The Three Counties Bus And Commercial Vehicle Museum

Presented at the Club AGM, 26/11/2002

Introduction
This year we have expanded our activities, and we are well on the way to attaining charitable status. It is also the year in which we have to cope with the sad loss of our Chairman, Dave Johnson. I describe briefly our activities below.

Monthly Meetings
Our year started in December with John Hambley’s excellent and highly entertaining presentation of slides of London Transport vehicles taken mainly in the 1960’s. The January meeting saw Peter Gomm kindly deputise for the booked speaker with a very capable talk and demonstration of pre-war Hornby ‘O’ gauge model railways. Jim Knight followed in February with his entertaining ‘Transport of Yesteryear’. March saw Colin Curtis return to speak on the Development of the Motor Bus, and in April Peter Lutman presented a different side of the bus operating industry with his talk ‘Confessions of a Traffic Manager’. We returned to the vehicle engineering theme in September when Alan Gurley spoke for two and a half hours without hesitation deviation or repetition about his career in vehicle engineering. Gerry Cullen brought a very different theme, and kept members spellbound in October with his reminiscences of growing up opposite the Handley Page airfield. Attendance at meetings has varied from 20 to 37; as I said last year, the hall is licensed for a ‘3 bells’ load of 180 standees, so please tell your friends. Once again our thanks to Mick Rolley, Avril Chapman and Carol Warren for keeping us fed and watered, and my thanks also to those members who have fronted presentations for us.

Other Events
I included in the Summer programme some trips on the Midland Red Leopard, but in the event, only four members asked to come on one trip, to Showbus. Presumably, then, these aren’t of particular interest, and I will need to think again. The event that was well-supported took place in the week Dave Johnson passed away, and thanks to Pam Johnson and driver Geoff Hudspith an accurate and rather poignant recreation of the old route of the 321 between Luton and Watford Junction took place with RT3496.

‘Other Goings On’
We have participated in a number of events in which members have been interested and have assisted. These are important - they get our name known in the community, and they ensure that we fulfil our charitable aims by educating the public about our vehicles.

The first such event was in April when we helped the Marston Vale Community Forest launch the Timberland Trail. The previous weekend saw Malcolm Skevington and I clear the private road to Houghton House for double deckers - for probably the first and last time a double deck bus will ever go to Houghton House. My thanks to Jim Knight, Martin Hawkins, Malcolm Skevington, Nick Doolan, Julian Davis and Mick Rolley for their assistance on the day, and to Colin Horton for making his van available for display.

In June a number of ‘Three Counties’ vehicles and our sales stand attended Quainton Bus Rally and a washed-out Luton Festival of Transport. July saw ‘Anoraks Day Out’ in somewhat better weather, with again a number of Three Counties vehicles and the sales stand in attendance.

August saw our attendance at the Woburn Vehicle Rally, and our own ‘Buses and Bygone Machinery’ at the Marston Vale Community Forest. Attendance was down on last year - both our own vehicles and members of the public - but those people who did attend found it interesting and we made a number of friends. My thanks to Mervyn Askew for bringing his photographs of London Brick vehicles, and to Jim Knight, Nick Doolan, Roy Warren, Nigel Adams and John Clarke for their help on the day, and to Colin Horton for allowing the use of his van for display.

The final event was the Transport Day at the Milton Keynes Museum of Rural Life in September, at which we had four buses. My thanks to Mick Rolley and to Pam Johnson for bringing vehicles, and in particular to Roy Warren and Phil Chapman for allowing us to ‘gatecrash’ an event I’m sure they had come to regard as their own.

You will have noticed the display and the sales stand selling bits and pieces. My thanks to those who have donated items for sale, particularly Mick Rolley and Derek Bonfield, and to those who have helped man it - Nick Doolan, John Hammond and Roy Warren, who have all at various times showed better sales skills than me. It may not look much, but we have raised around £75 from this over the course of the year without really trying.

I must also mention the newsletter, which is now excellently presented, and I hope more members will wish to submit material for it. Thanks to John Hammond and Nick Doolan. The website continues to be maintained by Nick Doolan and Jonathan Wilkins.

We have also received some small items of local interest. These were given to us by a widow of a former United Counties employee by Malcolm Keeley of Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Trust. These consist of mileage sheets, vehicle graphs, and other bits and pieces pertaining to the work of the Traffic Office from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. As such they will form an important resource.

‘Where Do We Go From Here?’
Hopefully we will elect a Chairman at this meeting and we can begin to drive the project forward again. In particular, we need to be seen ‘out and about’, so I would ask that if members have vehicles at shows, fetes, carnivals and so on, to acknowledge that they are members of 3cbcvm. A subject closer to most vehicle owners’ hearts is accommodation, and here we have one or two tentative irons in the fire.

Assuming that we are successful with our application for charitable status, we will want to apply for associate membership of Resource, the local museums service.

Matt Gamble

VYO 767 is the sole surviving member of a batch of five coaches (VYO 765 - 769) supplied to Tillings Coaches of London for tour work in April 1959.

It is a Bristol MW6G with E.C.W 41 seater coach body, and is powered by an 8.4 litre Gardner engine mounted horizontally driving through a four speed gearbox with an overdrive fifth. It has no power steering and the ever reliable vacuum brakes, so driving it when finished may prove interesting (I've been spoilt with modern auto and semi-auto buses up until now!).

VYO 767 passed from Tillings to Eastern National in the mid 1960's where it saw further use as an excursion coach. It left psv use in 1971 when it was sold by Eastern National, to a man from Essex to use as a mobile home.

It was regularly in use up until about 1995 when a major engine failure occurred and it was laid up awaiting repair. This repair sadly never happened, and it changed hands several times before finally ending up in the hands of a Yorkshire-based group of enthusiasts from whom I purchased it in June of this year. In November of this year VYO 767 was moved on a suspended tow from its previous storage site in Selby to undercover accommodation in South Bedfordshire - all went well on the day except for some difficulties manoeuvering the vehicle into its new home, which needed the aid of a tractor and several strong men! Unfortunately, due to an accident with the tractor, part of the offside front panel was damaged, however as the front pillars need replacing, the damage can be rectified at the same time. At present the coach is a rolling body with the gearbox stored in the boot, and two Gardner engines stored separately on pallets -eventually I hope to create one good unit from the two. On the positive side, the body is very sound and I have been able to source many of the missing parts. In addition, it has the benefit of a chimney and partial wallpapering - remnants from its days as a mobile home! I hope to restore it into original Tilling livery (grey and maroon) and as far as I know there are no other ex-Tilling vehicles currently restored in these colours. I hope that a full restoration will be completed in around 4 - 5 years - I would welcome any information about the vehicle's past history or has any photographs or details of the interior design, especially regarding the moquette style. All correspondence via the editorial address please.

Andy Lea

Just before the recent Showbus event, I was fortunate to have some friends from Edinburgh down to visit our region as they took time to take show a bus at Duxford on the 22nd September for the Showbus rally. A couple of my friends on the bus from the Edinburgh Transport Group are also interested in commercial vehicles and are conducting restorations on some 1960’s Leyland Trucks.

Having previously seen from the main road, the vast collection of vehicles contained on the site, I mentioned about the possibility of visiting the vast Rush Green Scrap yard near Langley in Hertfordshire. I was open to the idea of trying to gain access with my friends to view the collection. This was agreed and the guys who were staying at a motel near Huntingdon decided they would come down to Biggleswade, and let me navigate them to the yard. My transport for the visit turned out to be F371 WSC, a coach specification Leyland Olympian from the LRT private hire fleet, which collected me from my house in Biggleswade before we then trekked down through Hitchin to Rush Green's premises.

You get the impression Rush Green's yard is big when you drive past it on the B656, but what greets you as you walk through the gate is just an incredible sight. The total size of the yard is at least 6 acres and is just littered with trucks dating back to the 1950's. The vehicles just appear to have been driven in to the yard over its 35 years in business and never moved since, many have rusted into the landscape whilst others have been stacked on each other, sometimes 3-4 lorries high. It featured trucks I have not seen on the road for a long time, I must have seen in the region of 50 Ford D-Series’ in various conditions, the same with Leyland’s from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The business is primarily in the sale/export or breaking of trucks, but over the years a few buses have made their way into the yard and one of the most incredible is EDB 317, a 1950 Bristol L5G with Weymann body. It has been in the yard since the late 1960’s. It is very rotten as would be expected of a bus that had been sat exposed to the elements for around 35 years! Very little is left and the bus would require a total body and chassis rebuild if it was to ever be considered for preservation. I find this very unlikely and would expect the bus simply to rot away to nothing. It was joined in the yard by D49 TKA, a Freight Rover Sherpa, that was also new to North Western, although not of the same vintage (and I'm sure not of the same enthusiast standing) as the Bristol. The Sherpa had latterly been with Hertfordshire County Council and featured a somewhat striking livery of graffiti. This appeared to be still serviceable and being used by Rush Green.

Another rare sight was SKN 486H, a Ford R192 with Duple Empress bodywork which was new to Smiths of Sittingbourne in Kent, it appeared to have one time been converted to a mobile home, this too was looking very sorry for itself and is probably past economically saving. A Duple Dominant bodied Bedford YMT was present in the form of VDF 519S. This was latterly with Hats & Herts Coaches of Hatfield but had been laying in the yard for around five years. This was new to Warner’s Fairfax of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, a fleet with family connections as I had a great uncle who worked for them as a traffic manager during the 1960s heyday of the fleet. The body was looking sorry for itself but it wasn’t as bad as one would expect a Duple bodied vehicle to look after standing in the open for five years.

Newer buses also had a small feature in the yard, G272 and G274 BLD had arrived from Master Travel of Welwyn Garden City, these are Talbot Express Pullmans that originated with The London Borough of Brent, and both had retained Brent Council livery. Other vehicles in the yard included VWL 510X, a Leyland Cub with Reeve Burgess body conversion.

All in all, my visit was a very interesting one although short on buses, enough trucks to keep me occupied and my camera busy. I must mention that Rush Green do not welcome tourists to their yard, and that my visit was made alongside my friends who were genuine spares hunters. I suggest visitors do not trek to see these buses or trucks on the off chance unless you have a desire to purchase one for restoration.

John Hammond

It was a chance conversation with a fellow Stagecoach employee who attended the Bedford Gathering 02 and announced his attention to take one of the Stagecoach East Lodekka’s to the Isle of Wight for the IOW Bus Museum open day in October. At the time, I made a note of the dates and arranged to get some time off, thought no more about it after that.

On Friday 19th October, I awoke at 7.30am to the sudden realisation I was about to make a 300 mile round trip on a vintage bus which was new in 1966 in a time when buses had neither suspension, high cruising speeds or warm air heaters, and motorways were the stuff of a mad mans dreams. I have to say the idea of going back to bed for a bit and using my car seemed very a tempting one. I had to meet the bus at Stagecoach East’s HQ in Northampton and pick up a colleague at Bedford before trekking to Northampton, we arrived at about 11am to find Bristol FLF 953 waiting for us, and we loaded our luggage aboard and adopted a seat before we set off for Portsmouth where our ferry to the island was waiting. An event free journey was made, thankfully when ECOC 453 (I use the proper number) was new; its owners took the wise option to have a 5 speed gearbox that at least allowed 453 to chug along at a steady 50mph (on the flat with the wind behind us anyway).

We called in at Stagecoach Coastline’s Portsmouth depot to fill up with diesel, the garage home to at least four preserved Southdown vehicles nestled inside including Leyland PD3’s AOR 156B & BUF 279C. Once 953 was filled up, we then set off for the ferry terminal and our ferry to the Island.

After a relatively peaceful crossing, we meandered around the island to our hotel near Shanklin Station where we arrived at around 6pm. As the running day wasn’t until Sunday, we decided to do a guided tour on Saturday around the island using 453 - the Isle of Wight whilst being attractive, is slightly hillier than the Fens, and so 453 (and the brave drivers) had some work to do!

Our tour took in the very scenic but hilly coastal routes on the south west side of the Island that is used by the Southern Vectis Island Explorer service. We passed through Ventnor and then along the coast A3055 road past Blackgang and Freshwater bay before heading to Alum Bay. Sadly, at Alum Bay, only Southern Vectis buses are allowed to take the frighteningly steep climb up to the Needles viewpoint, so it wasn’t possible to recreate Lodekka operation up to the top, which ended last year with Southern Vectis. A native open top VR was on hand to transport us up to the top and back again so all wasn’t lost. The tour restarted and passed through Yarmouth, interesting coincidence as when new, 453 was of course based at Great Yarmouth! The last point of call after a trek back across the middle of the Island was to Ryde, where we had chance to have a look around the town. I took this chance to photograph some native buses in service, many of Southern Vectis’s 1982 batch of Olympian and the last vehicles to carry the Mushroom & Green livery have had the death knell announced, and so I aimed to photograph these examples whilst they still soldiered on.

The Sunday was the day of the event, so after breakfast - we loaded up the bus with our gear and set off for the IOW Bus Museum on Newport’s harbourside. Around 30 buses greeted us when we arrived, the basis of the event being the open day of the small museum and its collection of vehicles and memorabilia from the island's transport history. The surrounding dockside area is turned into a bus station and static display area for visiting vehicles. Free bus services depart the museum between 10am and 5pm at approximately every 10 minutes using a selection of vehicles and various destinations on old SV routes. My first ride was to East Cowes dockside on UDL 669S, a preserved SVOC Bristol VR in Tilling Sand Cream and Green livery, not a livery it carried during its life but still looking very smart. It was a nice vehicle to travel on, very loud and surprisingly rattle free for a product from ECW, I returned to the museum and took time to photograph the static displays. A variety of vehicles were on display, the newest being SVOC’s HW52 EPL, a Volvo B7L with Plaxton bodywork & HW52 EPX, a Super Pointer Dennis Dart that have just been delivered to the SV fleet and looked very smart. Older vehicles on display included a selection of Bristol Lodekka’s from the Southern Vectis fleet, GDL 764, a Leyland PD2 of Seaview services.

Other vehicles included CCG 704C, the King Alfred Bedford VAL and a selection of London Transport Routemasters & RT’s.

I had hoped to take a ride on KDL 202W, a Bristol LHS which had been restored on the Island into NBC Dual purpose livery, sadly the bus was not fit for use and did not turn up, but its replacement on the service was TDL 564K, the "Shanklin Pony" Bristol RELL, it was a bracing ride given the weather but the noise from the engine was superb, and even louder as the bus has no roof! We arrived back in time to see that its sister TDL 563K had arrived, this vehicle is preserved in the attractive mushroom / green SV livery carried when it left service, I took a short ride on this vehicle to Newport bus station where I departed to take photos of the current SV fleet in service.

We left the museum at 4pm for the long return journey home, and finally arrived back in Northampton at 10pm. It was a great weekend and a good running day, 453 did a grand job of transporting us to and from the Island.

John Hammond