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

Lancaster City Transport
1949
AEC Regal III
Strachan B36F

This in my mind is what an half cab single deck bus should look like, mind you the 50-50 split livery of this Lancaster Corporation does help. I’m not all that knowledgeable about Strachan bodybuilders I think I went on a Ford demonstrator which had a Strachan body once when it was on loan to Halifax Corporation. 
This bus was originally delivered new to Morecambe and Heysham Corporation along with its sister vehicle KTF 582, I’m not sure what fleet numbers they had when at M&H, if you know please leave a comment. They were both transferred, sold or exchanged to nearby Lancaster in 1953, I think there was a close working relationship between the two corporations, I read somewhere that Lancaster actually took over M&H bus fleet in the early seventies.
Lancaster had a very strange way when it came to fleet numbering they used the registration number which meant out of there fleet of 37 buses in 1965 the lowest fleet number was 70 and the highest was 965, now that was different.

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In 1974, local authorities were reorganised – the most dramatic being the invention of Metropolitan Counties such as Greater Manchester and Merseyside. The City of Lancaster borders were extended to include the boroughs of Morecambe and Heysham. As a result, Morecambe and Heysham buses came under common ownership with Lancaster – hence the take over.

David Oldfield

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KTF 581/2 were new to Morecambe and Heysham in January 1950 and allocated fleet numbers 52/3. When new they were 35 seaters. They were withdrawn in 1951 and after a period in store were sold to Lancaster City Transport in October 1952. They entered service with their new owner in January 1953, being withdrawn in July 1967 and May 1968 respectively.

Just as a note, the Regent III double deckers delivered concurrently, 54-65 (KTF 583-594) had a much longer life in the resort, withdrawals taking place between 1974 and 1979, some of them converted to open-top.

Dave Towers

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Just to add to the above, the Regals were converted for o-m-o in January and February 1957, Lancaster commencing such operations later that year, (a process completed in 1982). Of course one-manning of half cabs was not ideal with the driver having to swivel around to face passengers and take fares, but with a fairly small capacity would be manageable!

Dave Towers