THE

THE SCOTTISH VINTAGE BUS MUSEUM – LFS 288F

DETAILS

Chassis: Bristol VRT/LL6G, built 1968, No. VRT/LL/109

Body: Double-Deck, Open-Top, Eastern Coach Works O47/33F (was H47/36F), built 1968, No. 17327.

Engine: Gardner 6LXB (was 6LX) 6-cylinder diesel, 10.45 litres

First Licensed: 28^th November 1968

Photo: Charles Roberts, Promenade, Southport, 31^stJuly 2004

For a summary history, click here on the Bristol Commercial Vehicle Enthusiasts’ website: http://bcv.robsly.com/.

BACKGROUND HISTORY

The last front-engined Bristol FLF Lodekka, YNU 351G, was delivered to Midland General on the 4^th September 1968. Two months later, Scottish Omnibuses Ltd. (Eastern Scottish) became the launch customer for the rear-engined Bristol VRT. The batch was given the fleet numbers AA280C-AA297C and AA298G-AA304G: 83-seat, ECW-bodied VRT/LLs (Vertical, Rear, Transverse engine, Long, Low frame) registered LFS 280-304F. ‘AA’ stood for double-deck Bristol. C and G were the garage codes for Baillieston and Dalkeith respectively.

The Bristol VR was originally conceived three years earlier as the ‘N’ Type: a multi-purpose single or double-deck bus or coach with a longitudinally-mounted engine in the offside rear corner, a high or low frame, 33’ or 36’ foot overall length and a choice of Gardner, Bristol, Leyland or AEC engines. In fact, the first prototype VR, GGM 431D, was a converted ‘N’ Type chassis and it entered service with Central SMT on the 10^th January 1967 after causing a stir at the 1966 Commercial Motor Show.

However, Bristol Commercial Vehicles’ largest customer, the Tilling Group, wanted a successor to the Lodekka that had a more conventional transversely-mounted rear engine, so that its overall length could be kept to no more than 31’. The difficulty that lay ahead was Labour’s 1968 Transport Act, which put BCV into a Leyland-dominated British Leyland Motor Corporation. Knowing that its survival was at stake, BCV hurriedly designed a transverse-engined version of the VR, by announcing the VRT in June 1967. Compare this situation to times when the customer base and ownership were stable. Despite the first Bristol LD Lodekkas rolling off the production line in 1953, ECW was happy to carry on providing lowbridge Bristol KSWs to Thames Valley until 1955 and it was 1957 before the final highbridge KSWs entered service with the Bristol Omnibus Company.

Another element of the 1968 Transport Act was bus grant legislation, in which the largest operators in the new order (the forthcoming Passenger Transport Authorities, the forthcoming National Bus Company and London Transport) defined the blueprint. For buses ordered on or after 8^th July 1968, Clause 32 of the Act specified that stage-carriage double deckers be either between 30’6” and 30’10” (nominally 9.5m) or between 32’9” and 33’1” (nominally 10m) with a transversely-mounted rear engine and a semi- or fully-automatic gearbox, if the government were to pay 25% towards the cost of a new one. For the longer buses, there was a catch that some would say was typical of socialist state diktat: the buses had to be of full height with dual doors and powered steering. At 32’7”, with lowheight bodywork, a single doorway and powerless steering, further lowheight VRT/LLs would not qualify for bus grant, so they were never ordered again by anyone at all. Although the criteria were relaxed under a less prescriptive Conservative government in early 1974, when seven pages of regulations came down to two, the ECW bodies on these twenty-five Scottish buses, with their instantly-recognisable long rear upstairs side windows, were to remain unique.

“Rear-Engined Lodekka”.

Official ECW portraits of sister vehicle LFS 286F when new. There are no side grilles to the engine cowl yet and the door glass is still level with the tops of the side windows. Note that the front fleet number is towards the offside on the front radiator panel and that the seating capacity is stated behind the rear axle on the nearside – the very places where the lettering would have been on a rear-entrance half-cab.

Photos: ECW, Lowestoft, 1968

Altogether, Bristol Commercial Vehicles produced an impressive one hundred and eleven VRT chassis in 1968, although this was a serious error to make without any prototype. The exact sequence of events was that BCV built three G-registration VRT/SL chassis for the Tilling Group:

CPU 979G: Eastern National Omnibus Co. 3000, which stayed behind to be displayed as a chassis at the 1968 Commercial Motor Show and was not bodied until spring 1969,
OCD 762G: Brighton, Hove & District 93,
YWW 539G: West Yorkshire Road Car VR24

and then the twenty-five F-registration VRT/LLs for SOL. The LFS-Fs were possibly up to six months late, as AA297C’s original destination screen, made by Norbury Brothers of Altrincham, Cheshire in March 1968 suggests. ‘G’ registrations had come into effect on the 1^st August 1968, so the SOL VRT/LLs really should have been ‘G’ registered, but this oddity was nothing compared to Bristol REMH6Gs XA273A-XA279A (LFS 273-279F), which did not arrive at the company’s New Street, Edinburgh, headquarters until May 1969.

As the Tilling Group had no desire for VRT/LLs, ECW decided to body the long SOL buses first. The result was that a mere four Tilling Group companies only received eight completed VRT/SLs from ECW between them by the end of that year compared to SOL’s twenty-five VRT/LLs. Sensibly, the Tilling companies only used their eight VRTs for training and no Tilling VRT actually entered service in England until after the formation of the National Bus Company in January 1969. It is also worth noting that from January 1969, the Scottish Bus Group (SBG) had no direct shareholding in Bristol Commercial Vehicles or Eastern Coach Works, because the (British) Transport Holding Company’s relevant shares were all transferred to the (English and Welsh) National Bus Company.

In launching the world’s first VRT service between Edinburgh and Balerno and in placing all twenty-five vehicles into service in November and December 1968, SOL had to bear the brunt of the major, unforeseen, design flaws in both VRT chassis and ECW body. It did not help that eighteen of the buses were assigned to Baillieston, which tended to receive brand-new vehicles to make up for its difficulty in recruiting and keeping maintenance staff, in the face of stiff competition for labour from Alexander (Midland) at Stepps and Glasgow Corporation at Parkhead and Gartcraig. With the prospect of the Scottish Bus Group taking over Glasgow Corporation Transport very much on the cards in late 1968 it would have been foreseen that this problem would disappear, but the takeover did not take place.

This is Scottish Omnibuses Ltd Screen List ‘C’ of 1968 from sister vehicle LFS 297F, as reproduced in authentic cotton canvas by Norbury Blinds Ltd of Birmingham in 2005. The font is Universal 57. Many thanks go to Fraser McKay of Penicuik for lending the original screen from his collection.

Weaknesses of these early production VRTs were:

BCV: No engine fan whatsoever and minimal ventilation to the engine compartment, leading to overheating of the fluid-flywheel oil seals and subsequent fires;
BCV: Stress fractures of the mitre box compounded by SOL’s drivers being wrongly trained to rev the engine in neutral when changing up a gear;
BCV: Overheating and stress fractures of the cast axle joints, causing wheels to come off;
BCV: The one-piece engine cowl requiring significant vehicle-to-vehicle clearance to be opened, falling shut on mechanics’ heads and becoming difficult to close after collision damage and warping;
ECW: The routing of the hot radiator return pipe near to wiring made inaccessible by the staircase;
ECW: The inadequately-high nearside door glass causing poor visibility and the resulting low nearside mirror causing head injuries at bus stations.

BCV engineers had to come north to assess what was wrong with the LFS-F batch, while the remaining undelivered Series 1 VRTs were recalled directly to Bristol from ECW Lowestoft to spend much of 1969 sitting in open storage at the Bristol Omnibus Company’s Lawrence Hill Works. First of all, SOL fitted an engine fan and side grilles. The mitre box casing was changed for a tougher material. Uniquely to SOL, the double oval grille meshes on the flat, rear part of the engine door were changed to vents that pointed downwards. Subsequently, SOL divided the wraparound engine cowl absolutely vertically into three pieces, but this action involved moving the two outermost hinges inwards. Whereas most other operators, not knowing that there were problems, could wait for the BCV recall programme and its re-issued drawing set, which preserved the top hinge locations by making the new central engine door kinked to taper inwards around the light clusters, SOL did this work in a unique way that involved three, very long, barn-door hinges. The side catches, identical to those found just aft of the Triumph Herald, Vitesse and GT6’s front wheels, were now redundant. The forward-most glass door leaf was turned upside down and the mirror was raised, but ECW was already making new door glass taller by early 1969, as found on SOL’s ten VRT/SLs (AA305-314: OSF 305-314G). (Once again, the second half of this batch should have been ‘H’-registered). On the 1974 introduction of the Series 3 VRT, which lasted in production until 1981, a one-piece rear axle did away with the dangerous, cast axle joints.

SOL modified the rear cowls of its Bristol VRTs in a unique way. Here are LFS 304F, LFS 302F & LFS 293F with their new National Bus Company owner, Eastern Counties, back in the town where they were originally bodied. Note the Western SMT coach.

Photo: Julian Patterson Collection, Gordon Road Bus Station, Lowestoft, 1973

Driving was slightly awkward by today’s standards, so it may come as a surprise to learn that the SOL management regarded the ideas of a non-secluded cab and a semi-automatic gearbox not only as soft options, but as corrupting influences on staff discipline. A warning notice was placed on Dalkeith’s VRTs warning driver and conductor not to fraternise during journeys, or else a return would be made to manual gearbox buses. However, an ironic twist to this idea of fraternisation was that the combination of a front entrance/exit and a lack of powered steering meant that a Dalkeith driver about to make the uphill turn from Edinburgh’s York Place into Elder Street for St. Andrew Square Bus Station (after the c.1970 closure of the East Register Street/St. James Square thoroughfare) often had to ask the conductor to turn the steering wheel with him to combat the surge of passengers’ weight towards the front of the bus. The same thing happened at outlying termini. The 150bhp Gardner 6LX engine, standard on SOL Bristol FLF Lodekkas from 1962, and the four-speed gearbox left the bus very slightly underpowered and the hydraulic throttle would fight back against the driver’s right foot, unlike the 180bhp 6LXB engine, five-speed gearbox and air throttle that became standard on NBC VRTs. One task that belonged exclusively to the conductor was the changing of the destination screen. In common with the last thirty-five Lodekkas bought new (AA37-46: CSG 37-46C and AA207-231: GSG 207-231D) and many others converted retrospectively, where no handles protruded down over the engine compartment and where there was no foothold next to the registration number, SOL’s VRTs’ screens could only be changed from upstairs. This feature stemmed from a union representation following a severe back injury to a conductor who was propelled backwards from the bonnet of a nearly-new AFS-B registered FS6G Lodekka on to the kerb of Stance C of St. Andrew Square Bus Station when the bus drew forward and stopped suddenly, but it missed the point that no-one need fall anywhere if handles were allowed to protrude through hatches in the VRT’s lower deck ceiling, as on everyone else’s ECW-bodied VRTs. It would be 1976 before SOL introduced one-person-operated (OPO) double-deckers itself.

The drastic, but understandable, 1969 decision, to dispose of the SBG’s one hundred and nine VRTs (most of which had not yet been seen, because they were still at Bristol on recall) and to order one hundred and twenty Daimler Fleetlines for 1970, was never regretted, although SOL’s particular regret was that the day of the brand-new, manual gearbox, half-cab bus was over. Simple arithmetic showed Central SMT that it cost the same to replace a broken VRT rear axle as it did to keep a Lodekka in service for a year. As time went by, “imminent” disposal caused Scottish VRT unreliability to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as maintenance standards fell. Alan Millar’s May 1975 “Buses” article “Change Your Partners” sums the situation up perfectly: “Many SBG VRTs were either sheltering over garage pits and assuming the appearance of pigeon lofts or were limping around their territories looking, and often sounding, like stock-cars or go-karts.” It only took a front wheel coming off a VRT/LL to kill a lady pedestrian in Glasgow and a Western SMT VRT/SL catching fire on a Paisley town service in 1970, to bring everything out in public. However, to keep up appearances, the VRTs were not to be allowed on to the open market and a proposal to exchange the SOL ones for West Midlands PTE, ex-Walsall Corporation, Dennis Lolines had to be dropped. There was also speculation about deals with the Bristol Omnibus Company and China Motor Bus. Twenty of the SOL VRT/LLs nearly went to Eastern National in early 1971, but as Alexander (Midland’s) fifteen VRT/SLs had been delayed so that they could be assigned ECW instead of Alexander bodies, the fifteen were able to go there in a late-1971 exchange for Bristol FLFs.

If a deal had been struck, West Midlands PTE Dennis Lolines, like the one on the left, could have appeared in Scotland, in exchange for SOL’s Bristol VRT/LL6Gs. However, it was ex-Southdown 2089 (KPM 89E), a Bristol FLF, that eventually replaced LFS 288F, becoming SOL’s AA989I in 1973.

Photos: Eamonn Kentell, Walsall, 1960 & Busspot.webspace.fish.co.uk (no link now), Livingston, 1979-1980

Eventually, the main 1973/74 VRT/FLF exchange with the NBC was arranged so that members of the 236^th Sanction of Bristol FLFs would be exchanged for the ninety-one remaining SBG VRTs in strict chassis number order, allowing for the fact that the SBG did not want Bristol or Leyland-engined FLFs, nor any semi-automatic ones. SVBM co-resident LFS 294F was supposed to be the first VRT to be exchanged, but it only made it as far as Dalkeith before breaking down. It took four attempts to get any VRT from Edinburgh New Street to Dalkeith under its own power, from which point the SOL VRTs were surreptitiously towed to within striking distance of the NBC to various places down the A1, namely Newcastle, Doncaster and Newark, before being started up and driven the short distance to the agreed handover points.

It took considerable effort, money, time and patience on the part of the NBC to overhaul the SOL VRTs to prepare them for service and for OPO in particular. Southern Vectis found that its ex-SOL VRTs had not even been swept out before departing Scotland, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. A typical finding from Eastern Counties’ enthusiasts’ Terminus magazine of March 1973 reads, “VR301 (LFS 291F) broke down on its first day in service at Great Yarmouth and has since been immobile.” The November 1973 issue refers to “the extreme engineering problems that Eastern Counties are experiencing with these vehicles.” The problems varied between a detached staircase, engine doors held on with chicken wire and an infestation of fleas, not to mention destination boxes and apertures that had to be turned upside down, in order for drivers to reach the handles. The situation was so serious that the original plan for Eastern Counties to receive forty-six Scottish Bus Group VRTs had to be cut down to thirty, with vehicles being diverted to Lincolnshire Road Car and Eastern National.

Despite this situation, it is strongly rumoured that an Eastern Counties LFS-F VRT/LL re-appeared incredibly at St Andrew Square Bus Station later in the 1970s as a Norwich to Edinburgh coach. Owing to a breakdown, a vehicle was required for a National Express or Scottish Citylink service from Norwich to Edinburgh and the only vehicle available was an ex-Scottish Bus Group VRT. The driver was told that the proper coach would meet him at Peterborough and so he set off from Norwich. On arrival at Peterborough, the driver was asked whether he would carry on up the A1, but to swap passengers and return to base when he saw the coach coming the other way. The driver rang from Edinburgh the following morning, still with his ex-SBG VRT, to say that he hadn't seen the coach.

It is a shame and an irony, given the secret towing that delivered it to Eastern Counties, that the first completed production VRT, LFS 280F, escaped a long retirement in Ben Jordan’s scrapyard at Coltishall, Norfolk by being sold on to Geoff Ripley at Carlton, South Yorkshire, being witnessed in a tow up the M1 for immediate scrapping there in 1985. However, there are six survivors of this batch altogether: AA287C and AA298G in service in California, AA296C and AA303G preserved in England and AA288C and AA294C in Scotland here at the SVBM.

HISTORY OF THIS VEHICLE

The first SBG Series 1 VRT to return to Scotland permanently since 1973 also possesses the oldest body on a VR in the UK. AA288C (LFS 288F) was assigned to Baillieston Depot in 1968. An identical match to original livery found during the restoration was Mason’s Thorpe Green 57, with an off-white band, off-white wheels and two off-white side advert panels in Mason’s Cream 139. There was no official rear advert panel because of the two Cyclone flaps, which were restored to the bus from a scrap Fleetline in 2002. The interior was a mixture of peacock blue (Mason’s Traffic Blue), grey and white, with blue and grey tartan seats. When re-painting buses, SOL used a darker green than ECW, but the VRTs did not last long enough to receive a repaint.

The fleet name was E^{astern scottis}H in cream.

Based in the Lanarkshire village of Baillieston, which was not absorbed into Glasgow until 1974, AA288C was used mostly on the high-frequency 211 service linking Easterhouse, one of the largest post-war housing estates in Europe, with the Killermont Street stance of Glasgow’s former Buchanan Street Bus Station. Note that the one-piece engine cowl cannot close properly. Photo: Julian Patterson Collection, Killermont Street, Glasgow, circa 1970
When the big exchange happened, LFS 288F was the first SOL bus to leave Scotland successfully and it arrived at United Counties in Northampton in January 1973. However, the exchange counterpart, LRP 736E, which arrived on the 26^th January, had to be returned south from Edinburgh on the 30^th January after it was found to have a Bristol engine, despite being recorded by the NBC as having a Gardner engine. This hiccough caused the entire exchange programme to be redrawn, with Bristol Omnibus and United Counties being excluded entirely. Eastern Counties’ KPW 481E was selected as the new counterpart, but this bus was exchanged with an available LFS 293F in late February. It made sense to keep LFS 288F at Northampton until March, when it was sent to Southdown in exchange for KPM 89E. Photo: Mike Penn, United Counties Central Works, Bedford Road, Northampton, 1973
Prior to entry into service with Southdown as fleet number 549, LFS 288F was down-seated to H43/31F, partly by losing its downstairs rear bench seat, in line with a trade union agreement for OPO. Photo: Julian Patterson Collection, Brighton, 1970s
After seven years with Southdown, LFS 288F moved on to Alder Valley, which fitted a five-speed gearbox and Autosteer power-assisted steering. The new fleet number was 895. By this stage, the irregular-hexagonal SBG destination display had been removed, so that an NBC destination box could be fitted, with handles protruding into the cab for the driver to change easily. The bus had now gone from having a one-piece to a three-piece to a four-piece rear cowl, because the long central fibreglass engine door cut by SOL had been replaced by a shortened aluminium flap, to improve vehicle-to-vehicle clearance in depots, and a flat piece (with no grab handles and no Bristol VR badge) at the bottom. The long, makeshift, barn-door hinges added by SOL were now redundant and had been replaced by more conventional examples. Photo: P.R. Gainsbury, 9^th September 1980
In 1983, Alder Valley carried out a very professional overhaul and open-top conversion on this bus and on LFS 296F, which is preserved in a version of this livery. The livery was also carried by Alder Valley’s Olympian coaches. The only two open-top VRT/LLs were put into service on the 8^th July 1983 on Service O1 from Windsor to Marlow via the Thames Valley. The service departed from Windsor Parish Church at 10.00, 13.10 and 15.20 on Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays and ran until the 17^th September in the first season. The outward journey went via Eton, Dorney, Boulters Lock, Maidenhead, Cookham and Bourne End while the return journey went via Pinkneys Green, Maidenhead and Bray. The round trip took two hours at fares of £1.70 for adults and £1.25 for children and OAPs, with alighting and rejoining being allowed along the route. Photo: Ray Ward, Showbus 1984
With NBC privatisation looming, LFS 288F was assigned to Alder Valley North when Alder Valley split into two on the 1^st January 1986 and then the Berks Bucks Bus Co (Bee Line) where it was renumbered 501 in October 1987. In 1990, LFS 288F was sold on to North (Dealer) of Sherburn-in-Elmet. Note that the electrical access panel is in Top Deck Travel livery. While with North’s, LFS 288F made its first trip to Merseyside, where Aintree Coach Line took it through MoT. Photo: Julian Patterson Collection, circa 1990
From 1991 until 1992, three different operators used LFS 288F, named “Regal Lady” by one, to serve Scarborough and Whitby’s tourists, until sale to Jorvik Tourbus of York. Shoreline Suncruisers is the only one of LFS 288F’s former owners still trading. Photo: Daniel Hill Photography, Scarborough, 1992
Still carrying Whitby Tour lettering as late as 1995, the bus seldom appeared on the narrow streets of York, due to its length, but received a new 6LXB engine and high-speed differential, enabling it to achieve 60 m.p.h. without difficulty. The photograph shows the vehicle in Jorvik Tourbus livery. Jorvik Tourbus became Viking Tourbus in 1998. Photo: John Carter, York, 30^th April 1997
LFS 288F in its Viking Tourbus livery. Photo: Alistair Friar, York, Late 1990s
As Viking Tourbus neared cessation of trading in July 2000, the troubled general manager went round his own fleet, systematically smoothing some of the more jagged features of each bus, such as rivets, mirrors and periscopes, using an angle grinder, silver gaffer tape, paper and various paints. It was not long before Ebor Trucks, landlord of Viking’s depot at Acaster Malbis, recognised the damage being done, seized the historic LFS 288F in lieu of non-payment of rent and moved the bus under cover to Escrick, to a location used by members of the Dewsbury Bus Museum. Meanwhile, Mark Telfer had been trying to contact Viking to buy the bus, but a call to the SVBM from the Dewsbury Bus Museum’s Scottish preservationist Ian Hunter made this action unnecessary. When the legal paperwork was complete, Mark Telfer bought the bus for preservation on the 17^th November 2001. Photo: Roland Williams, November 2001

RESTORATION DETAILS

Bus Doctor Roland Williams carried out a pre-MoT inspection and found the bus to be in exceptionally good condition from its Alder Valley overhaul. Work began on the 27^th December 2001 to repair front-end accident damage, re-instate the SOL irregular-hexagonal destination display and rear Cyclone flaps, renew outer panelling, replace vandalised, missing and incorrect body parts, remove the York City Tour identity and find a temporary set of matching lower deck seats. After a seven-month team effort involving The Bus Doctors, Vintage Vehicle Restoration and a repaint in Eastern Scottish livery by Mark’s sister Alison Telfer, LFS 288F gained a Class VI MoT on 8^th August 2002. Later that month, on loan to Hillfoots Vintage Bus Hire, the bus made its first revenue-earning journey. At the end of July 2004, the bus spent a week at Arriva’s Canning Road Depot in Southport, Merseyside when it acted as the transport for Mark and new co-owner Wendy Telfer’s wedding party.

Photo: Charles Roberts, Promenade, Southport, 31^st July 2004

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