lynx which in earliest forms gave the impression of having been designed and riveted together by engineering night school apprentices. Frequent malfunction of the air suspension system and the ZF automatic gearbox (especially in the 2 to 3 and 3 to 2 changes) caused great passenger displeasure and discomfort, and acute embarrassment and pain to conscientious drivers. Those passengers quite understandably having little or no knowledge of such matters were heard to comment loudly, in droves, “ooh he’s heavy on his brakes isn’t he” and “this is a dreadful old boneshaker isn’t it ??.” The latter remarks proved the point above all else, as the culprit vehicles were often very young in years. Arriva spent, I believe, around £10,000 per Mark 2 Lynx in “mid life refurbishment” involving reupholstered seats, new lighting, new handrails etc etc – all totally un-necessary. The effect on comfort and mechanical smoothness after this farce was nil as I found when, with an open mind, I encountered my first one – scarcely had we left the bus station before I inadvertently went over a twig or something to receive a painful thump direct to the spine, and then the passengers were treated to a missed third gear, Cummins engine screaming, and then the gear engaged before the revs could die down – I momentarily just mused over what I could have spent £10,000 on. The Lynx didn’t stay long in the Volvo catalogue !!

Chris Youhill


06/10/12 – 07:49

The above postings are fascinating to someone such as myself having never been involved in the bus industry. It is a revealing tale of management failings, poor planning, poor workmanship and lack of design development.
How sad that such situations occurred not only there but of course the British motor industry was just as haphazard. The late 1960’s to early 1980’s have much to teach us if only we bother to learn. No wonder that nowadays bus construction and fleet operators are so defined/limited.
Is not also strange that the Japanese who massively shook up the motor industry here, did not influence the commercial manufacturers to anything like the same extent. I believe that only Mazda and Nissan have made even a small dent in offering commercial chassis and even then with only lightweight vehicles.
Thank you gentlemen for your memories and insight to rather dark times and difficult operating situations.

Richard Leaman


06/10/12 – 07:50

Over the years OK bought quite a number of buses from Newcastle Corporation and later T&W PTE, but these went in the other direction, a bit ironic when you think about it. I know OK did have a couple of Regent V’s, but I don’t know if any of these eventually made it into their fleet, although I think I’m right in saying that one of the Leeds buses diverted to Newcastle did survive into preservation, but I don’t know where it is.

Ronnie Hoye


06/10/12 – 07:51

One other point on this. Whatever the problems within the industry, political meddling, starting with Castle’s clumsy handling of British Leyland,the PTEs and the formation of the National Bus Company and culminating in Ridiculous Ridley’s deregulation in the name of choice (leaving us with an effective national quadropoly) have not only proved the correctness of the maxim “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but have cost thousands of jobs, millions of pounds in lost export orders, diminished civic pride and taken away local accountability.
On the plus side some comfort can be drawn from the export successes of the last few years and my cousin, who is Director of Bus Operations for Go Transit in Toronto has, I’m pleased to say, contributed to this.

Phil Blinkhorn


06/10/12 – 09:01

Phil I agree with you wholeheartedly in your comments, and I am tickled pink by your very very appropriate nickname for Sir Nicholas Ridley, whose deregulation fiasco was based on the alleged success of the notorious Hereford and Worcester “trial area.”
We mustn’t forget either his even more incredible sidekick Mr. David Mitchell who came to Leeds on a promotional visit and stayed at the Queen’s Hotel. Writing in the press the Government minister said something on the lines of “I looked out of my hotel window in City Square this morning at 08.45 to see dozens of double decker buses all nearly empty, and deregulation will cure all this wastage.” It beggars belief that he had failed to notice eighty plus workers alighting from each of the said vehicles at the same time – would it be cynical to suggest that he knew full well what the situation was and that he was simply “helping the Government’s cause” ?? So, therein lies the root of the expensive and distressing shambles that we’ve all suffered since – as I see it the only beneficiaries of the 1986 Act have been the vinyl makers and the marketing gurus who have, at the operators’ expensive behest, turned the Country’s once mainly dignified buses (and trains) into mobile graffiti carriers.

Chris Youhill


06/10/12 – 10:54

Just as aside regarding David Mitchell. His son is the famous Andrew Mitchell him of the cycle incident at Number 10.

Philip Carlton


06/10/12 – 14:21

Ronnie The surviving ex Leeds AEC Regent V that ran in Newcastle is none other than the pictured 952. It is now under restoration at the Lincolnshire Vintage Vehicle Society A later one 980 ENW 980D is also preserved at Keighley bus museum. This one ran for AA Motor Services after sale by the PTE.

A Non


06/10/12 – 14:22

Years of dealing with politicians, local and national at home and abroad, has taught me that when those in power decide they want to do something, they generally do it and if they say something is so – it is.
In dictatorships they don’t have to prove anything to implement their ideas. In democracies they have other ways. They go out of their way to find obscure examples to prove their case, they manipulate circumstances and events so their case will fit or, as in David Mitchell’s and many other cases, see only what they want to see and take that as fact.

Phil Blinkhorn


06/10/12 – 15:05

As we all know, hindsight is an exact science. At the age of 66 I’m still a youngster to some, but I’m old enough to remember a bygone ere when buses were classified as ‘Public Service Vehicles’ and pride in the company, it’s vehicles and the service they provided was still regarded as a virtue and something to be positively encouraged. Today we live in a world run by people who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing” (Oscar Wilde) pride has become an outdated expensive and unnecessary obsession that eats into shareholders dividends and no longer has a place in today’s throw away society. I started at Percy Main at the beginning of 1967 when I had just turned 21. The Northern General Group was by no means alone in setting very high standards for itself, and throughout the industry many examples can be found where pride in all aspects of the company was still very much on the agenda. NBC and the formation of the subsequent PTE’s that followed were to change all that, at countless depots throughout the country pride was soon replaced by an attitude of ‘whats the point?’ The Tilling Group and many Local Authority Undertakings were perfect examples of how Nationalised or Municipally owned companies could and should be run, they were managed by people who knew the industry rather than a board made up of accountants, ‘experts’ and people with a political axe to grind, most of whom hadn’t been on a bus since they left school, and as for running a fleet of them ‘that’s censored’. End of rant.

Ronnie Hoye


06/10/12 – 18:44

Very true Ronnie and that goes for many other industries. Allied to the total focus on “qualifications” and little emphasis on common sense, practicalities and experience it’s no wonder so many economies are in such a mess.
I’d be the first to say that, on the other hand, working conditions for most workers have improved but the standard of service given has declined dramatically.
Going back to the photo at the top of this thread, does anyone know the reason for the nearside staircase which Newcastle specified for a while?
In October 1968 Alexander bodied Atlantean Newcastle 601 was displayed to the public in Manchester alongside Manchester Fleetline Mancunian 2048 and Sheffield Park Royal bodied Atlantean 293 and the feature drew some adverse comment.

Phil Blinkhorn


06/10/12 – 18:45

Long delivery times were also experienced in the late 1950s. Hull Corporation tendered for 5 Atlanteans on 8 December 1958 but did not receive the first two until May 1960. MCCW got the order for the bodies on 16 March 1959. (it charged £5 10s per bus for a certificate of fitness!)
But the five AEC Reliances that were ordered in February 1959 arrived in February 1960.
When Mr Pulfrey obtained authority for ten 35 foot long single deck trolleybuses with Roe bodies on a Sunbeam “Transit” chassis in November 1958 he told the Transport Committee that he had been quoted two year’s delivery.
On more than one occasion in the mid/late 1950s Walter Haigh who succeeded Pulfrey asked for permission to place orders well in advance due to long delivery times.

Malcolm J Wells


07/10/12 – 08:08

The above mentioned Nicolas Ridley will go down in history as one of the intransigent bigots of all time. I recall penning part of the London Country response to the Deregulation “Green Paper” on behalf of the MD, Colin Clubb. The LCBS input, together with the contributions from other NBC companies, was collated and edited into the National Bus attempt to introduce some semblance of reality and common sense into the impending legislation. The other parts of the bus industry, the PTEs and municipalities, also submitted soundly based comments. It was all ignored totally, such was Ridley’s blind commitment to destroy public ownership at whatever cost, and equally, to wound fatally the Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its perceived important funding role in the Labour Party. The Transport Act 1985 was barely different from the “consultation” Green Paper. The considerations of the travelling public did not occupy Ridley’s interest for a microsecond. His motivation was purely political. His previous crass involvement in the Falklands issue, and then his deliberate escalation of circumstances that lead to the miners’ dispute, show him to have been the wholly destructive force that was brought to bear upon the bus industry.

Roger Cox


07/10/12 – 08:09

I don’t know the definitive answer to that one, Phil, but I can tell what I do know. in 1975 I left Tynemouth and Wakefields to join Armstrong Galley ‘the coaching division of T&W PTE’ Whilst I was at Percy Main I was a dual crew driver, so my experience of buses with centre exit doors is somewhat limited. Newcastle Corporation ‘as it was at the time’ for some reason had the staircase on the N/S side on some of the Alexander bodied Atlantean’s with the exit door to the rear of it. To the best of my knowledge none of NGT’s were like this, and I cant remember any United D/D’s with centre exits. Anyway, after a series of accidents, including I believe a fatality, the unions at both NGT and the PTE refused to use the centre doors, some, but not all, ‘depending on cost V’s life expectancy’ were removed and extra seating added, and the remainder were made inoperative, and since then neither Northern or Stagecoach as the former PTE is now, have brought any new vehicles into the area with centre doors fitted.

Ronnie Hoye


07/10/12 – 08:10

And much of what appears above in connexion with the bus industry, also applies to the mismanagement of the rail industry. All the EU wanted was accountancy transparency by separation of the infrastructure side and the train operations side, but politicians saw an opportunity to privatise the whole system by breaking it up into component parts, rather than, at least, complete regional railways. And the industry has been in flux since 1993, Railtrack/Network Rail, using outside contractors, then in-house staff, train leasing companies, but also government-built trains, short, then long franchises, with the latest Virgin/First fiasco and Network Rail still not achieving the levels of efficiency found abroad. It’s a pity the railways were ever nationalised in the first place, for shareholder control is powerful. But having done so, the governments never exercised that firm control to ensure increasing efficiency. BTC was a giant transport bureaucracy that needed this.

Chris Hebbron


07/10/12 – 08:10

Trouble is Ronnie, and Phil, your rant has substance. Everything you say is true.
I think I’ve said before that as a young, and cocky, well qualified musician, I had my legs cut from under me (metaphorically) by the experienced men of Manchester. It did me no harm, and lots of good. With experience, I matured and improved as a musician and a teacher. Qualifications alone don’t cut it.

David Oldfield


07/10/12 – 14:45

Chris H, your remarks about the railway industry (it’s probably an age thing, but I detest the the PR truncation “Rail Station”) have much force, but equally destructive has been the influence of “Left” and “Right” domestic pendulum politics, whereby governments of utterly opposed persuasion seek to undo the economic structure of their predecessors. The separation of track/infrastructure and service operation in a manner akin to the roads was envisaged in the very early days of the railway industry, and was jettisoned in favour of unified control of track and trains. The present profiteering shambles in the UK is inexcusable, and the inefficiency is reflected in exorbitant ticket prices.
Yet again, we have wandered away from the subject matter above, but don’t we get some interesting contributions to discuss?

Roger Cox


07/10/12 – 17:56

Wasn’t one Prof. John Hibbs the architect of deregulation? (and consequently the dismemberment of the NBC which was seen as necessary to ensure its success). Now John Hibbs might have been a gifted academic – and his “The History of British Bus Services” (David & Charles, 1968/1989) is a good read – but I would have thought that politicians like Nicholas Ridley et. al. might have had the nouse (good Yorkshire word there) to avoid taking practical advice on the organisation and regulation of the entire English and Welsh stage-carriage sector from somebody whose sole experience of day-to-day management of bus operations was limited to the spectacularly unsuccessful ownership of the tiny and rural Corona Coaches (of Sudbury).

Philip Rushworth


07/10/12 – 17:57

The Thatcher Government was ideologically opposed to public transport.
Two quotes illustrate this one:
“anyone on public transport after the age of 25 is a failure” – Baroness Thatcher.
“all of you should be running a service individually” Nicholas Ridley to a group of Hull drivers in 1984.
This is not an anti Tory rant but a honest recall of past events.

Chris Hough


08/10/12 – 08:31

Doubts about road service licensing had been expressed from the very beginning of the system but once the bus industry was no longer financially viable overall and unable to ‘pay its way’ the regulatory regime was bound to be questioned with greater vigour.
I know Professor John Hibbs well. He is a libertarian. His pamphlet (in the series Hobart Papers) ‘Transport for Passengers’ published in 1963 (and in revised form in 1971) provides a convincing demolition of the road service licensing as then practised and I consider this to be a seminal piece.
Looking back at the period when I was studying for corporate membership of The Chartered Institute of Transport (shortly after the second edition of Hibbs’ paper had been published) it was notable that reference to Hibbs’ critique of the system was ignored – presumably in the hope that it would go away.
Hibbs was not alone in questioning whether a system that had been introduced when the industry was young and recently developed was best suited for an industry that had matured and was in decline. Professors Michael Beesley and Stephen Glaister (along with Dr Corinne Mulley) weighed in with similar arguments.
In April 1998 I presented a paper ‘The Story of Bus Service Deregulation’ to the Yorkshire Section of The Chartered Institute of Transport which recounted the tale from the early days of the system and examined in some detail the process leading to de-regulation. This was published and is available in Proceedings, Volume 7, Number 4 December 1998 of The Chartered Institute of Transport.

Kevin Hey


08/10/12 – 11:48

I’ve devised and run enough academic and industry conferences in my life and had close dealings with the interface between a range of industries and academia around the world to know that there are three truths which hold whether the subject is nuclear physics, aviation, medicine or road transport:
1. For every academic thesis there are 100 other thesis which will disagree.
2. Academic theories which are not carefully and properly devised in consultation with those who have day to day experience in the industry concerned are generally proven, in time, to be either worthless and, at worst, destructive.
3. The appointment of people, be they academics or just from another industry, to give an impartial and independent overview and produce a report on which a government will act, on the basis of their being “experts” in management or successful in their own field, has been proven time and time again to be flawed.
The pressures of time scales imposed, the amount of knowledge that needs to be assimilated, processed and judged and the often skewed selection of the expert to fit the profile and outcome the commissioning government wants are the same whatever the complexion and location of the government concerned.
In terms of the bus industry and Ridley’s Act, I understand how a libertarian can justify the free for all that emerged in the late 1980s and into the 1990s with every Tom Dick and Harry blocking the streets with all but clapped out vehicles as they jostled to give “choice” to passengers and make fast profits by employing crews at minimal pay – as happened in, for instance, Manchester – but I wonder how the same person can justify, in their terms, the outcome of the virtual quadropoly which exists today where the small guys have been driven out of business, the big companies cherry pick routes and times of service, the Transport Bodies in the conurbations seem to be in the thrall of the operators and passengers’ needs still come well down the pecking order at a time when there is both economically and environmentally a growing need for public transport.

Phil Blinkhorn


08/10/12 – 11:49

Gosh! What a long and diverse discussion has arisen from my wee question about fleet shortages. To turn to Kevin’s point, however, I think most followers of this site understand very well that the financing of the bus industry by the late 1960’s had become unsustainable in its then form – I wrote a short OBP article on this very subject a little while ago. It is the subsequent political and doctrinally motivated series of disruptive and ultimately pointless reorganisations that most of us find objectionable. Professor Hibbs’ libertarian approach does not fundamentally alter the social requirement, (to those who accept that principle), to provide unprofitable bus services – only the degree of provision and the manner of subsidisation. It’s not surprising that many people just wonder what has been achieved by all the upheaval. Considering how successfully, in service terms, the array of provincial and municipal operators were working, the financial problems could have been addressed satisfactorily without it, and at much less overall cost to the public purse. The ‘old’ structure had many benefits in terms of passenger and staff loyalty and identity, (you just need to read these pages to remind yourself of that), that have been destroyed for ever. I left the industry the day before the NBC started to operate. Much that has happened since amounts, to many of us, to swapping a birth right for a mess of potage.

Roy Burke


08/10/12 – 15:21

Phil and Roy – although I can speak only as the humble holder of the RSA Diploma in Road Transport, and most of my long experience in the Industry has been, out of choice and job satisfaction, entirely practical I must say I admire your professional views entirely and I feel that you have both “hit the proverbial nail on the head” in your analysis of the present situation.

Chris Youhill


09/10/12 – 08:06

John Hibbs’ intense hatred of the Road Service Licensing system arose through his, and Bert Davidson’s, involvement with Corona Coaches of Sudbury, which the two of them purchased in 1956. He seemed to position himself as a latter day Basil Williams, set upon taking on the big operators, notably Eastern National, encircling his business. All his attempts to revise/expand his network were frustrated by objections from the “big boys”, and his antipathy towards the RSL system became a passionate crusade. However, the ultimate demise of Corona was very largely due to the misguided purchase, at an inflated price, of the business of A. J. Long of Glemsford in August 1958. The subsequent death of his partner, Mr. Davidson, compounded the difficulties, and Corona went bankrupt in July 1959. Nonetheless, John Hibbs always blamed Road Service Licensing for the collapse of Corona, and in his later career as an academic, campaigned long to destroy the licensing provisions of the 1930 and 1968 Acts.
Ironically, had the Ridley style deregulation been introduced in the mid 1950s, Corona would have been wiped off the map within weeks, just as, to give one example of many, Darlington Corporation was later annihilated by unbridled, unregulated competition.
My only personal encounter with John Hibbs occurred in an extended Traffic Commissioner’s Hearing into an application by an outfit calling itself Vulcan Crown that sought to run frequent minibus services between Heathrow and central London. John Hibbs appeared in support of the application, which was opposed by the many operators who already had services between the airport and London, and also by the licensed taxi operators. In short, John Hibbs did not make an impressive witness. Vulcan Crown did not win its case.
Mr. Hibbs must now be well into his eighties, but a picture of him in youthful days may be found here.  
Deregulation was a step too far for the bus industry. Norman Fowler remedied the unfair bias in RSL applications towards existing operators by changing the emphasis in favour of applicants. Before that, applicants had to produce proof of need. As Phil points out above, we are now, thanks to deregulation, suffering the state of huge companies operating as regional monopolies, who can do precisely as they please at will. The bus passenger, unlike the air or rail traveller, has access to no official authority to pursue complaints.

Roger Cox


10/10/12 – 09:20

Some very useful discussion here.
The quantity restrictions introduced through road service licensing was an economic experiment with the very clear intention of capturing the benefits of both competition and co-ordination. This is evident from reading Ministry of Transport documents at the National Archive, the Minutes of Evidence of the Royal Commission into Transport 1928-30 and the parliamentary debates on the Road Traffic Bill recorded in Hansard. A good deal of the evidence from operators associations stressed the desire, nay need, that bus operations should remain competitive. The aim was for ‘light-touch’ regulation to temper what were considered to be the worst excesses of competitive behaviour rather than to remove competition.
The reality was very different. From the very beginning the Traffic Commissions sought to establish complete and detailed control over key operational facets. They specified timetables as a condition of a licence and, of course, there was no authority or system of variation – that came later. Interestingly their powers in regard to fares were permissive but the Commissioners adopted a standard approach of making a fare table a condition of a licence also, even though their legal authority for doing so as a matter of general administrative policy was less than clear. Moreover, they insisted on standardising fares and operators specifying each fare.
I have to say in all honesty that I am not convinced that Hibbs harboured ‘intense hatred’ towards road service licensing or that his objections to the system arose solely from his experience at Corona Coaches (although undoubtedly this played a part). I say this because it was after the failure of Corona that G. J. Ponsonby at the London School of Economics and Political Science persuaded Hibbs to research the effects of the Road Traffic Act, 1930 upon the development of the bus industry under a Rees Jeffreys Scholarship. It is my opinion that it was here that Hibbs developed his thinking in questioning seriously road service licensing. Up until this point there had been little critical, systematic study of the system with just a few volumes available to the scholar, such as: D. N. Chester’s ‘Public Control of Road Passenger Transport’ published in 1936 and G. Thesiger’s ‘Report of the Committee on the Licensing of Road Passenger Services’ in 1953 Report. This latter report focused on the administrative procedures of the system rather than an economic examination. I do not have a copy of Chester’s book to hand but I seem to recall that he observed that the system may in due course produce the worst of all worlds.
To come back to the point of Hibbs’ stance on licensing: in his Hobart Paper first published in 1963 and republished a decade later he suggested retaining road service licensing with some key reforms rather than calling for its abolition. This is hardly the position of someone who possessed ‘intense hatred’ of the system.
I would have to revisit Hibbs’ work to establish for sure when he moved his position from reform to favouring abolition but it may well have been following the partial de-regulation under the Transport Act, 1980.
Although Hibbs was an early advocate of de-regulation (if one ignores Professor Arnold Plant’s paper to the Institute of Transport in 1931 deploring restrictive quantity controls under road service licensing) the key factor is to be found in the way in which the idea was developed by others and embraced and promoted by ‘think tanks’, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. These bodies had considerable influence on Conservative Party thinking under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. Dr Andrew Tesseyman’s Ph.D Thesis ‘The New Right Think Tanks and Policy Change in the UK’ – 1997 unpublished – features bus de-regulation as one of his case studies and our ‘paths crossed’ as he was working on this around the time that I was researching the roots of de-regulation.
I agree that road service licensing saved many small, independent operators and enabled a good many of them to remain in business as they were protected from competition from the large companies, but the detailed control of every facet of operation was not the intent of the architects of the scheme and the way it developed did the industry considerable damage.
Post de-regulation Hibbs has been a stern critic of the predatory behaviour of some of the large groups, and he has long argued for road pricing in order that each motorist pays at the point of use in accordance with the space they occupy and the time.

Kevin Hey


10/10/12 – 11:49

Hibbs maybe a stern critic of the predatory practices of some the large groups but such Damascene conversions are typical of academics whose blue sky thinking has wrought havoc on industries they have tampered with.
As for advocating point of use charging on a space and time basis – this has merit only if other road transport taxes are reduced so that discretionary use isn’t affected and the tax take is demonstrably fair.
The UK, indeed the world in general, has suffered from academics and economists who have in some cases a little, in many cases no experience of having to daily manage and operate a business in the real world, provide employment and suffer the vicissitudes of competition and ever changing legislation, commodity prices and changing customer demands..
The effect of their input is visible around the world today.

Phil Blinkhorn


10/10/12 – 11:50

There has been comment above about Nicholas Ridley. Ridley occupies a position in the bus world that is the same as Sir Richard Beeching to the railways and it is very difficult to have a reasoned discussion about either of these two men because attitudes are polarised.
Andrew Tesseyman made contact with me after hearing of my work researching the path to bus service de-regulation and we exchanged notes, as it were. During the exchange Andrew said that he had a photo-copy of the speech that Ridley delivered to the Annual Dinner of the Bus and Coach Council on 15 February 1984. This was the speech that caused the hearts of many members of the audience to miss a beat and the reports in the press and trade journals at the time covered the main points of Ridley’s address but not the detail. I asked Andrew for a copy of the speech as I wished to see for myself what Ridley had said.
Ridley questioned the dispensation of road service licensing and sounded its death-knell but he then floated a range of possible alternatives ranging from complete de-regulation to administrative franchise. One is left with the impression that he was genuinely open-minded about what might replace road service licensing. I accept that this is a minority view, and one that some people in the bus industry from that period seem unable or unwilling to accept; but the fact that the view is minority in no way invalidates it.
Andrew’s research discovered that Ridley had established a departmental panel under the title of ‘Road Passenger Transport Steering Group’ (RPTSG) to examine reform of the system. This was hardly surprising as further reform of bus licensing was in the Conservative Party election manifesto. The RPTSG consisted of representatives of other government departments along with a small number of external advisers that included Professors Michael Beesley and Stephen Glaister as well as Malcolm Buchanan, a transport consultant. The group was given the remit of considering all options except retention of the status quo. The view that Ridley wished to abolish road service licensing as then operating is absolutely correct. This was Ridley’s starting point, but that is not the same as saying that he was fixed upon complete de-regulation, although one must conceded that an advisory group with Professors Beesley and Glaister among their number may have leanings in that direction.
It was this group that suggested complete de-regulation to Ridley and this taken forward to cabinet and then published as a White Paper. At this point the decision had been taken and de-regulation was unstoppable in the same way that regulation under road service licensing was unstoppable in 1930. That’s the way the process ‘works’.
Ridley did not take advice from Hibbs, well at least not directly; other academics played a critical role here as Andrew discovered. In a few years time the deliberations of the RPTSG may be available for public examination at the National Archive and we will be able to better see how the decision to favour de-regulation was taken.
Critics of this process may care to consider that it bears some similarity with the way in which ideas for bus regulation was developed after The Great War. Then the word on the lips of policy-makers was not ‘competition’ but ‘co-ordination’. An internal departmental committee was established at the Ministry of Transport with representatives from operators and their associations – in fact it was chaired by none other than Frank Pick – to consider matters of bus safety but they soon strayed into the realm of examining and developing proposals for the licensing of services. It was their final report in May 1925 – an interim report had been issued a year earlier – that laid the basis for road service licensing.
Here we see that the pressure for regulation came not from ‘think tanks’ but from operators and their associations who managed to have seats on the ‘inside’ – and in time dominate public discourse along with other competitors such as the railways who wished to see development of the bus industry curtailed. The position of the bus operators was strengthened further by the alignment of interests between capitalistic owners and organised labour in the form of the Transport & General Workers Union.

Kevin Hey


10/10/12 – 14:45

Kevin,
I don’t doubt the depth of your research and the accuracy of the information you quote, however to opine Ridley was not fixated on total deregulation flies in the face of the major tenets of Thatcherism i.e. to de-nationalise and deregulate as an article of faith rather than a reasoned and applied matter of policy where such application could be proved efficacious.
Clearly it is now a matter of history that bus de-regulation, rather like rail privatisation, was badly flawed and has left the industry in a much different state to that which was intended.
It is interesting to note that the concept of public transport as it developed in the 20th century was allied to the idea of public service – thus Public Service Vehicle.
The involvement of local councils in the provision of transport was on the basis of joint funding – from ratepayers in general and from the paying passenger in particular – with the aim of providing a service to allow people to travel at a reasonable price from and to where they wanted to be.
Some operators got it very wrong and the service was always a drain on the rates but the idea of service remained. Some got it very right.
Stockport, for instance, renewed its fleet in the 1960s, kept fares at a reasonable level and provided excellent service to all parts of the County Borough with clean and comfortable vehicles. In 1969 they handed a fleet to SELNEC, all but a handful being under 12 years old, and that handful were usefully used elsewhere in the SELNEC system to replace older vehicles. At the same time it handed over a brand new depot and engineering works and the final balance sheet showed a healthy profit which helped keep the general rate down.
Whilst SELNEC and GMT had their critics, they continued the ethos of service to the ratepayers – an ethos deregulation destroyed and replaced with profit before all.
The resulting bus wars in Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s not only gave poor levels of service but brought the industry into disrepute. The Stockport and Oxford Rd corridors became over congested with rival operators whilst other areas saw service reductions and complete withdrawal of service in the evening.
The well known debacle of UK North (trading as GM Buses) was a direct and dangerous result of deregulation.
As of September 2010 the Greater Manchester PTE (now transport for Greater Manchester) supplied information that showed no less than 343 routes had to be supported by subsidy for part of or the whole service.
Subsidising bus routes from the rates through an elected council’s transport committee operating a service which puts its losses or profits into the rates is one thing.
Subsidising tendered for services through a remote from the voter executive which selects profit making operators and then pays for operating often inconvenient evening and weekend timetables is nothing more than a nonsense.
There is nothing wrong with blue sky thinking, devising ways of improving the way an industry works or even trying new methods. Where it all goes wrong, as it has in this instance, is when political dogma, academic theory and a lack of consultation with the professionals combine.
The end result has been the elimination of accountability, the creation of a small number of powerful major operators with profit as the first motive for existence and general public dissatisfaction with buses as a means of transport

Phil Blinkhorn


10/10/12 – 14:46

From reading the comments so far we can see that as ever, if you go to the right people all the answers are there, but no one ever thinks about asking the question. I remember someone asking me years ago “do you know the meaning of the words incentive, initiative and logic?” to which I replied “yes” I was told to forget them, as in most cases you’ve got no incentive to use your initiative and logic doesn’t apply. The same person told me he thought many economists and experts were people who looked through the rear window of a car and told the driver what direction to take. Many a true word, as the saying goes.

Ronnie Hoye


11/10/12 – 07:14

Economics: ah, yes, the examination subject where they ask the same questions every year, but the answers are different. Remember that war is good for the economy. It stimulates factory output, which generates more production of raw material, so it encourages more circulation of money, and it reduces excess population!

Pete Davies


11/10/12 – 07:16

Two other points need to be taken up.
It is your contention that once the idea of complete de-regulation had been taken to Cabinet and the White Paper had been published, the decision to proceed to de-regulation was unstoppable.
Thatcher had an overwhelming majority and at any stage of the passage of the Bill through Parliament the decision could have been aborted or amended right up until the unusual, but still viable, method of delaying Royal Assent for further consultation, had the government been open minded on the subject.
This may have caused embarrassment but the 1980s spin doctors had no difficulty in projecting whatever reasons and explanations necessary when the admittedly few changes of policy were made.
Of course that fact is that Ridley presented exactly what the Cabinet expected to hear and what the party dogma had defined. That, and only that is the reason the Bill was unstoppable.
On the subject of Ridley’s speech of 15 February 1984 is concerned, it seems to me and many of those who heard the speech first hand that his range of options were there to deceive the listener into believing all options would be thoroughly researched and discussed. This patently did not happen and the speech was an example of an oft used political device of laying out all possibilities to deflect criticism and reassure, whilst proceeding down a specific and unwavering path.
In 2005 in his book “The Dangers of Bus Re-regulation” Hibbs said “after 20 years of comparative freedom the bus industry today has become a commercial success”.
He’s right – as far as the owners and shareholders of the bus companies are concerned, but how many passengers and ratepayers would agree?

Phil Blinkhorn


11/10/12 – 11:36

Phil,
I gather from your postings that you are not a supporter of de-regulation, or the subsequent outcome; and I have the feeling that if you were having a party at home that Hibbs et. al. would not be included on your guest list.
My position is one of fascination with the processes by which ideas for regulating the industry in the 1920s and subsequently de-regulating the industry came to be developed, promulgated and ultimately produced as acts of Parliament.
Certainly Prime Minister Thatcher was driven by ideology. I think the phrase used at the time to describe her was that she was a ‘conviction politician’. Ridley was a true disciple.
There are three additional points that are worth making in this lively debate.
The first is that from the early 1970s questions began to be raised across the political spectrum about the system of bus service licensing. It is a matter of record that the Labour Government Transport Policy paper of 1976 made explicit reference to the need at some stage to examining the case for changes to the licensing regime, although I am absolutely certain that they would not have embarked on privatisation and de-regulation of the Ridley variety.
Secondly it is unfortunate that in the years immediately preceding de-regulation the Labour Party had moved decisively to the Left and the Greater London Council and some of the Metropolitan County Councils had made transport subsidy a central issue in challenging Thatcher’s doctrine. In this sense a large part of the bus industry was caught between a clash of two competing and opposing ideologies: one at local level, the other at national level.
Thirdly, following the return of a Conservative Government in 1983 Tom King has been appointed Secretary of State for Transport but in the reshuffle that followed the resignation of Cecil Parkinson from the cabinet over the Sarah Keys affair, Ridley was given the transport brief. It is interesting to contemplate some counter-factual scenarios of what might have happened if Tom King remained at Transport had Cecil Parkinson not lost his trousers.
I agree that proposal for reform can be halted at any time where a governing party has an absolute majority but the realities of our political system framed around parties means that once a policy gets ‘a head of steam’ it becomes almost impossible to stop. At some point a policy proposal passes the point of no return. This is true at the local council level too, where councillors sometimes have to vote to support policies with which they disagree; or vote against course of action that they privately favour. The situation that I describe applies across the entire political spectrum. That’s the way the system works, and it’s not ideal; in fact it’s verging on crazy but at the moment it’s the best that we’ve got and frankly the alternatives look much less appealing.
Dr Alan Whitehead, who subsequently became Labour MP for Southampton Test, made a very astute observation in regard to the intellectual arguments used by each of the two opposing political parties in the debate on de-regulation. ‘It is also clear that the Labour opposition had no real understanding of the premises to which Ridley was working, and therefore, concentrated their attacks on targets which did not exist as problems, at least from the point of view of the vision of the proposed legislation’. (Whitehead, 1995, ‘Planning in an Unplanned Environment: The Transport Act, 1985 and Municipal Bus Operations in McConville and Sheldrake (Eds.) Transport in Transition)
Certainly one can place a different interpretation on Ridley’s speech to the BCC to the one that I have set out, and I’m sure that at the time some were of the view that he was ‘going through the motions’.
What I find interesting about Andrew’s revelations relating to the RPTSG is his finding that the group consisted of representatives from a variety of other government departments. One is curious to know which other departments were at the table, and why? One cannot but wonder whether there was representation from the Treasury and if so how much the desire to curb public spending on bus subsidy further was a critical factor in shaping the deliberations of the group and the form of de-regulation that they proposed.
We may know the answers to all of these questions in a few years time if the minutes of the RPTSG are available and lodged with the National Archive.
With very good wishes

Kevin Hey


11/10/12 – 15:54

It may interest the political watchers on here, regardless of their own views, that Southampton Test – as mentioned in Kevin’s entry above – is one of the barometers. It has, for many years, been the case that which party holds Southampton Test holds the majority in Westminster. NOT THIS TIME!

Pete Davies


12/10/12 – 08:16

Of course Nicholas Ridley was the obvious choice to take over as Transport Secretary. He was the only member of Thatcher’s cabinet who could actually recognise a bus. In fact – only apocryphal – I’m told he even once considered boarding one!
To be serious for a moment: I recall in December 1968 a meeting I had with Mr AFR Carling, a senior BET Director whose role in the industry has been mentioned in these pages before. At that time, BET seemed pretty relaxed about losing their bus interests. They’d got, (I have in mind, although my memory isn’t always perfect), £35 million – about £700 million in today’s money – for their less than half ownership in businesses with declining profitability, and were rather more excited with other interests, such as Rediffusion, Edison Plant, aircraft simulators, and quite a few more. If BET had been as strongly opposed to nationalisation as they apparently were in the late 1940s, maybe the NBC would never have been born. (But maybe Phil or Kevin, or somebody else will tell me that that idea is nonsense).

Roy Burke


12/10/12 – 08:18

If deregulation was seen by the Thatcher government to be the correct path for the bus industry, why then was the biggest UK market for public transport, that of London, excluded from the magic formula? Perhaps the destructive brutality of unbridled competition, in which commercial might obliterated inconvenient competitive innovation, was a bit too much to stomach for the seat of government and the home of politically influential financial organisations. As it is, London is specially treated in respect of its financial support for public transport, which is massively and disproportionately weighted in its favour in comparison with the deregulated rest of the country. This, amongst other things, allows the current mayor to treat Transport for London as a personal public relations machine, and expend upwards of £7.8 million on a handful of absurd, vanity project “Routemasters”. Elsewhere, in the deregulated provinces, county councils are cutting bus subsidies savagely. In my own county, all such subsidies have been withdrawn to save a mere £1.4 million. Deregulation, like railway privatisation, was born of political dogma, not sound commercial common sense.
That John Hibbs was a catalyst in this destructive policy is not in doubt. What does interest me is that he is described in his various writings as having “had a managerial career in the bus and railway industries before joining the academic world”. Can those who claim to know him better than I confirm this? I understood that he held a minor clerical position with British Railways before venturing into his purchase of Corona Coaches. I know of no other positions held by him in the bus, or, indeed, railway industry. If anyone can prove me wrong on this subject, I should be greatly interested.

Roger Cox


12/10/12 – 08:21

When I bought the photo from a stall holder on Tynemouth market, it came as part of a job lot of about 200, the bloke on the stall said “I just want rid of them, I’ve had most of them for years and nobody seems to be interested” how wrong could he be? Its certainly created a lot of interesting comments on this site.

Ronnie Hoye


12/10/12 – 12:49

I hope that no one is saying that other people are talking nonsense and certainly I have not said that. All I am doing is placing into the public domain the findings of my published research and people are free to agree or disagree or place different interpretation upon events.
AFR Carling was a staunch defender of road service licensing. He played a prominent role in the Institute of Transport and in 1965 was honoured with an invitation to deliver the twenty-first Henry Spurrier Memorial Lecture. His paper ‘Control in Passenger Road Transport: A View of Service Licensing after 35 years’ can be considered a response to Hibbs’ IEA paper ‘Transport for Passengers’.
The reasons for BET exiting the bus industry is worthy of study. From a strategic perspective a set of businesses with profitability under pressure and the likelihood of a great deal of political intervention in the future may have been the catalyst for BET ‘calling it a day’, especially if they could see better opportunities in other business areas.
Why was London excluded from de-regulation? This is a good question. At the time Ridley justified this on the basis of allowing bus services in the capital a period of adjustment under the revised framework of the recently created London Regional Transport (LRT). It is worth saying that at this point the House of Commons Transport Select Committee looked at this and was not convinced. They concluded that it amounted to an implicit admission of the potential risks associated with de-regulation in urban areas.
This may well be true but I think what has been forgotten is that Ridley ensured that the 1985 Act contained powers to extend de-regulation to London subject to approval by Parliament. When these powers were considered in more detail in 1987 presumably with a view to de-regulating services in the capital, (by which time Ridley had been moved to the Department of Environment), they were judged unsound as they implicitly contradicted some of the statutory duties of LRT. This meant that extending de-regulation to London would require primary legislation. De-regulation in London was thus placed in abeyance although the Conservative Party did include a commitment to de-regulation London’s bus services in their 1992 election manifesto.
Had de-regulation occurred in London this would have placed bus services in a similar position to before the London Traffic Act, 1924.
In essence there are four acts of parliament that altered quantity regulation: London Traffic Act, 1924; Road Traffic Act, 1930; Transport Act, 1980 and Transport Act, 1985.
Here is the crux of the matter, I think: the first two restricted competition and to a large extent had been framed by, or at least highly influenced by the bus industry (which was in favour of them), the latter two were imposed on an industry that was against them (which mirrors the points made so eloquently by other contributors).

Kevin Hey


12/10/12 – 15:30

Sorry not to have replied to various points for the last 36 hours or so but I’ve been en route to Texas to see the grandchildren.
I’ll come back on a number of points during the next day or so when I get a minute.
Enjoying the debate!

Phil Blinkhorn


12/10/12 – 18:01

Kevin Did the BET group not attempt a sort of comeback with the minibus operator United Transport a BET subsidiary who were going to target Leeds but got cold feet when Yorkshire Rider invested heavily in minibuses and possibly tried Manchester
It should also be remembered the 1985 act that at the time the centralisation of all services was being looked at in an effort to break the power of the largely labour local authorities. Some of whom mounted a concerted campaign against abolition just prior to the advent of the 1985 act. Oddly PTEs were left alone perhaps as they were seen as slightly easier to deal with than bus owning local authorities.

Chris Hough


13/10/12 – 06:50

Take care, Phil and I look forward to reading your next contribution. The nearest I have ever got to Texas is the word Texaco at the local petrol filling station!
Turning now to Chris’ excellent observations. I can’t answer your first point as I have not followed events that closely.
On the second point concerning the retention of the PTEs I hope that I can say something useful. The development, progress, fortunes and misfortunes of the bus industry are inextricably linked to local government.
The Metropolitan County Councils (MCCs) were formed and designated as PTAs thus setting policy for their respective Executive. The problem was that local government re-organisation established a two-tier system in the great cities of the large conurbations (and other cities and towns in the metropolitan areas) that had hitherto enjoyed unitary status as county boroughs. Many of them had fought valiantly to retain a unitary system but that was not to be, and some Metropolitan District Councils (MDCs) had a very uneasy relationship with the local MCC. This was very noticeable when the authorities were under different political control.
By 1981 the GLC and all the MCCs were under Labour control with the former committed to its’ ‘Fare’s Fair’ policy and Merseyside and West Midlands also embarking on a policy of large scale subsidy. South Yorkshire had adopted a low fares policy in 1975.
What happened then was interesting because some of the lower-tier authorities – the MDCs and London Boroughs in the GLC area, and which were under Conservative control as far as I can recall – mounted a legal challenge to these policies. The GLC policy was declared unlawful, the West Midlands policy was altered prior to judgement and the challenge to the Merseyside MCC failed. The different judgements turned on the set of wording in the acts of parliament which were different in respect of London when compared to the rest of the country. The Thatcher Government responded with the Transport Act, 1983 that set a limit to subsidy at or below which legal unchallenge could not be made. This was known as the Protected Expenditure Level (PEL).
The Conservative Election Manifesto of 1983 contained a commitment to abolish the MCCs, although as far as I can remember gave no indication of what would happen to the PTEs.
As it so happened the legislation abolishing the MCCs was occurring at or around the same time as the Transport Act, 1985 and the PTEs were retained, while quite a few other MCC functions were transferred to statutory joint boards. The PTAs reverted to an arrangement not dissimilar to that which had applied when the first set were established in 1969: namely the PTA consisted of councillors nominated from the lower-tier MDCs. At a stroke this, along with the PEL, effectively neutralised them politically since in many PTA areas the MDCs were under different political control and even in areas were they were under the same party control the common party apparatus was more difficult to manage; and de-regulation did the rest so-to-speak.
There may have been a fear among policy makers in central government that de-regulation and dismantling the PTEs at the same time was simply too risky.
I have a hazy memory that the Act abolishing the MCCs allowed for a MDC to secede from the PTA (and hence PTE) if they so desired, but I’d need to re-read the Act to be sure.
I hope that I have set out the matter correctly but if I have not then I’m sure that others will respond to correct my errors and/or omissions.

Kevin Hey


13/10/12 – 06:50

I”m sure I”ve read somewhere that the House of Commons Transport recommended that a PTA should also be created for London, but the government was fed up with political control of transport by Ken Livington”s GLC, with its destructive Fare”s Fair” policy of ridiculously cheap fares, slowly running LT into the ground. Ridley, therefore, created London Regional Transport, controlled directly by the Secretary of State. The GLC was abolished not long later. With full deregulation (1985?) the long road of route-tendering was introduced, uniquely. London was not immune from the chaos of deregulation, but was spared the worst effects of it. Of course, passenger numbers dropped off when more realistic fares were restored.

Chris Hebbron


13/10/12 – 06:52

Reading the very interesting debate made me look at the statistics for Kingston upon Hull City Transport immediately pre-1986.
In 1983/84 KHCT made an operating loss of £3,128,75 which was reduced to £2,664,444 by revenue support and Transport Supplementary Grant income from Humberside County Council.
The following year saw a loss of £3,568,099 (£9,027,290 in 2012 money) with a nett loss of £3.091,510. Fares had remained unchanged since August 1980 as part of s deliberate low fares policy
Passenger numbers had increased overall by 0.50%despite the numbers using its Crown travel card falling. The mileage operated had increased by 0.50%. A fleet of 231 buses was maintained to meet a peak requirement of 185.
In 1965 the department made a profit of £4,500 (£71,850 in 2012 money) from 63,172,000 passengers carried
Keith Bastow in his annual report highlighted the challenge which the new Bill would require, namely going from £3.5 million deficit to at least break even.
Even without deregulation could that level of support continue? Was this the case elsewhere? As several people have mentioned the existing system was under pressure from all sides and the level of subsidy was a major factor in the Conservative thinking.
Deregulation might not have been the best answer but change was needed.

Malcolm J Wells


13/10/12 – 17:48

Kevin, you are correct, I’m not a great believer in deregulation and history seems to bear me out.
Apart from the debacle in the UK bus industry, deregulation in aviation (an area in which I’ve worked and have detailed knowledge) has been at best a mixed blessing and at worst a disaster. Take the situation in the USA for instance where the initial round of deregulation was touted as the opportunity to widen passenger choice, reduce fares and open competition. After an initial surge of new airlines, few of which lasted more than a few years, the toll began to be taken of a number of long established regionals and the odd bigger carrier.
33 years on most of the once household names have gone, American Airlines is in Chapter 11 protection and likely to be taken over by US Airways which would leave just 3 majors handling all the international routes and over 85% of domestic service.
Fares have returned to the sort of levels common before deregulation and service on board has decreased. Sounds familiar?
Deregulation in the financial sector has also been an unmitigated disaster and I won’t go into the ludicrous situation on the railways.
As for Hibbs and Co coming to one of my now rare parties, perhaps a party would be the wrong place to meet up but I would have been very happy to have organised a conference for them to present their side of the story.
I’m a great believer in a mixed economy and the provision of public services. Having held senior positions in a number of manufacturing and service companies, been a Principal Officer in local government in a then unique Public/Private partnership, which I was instrumental in starting more than 30 years ago, and finally run my own international conference company specialising in aviation topics with events sponsored by IATA, various governments and airport authorities, I’ve developed my views based on a variety of experiences.
I was working in Greater Manchester Council from 1978 to 1984. When my operation was set up the Tories were in control. Thatcher had been an enthusiastic supporter of the MCCs in 1973/4. By 1984, with Labour in power in the MCCs and presenting a power base in the largest population areas, she’d changed her mind completely and, unable to democratically take charge via the ballot box, she decided to remove what had become a thorn in her side. At this time she was presenting herself as a bastion of democracy on the world stage.
Kevin says that in the period prior to deregulation the Labour Party had moved decisively left. At the same time it must be acknowledged that the Tories had moved decisively right. The paternalistic policies of the 1950s and 60s under Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Home had been buried under a tidal wave of dogma as the right wing of the party moved as far away from Heath’s disastrous industrial relations policy as possible, running rough shod over many long held party “truths” in the process.
My own position was supposedly threatened by Labour taking over control from the Tories at GMC but I can honestly say I received equal support from all parties in the Council.
Back in the mid 1960s, the formation of the original PTEs had been advised by industry experts (such as Albert Neal, ex MCTD) and whilst in many quarters there was anger at the elimination of municipal bus operations, the principal of local service, albeit on a more regional but still publicly accountable basis, was maintained.
The machinations of deregulation under Thatcher and Ridley totally ignored the concerns of the industry, sacrificed the public service element to the cause of profit and took away any level of public choice and accountability leaving only the Transport Authorities as a token level of control.
As matters have evolved the much vaunted tendering process, which was supposed to have given so much opportunity for choice has, because of the dominance of the big groups, become little more than a formality, the ogre of subsidies that deregulation was meant to see off has not disappeared and, in London, whilst the operators have to paint their vehicles in approximately the same livery, giving a patina of uniformity and hiding their individuality, we have Boris spending exorbitant amounts to get rid of articulated vehicles, which manage to operate successfully in cities just as congested and with equally as narrow streets as London, whilst protecting his new Routemaster vanity bus from open sale which, were it of use to others, could bring in much needed business from elsewhere.
I believe there are certain areas of national life which have to be provided with some level of local or national government subvention and public accountability. The realities of running a business for profit are such that you minimise costs and get the highest price possible for your product. For producers of discretionary products this has always been the case but the provision of affordable public transportation, from the early days of municipal transport, was always seen as a social necessity.
The burgeoning of private car ownership from the 1950s helped jeopardise the industry. Had some of the fuel duty and road tax for private cars been locally ring fenced and given to operators to offset the need for government subsidies, around 1955, we probably wouldn’t have seen the emergence of the PTEs, let alone deregulation.
I’ve said before, the need for extensive, affordable to the passenger public transport is growing. An answer other than the current situation is urgently needed.
We’ve travelled a long way from the above Regent V and for the next week I’m a long way from home and much of my reference material. Given my memory isn’t what it was, I’ll keep up with any developments on this thread but may not contribute unless I’m confident of the sources I can access.

Phil Blinkhorn


14/10/12 – 07:07

Phew! Bit heavy, but fascinating, Phil.

David Oldfield


14/10/12 – 07:08

Malcolm mentions Hull In the years following deregulation Over the period before the sale of the company they tried a number of different strategies to maximise their profits. These included a low cost operation Citilink using older vehicles in a two tone green livery and a successful short break holiday programme under the Kingstonian banner They also expanded out of the city into York by taking the coach side of Reynard Pullman over As the economic noose tightened these activities were disposed of . Several other companies courted the council to buy the business including Yorkshire Rider who were still an independent company at the time Eventually Cleveland Transit who in turn were bought by Stagecoach.
In contrast East Yorkshire seen by many as a weaker company who would quickly fall by the wayside with their small operating territory and motley collection of used buses have thrived and prospered despite a damaging turf war with Hull following the end of the joint operating agreement.
Today they have offshoots in Manchester (Finglands) and the Midlands (Whittle) and maintain a high quality fleet in all three areas.

Chris Hough


15/10/12 – 07:17

What a wonderful piece on the trial and tribulations of the bus industry since 1970 which I think is worthy of filing under “Best Bits” for reference about the problems with bus deregulation now. I have found the story of great interest which has confirmed many of my own views on the National Bus era, the PTEs and bus deregulation. However these events are a very good reason why this splendid web site has block on post 1970 bus photos. In my dotage I prefer to think of the good old days of the forties and fifties.

Richard Fieldhouse


Vehicle reminder shot for this posting


04/04/16 – 06:33

Re former Leeds 937 – does anyone know where this was scrapped? I found a photo of it last week, in a yard with a Hants and Dorset Bridgemaster and an engineless Bristol highbridge KSW for company. Its not at North”s where two of the later ones were photographed after withdrawal. Any info would be appreciated.

Steve Milner


05/04/16 – 10:11

Steve.
Former Leeds 937 passed to North (Sherburn) in 2/1977 and then to Askin (Barnsley) also in 2/1977 for scrapping.

Dave Farrier


06/04/16 – 05:54

Cheers for the info Dave – much appreciated.

Steve Milner


06/04/16 – 05:54

One aspect of the discussion above that has yet to be mentioned is the determination of the Thatcher government to cripple the power of trade unions, not only to ‘liberate’ industrial contributors to Tory Party funds, but equally to undermine the union derived income of the Labour Party. The T&GWU, like the Miners’ Union was seen as a legitimate target. The T&GWU was a major player in bus industrial relations at the time, and deregulation was seen as a way of weakening union membership and the collective bargaining structure of wages and working conditions in the bus industry. The whole issue of bus deregulation was entirely dogma driven (one sees similarities today in government policies towards Education, the NHS and the BBC). The environmental, social and industrial consequences were simply disregarded in the pursuit of a far right wing agenda. And then it became the turn of the railway system…

Roger Cox


06/04/16 – 16:27

Well Roger certainly around here we have the best bus systems ever in our history and it seems we have more people travelling on the railways Nationwide post second world war than ever before.
I remember the Trade Union dogma that kept modern buses in the garages unused when the industry was dying; and also the myriad of restrictive practices on the railways which still prevails on London Underground.

Roger Burdett


06/04/16 – 17:10

Without getting into a pointless political debate, it seems to me that there was always a need to introduce a ballotting system before union strikes. BMC/BL’s Red Robbo and his endless ‘everybody out’ after a show of hands, probably rigged and overladen with oppression, was typical of the pre-Thatcher situation, hardly fair to members, or, indeed the employer. And the disastrous Miners’ Strike did not result from a ballot, with attacks on the moderate committee members for trying to object. Many of these strikes had a political motive at the heart. I particularly recall that the power generation union had a Communist as leader. Harold Wilson used Barbara Castle to try to come up with a solution, but ‘copped out’ in the end, a pretty forgone conclusion. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ is a useful motto with strikes, for the outcome is rarely as successful as hoped for. Loss of wages can take a lot of time to make up, perhaps with an extra 1/2% on an original pay offer. London Transport buses went on strike around 1938 and 1958, both resulting in a great loss of passengers and subsequent reduction in staff. Strikes still occur today – I think that London Underground are suffering from two this month – but at least the members are able to decide for themselves and the system of voting precludes skewed results. I was always grateful that I belonged to a couple of unions which had pre-strike ballots, which did not always go the way the leadership wanted!

Chris Hebbron

Leeds City Transport – AEC Regent V – XUM 888 – 888

Leeds City Transport - AEC Regent V - XUM 888 - 888

Leeds City Transport
1957
AEC Regent V MD2RA
Roe H33/27R

Leeds was one of several operators initially not persuaded by the AEC “new look” front end (a preference with which I entirely concur), and its first Regent V deliveries retained the classic radiator design and hence the outward general appearance of the Regent III. These buses were of the MD2RA air braked specification of which Leeds became the largest customer, being powered by the AV470 7.7 litre engine driving into the four speed Monocontrol transmission. They were delivered in two batches, all with handsome, traditional Roe H33/27R bodywork. WUA 760 to 839 (with corresponding fleet numbers) came into service from January to November 1956, and XUM 840 to 894 arrived between March and October 1957. In the photo above, XUM 888 is seen in April 1970, four years before Barbara Castle created the heavy and inefficient hand of the West Yorkshire PTE that was to fall upon the municipalities of Bradford, Calderdale, Huddersfield and Leeds. I understand that these buses did not long survive in PTE ownership. Geoffrey Hilditch paints a revealing picture of the dire financial performance of the PTE in his “Steel Wheels and Rubber Tyres, Volume 3”. Later still, of course, another dogma driven politician of the opposite persuasion, a certain N. Ridley was to wreak even greater devastation upon the entire bus operating industry outside London, a saga that has previously been discussed at length on this forum.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Roger Cox


21/05/18 – 06:39

These buses were all withdrawn before PTE days.
The last of the WUA batch had gone by April 1973.
The XUM batch had perished earlier, all bar one (accident damaged) in 1971.

Dave Towers


23/05/18 – 06:44

These small AECs flattered to deceive they had an attractive body but were of light weight construction and when idling in later years the rattles were almost syncopated. In addition because Leeds were frugal with fuel a fully laden example could really struggle on the most gentle of inclines For some reason they always seemed to really lean into corners perhaps due to their lightweight construction I well remember one occasion when one really heeled over at the bottom of New York Street in the city centre so far over did it go that the platform was causing sparks to fly from the road surface and was leaving gouges in the roadway!

Chris Hough


24/05/18 – 07:34

Chris, I recall that our highly respected and informed contributor, Chris Youhill, once commented on this forum about the distressing propensity of Leeds City Transport to cut down the engine fuel pump settings on this fleet of Regent Vs. These buses, with their modest AV 470 power units, must have been truly pathetic performers after the fuel pumps had been reset to “economy” levels. Yes, for years, a great many Bristol double deckers got along (albeit steadily) with the 94 bhp 5LW, but, in my experience, AEC motors were never remotely in the same low speed torque league as the Gardner.

Roger Cox


24/05/18 – 07:36

A feature of Leeds buses of yesteryear which always mystified me on visits to the city as a young lad was the unpainted bonnet cover on PDs & Regents of LCT. Nobody has ever given me a proper explanation as to the reason for this, somebody said it was so the fitters did not scuff the paintwork if the bonnet had been painted when working on the engine, but I do not know how true this is.

Andrew Spriggs


28/05/18 – 06:42

This was always given as the reason It survived three managers so was certainly a proper policy rather than a managerial whim and was in use in prewar days. Even the last batches of enclosed radiator AEC Regents with enclosed radiators had the feature The nineteen fifties and afterwards Daimler’s and the PD3As had green bonnets oddly the Crossleys also had painted bonnets.

Chris Hough