Photograph by ‘unknown’ if you took this photo please go to the copyright page.

Great Northern Railways
1950
AEC Regent III
Great Northern Railways H56R

This photo was originally on the ‘Do You Know Page’ of this website but thanks to P Heywood for the following.

The "Louth" bus on your ‘Do You Know Page’ is a Great Northern Railway (Ireland) bus which I think had its main bus operations in Drogheda (County Louth). Their first bus service (feeding into their railway route from Belfast to Dublin) started in 1929 and finished in 1958. Although they were basically a "Northern" company, they managed to keep their presence in the south after partition by continuing to build and maintain rail and bus equipment in their large workshops in Dundalk (just south of the border) which is probably where this bus was built. Their services were taken over by CIE in the south and Ulster Transport Authority in the north.

If anybody has any other information regarding this particular bus please get in touch.

———

08/05/11 – 10:21

In the book ‘CIE Buses 1945-1987′ there are two pictures of AEC Regent IIIs of similar outline operating with CIE. One shows 1948 bus AR437 (ZH3936) at Drogheda Bull Ring in full CIE livery, which looks identical in body design to 442 shown above. The other depicts AR294 (IY5396) at Eden Quay, Dublin, still in GNR livery but with CIE ‘flying snail’ emblem on the side. Although the bodywork looks broadly similar at first glance, AR294 has fixed glazing in the upper deck front windows, and is of 5-bay construction. However, in both cases the bodybuilder is given in the captions as Park Royal. I did wonder if they may have been built by the operator on Park Royal frames, or were they delivered as complete vehicles? Either way they certainly looked most handsome vehicles.

Bren