THE SCOTTISH
VINTAGE BUS MUSEUM
– LFS 288F
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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: 28th
November 1968
Photo: Charles
Roberts, Promenade, Southport,
31st July 2004
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For a summary history, click here on the
Bristol Commercial Vehicle Enthusiasts’ website: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/robsly/lfs288f.html
For
a photograph taken in Glasgow
by Alan O.
Watkins on the
26th June 1970, click here: http://sbg.fotopic.net/p10315579.html
BACKGROUND HISTORY
The last
front-engined Bristol FLF Lodekka, YNU 351G, was delivered to Midland General
on the 4th 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
10th 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 8th 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.
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“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
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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 1st 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.
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.
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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
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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.
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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,
Livingston, 1979-1980
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Eventually,
the main 1973/74 VRT/FLF exchange with the NBC was arranged so that members of
the 236th 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 Eastern scottisH in cream.
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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
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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 26th January, had to
be returned south from Edinburgh on the 30th 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
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Prior to
entry into service with Southdown as fleet number 549, LFS 288F was
downseated 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
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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,
9th September 1980
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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 8th 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 17th 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
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With NBC
privatisation looming, LFS 288F was assigned to Alder Valley North when Alder
Valley split into two on the
1st 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
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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
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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,
30th April 1997
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LFS 288F in its Viking Tourbus
livery.
Photo: Alistair
Friar, York, Late 1990s
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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
17th November 2001.
Photo:
Roland
Williams, November 2001
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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
27th 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 8th
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.
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Photo: Charles Roberts,
Promenade, Southport, 31st
July 2004
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