Photograph by “unknown” – if you took this photo please go to the copyright page.
West Yorkshire Road Car Company
1948
Bedford OB
Beadle B30F
West Yorkshire needed a few small buses for certain routes to replace there pre-war Leyland and Dennis small buses. Bristol who were the main supplier of buses to West Yorkshire as they were controlled by the B.T.C. were not producing any small lightweight buses at the time so they ordered four Bedford OBs has the photo above.
FWX 547 Initially numbered 614 – renumbered SP1 in April 1954
FWX 548 615 – SP2
FWX 549 K616 – KSP3
FWX 550 K617 – KSP4
The first two were based at Harrogate and were for the Cornwall Road route which is the destination of the bus in the photo, other local services were also undertaken in Harrogate by the two Bedfords. The other two Bedfords were based at Keighley (the “K” prefix was for Keighley-West Yorkshire) and were used on the Riddlesden service which had a weak wood canal swing bridge.
West Yorkshire also had a Bedford OB coach with a Duple C26F body built in 1947 registration FWW 596 fleet number CP1 it was based in York and was used for summer city tours. I think it was the only one based at York but if you know different please leave a comment.
A full list of West Yorkshire codes can be seen here.
Copy contributed by Chris Youhill
You may be right in thinking CP1 was the only one of the little Bedford OBs based at York Chris. It was one of two OB coaches supplied to West Yorkshire in 1947 (646/7: FWW596/7). A further two arrived the following year (648/9: FWW598/9), all had Duple C26F coachwork and the batch was renumbered CP1-4 in 1954. CP1 was given an overhaul in 1957 at Central Works, and alterations to the coachwork included fitting of cantrail windows and perspex roof panels for its new role as the York city tour coach. It was withdrawn in 1968, being replaced by none other than CF1 (8848 WY), one of the two Ford Thames/Duple coaches taken over with the Samuel Ledgard business.
Brendan Smith
CP1 is now fully restored and in the Aire Valley Transport Group collection
Chris Hough
Bedford OBs are just like a big car don’t you think, and the crash gearbox wine was just a great sound.
Anonymous
With respect Anonymous I can’t agree there – the OBs were incredible commercial passenger chassis with “hearts of oak.” The amount of heavy service work that they could reliably perform with their modest 28 hp petrol engines was just phenomenal. I’ve had the pleasure, thrill even, of steadily ascending some very long forbidding hills with full loads – for example Norwood Edge from Farnley in West Yorkshire. The wartime service OWBs put in even more incredible performances than their peacetime luxury coach kin. I agree though that the melodious howl of the gearboxes in the first three ratios, followed by the “silent calm after the storm” in top was just wonderful.
Chris Youhill