Copyright Pete Davies

Southampton Corporation
1969
AEC 2MP2R Swift
East Lancs B47D

Here are an off side front and a near side rear view of Southampton Corporation TCR 293H fleet number 7. This AEC 2MP2R Swift was built in 1969 with East Lancs B47D bodywork. She is seen in Pound Tree Road between duties. I captured her on film in April 1976. There is something odd about the name of this road, which might be resolved if the UK ever goes fully "European". Does it refer to Kilogram or Euro? After all, there are people who think money grows on trees!

Photograph and Copy contributed by Pete Davies

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13/01/13 – 10:27

Please refer to the "Gallery" entry on the King Alfred Running Day for comparative views of the Strachan body on similar chassis.

Pete Davies

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13/01/13 – 10:28

Not sure I like ‘peak’ at the front, but otherwise, it’s a nice design in a simple livery. I recall that Seddon bodywork had similar peaks. Sign of the time, I suppose.
I think it’s fair to say that East Lancs bodies were not common along or near the South Coast. They are not too familiar to me as a Southerner.
Maybe the road should be re-named Poundstretcher Road, in recognition of the country’s plight!

Chris Hebbron

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13/01/13 – 15:07

No, Chris, EL bodies don’t seem to have had much of a following in the South. I think Eastbourne was the only other Municipal, plus Aldershot & District and Southdown. Southampton bought them because, as one Manager told me, they were "cheap and cheerful"!

Pete Davies

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13/01/13 – 15:08

I have a picture of another Southampton Swift/Strachan, MTR 424F, which I hope to submit in a Southampton gallery at some time. As for the rarity of East Lancs bodywork "south of Watford", you’re right, Chris. Aldershot & District and Eastbourne and Luton Corporations had them. To the east, Southend had some, and Lowestoft had a couple of PD2s in 1965. Otherwise, nothing, unless, of course, anyone else knows differently.

It occurs to me that Gideon Osborne would be looking to set up huge plantations of Pound Trees accessed by a thoroughfare called Recovery Road.

Roger Cox

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13/01/13 – 17:19

Roger: just the 8 Reliances and 26 Lolines at Reading, of course. Not southern, but geographically south of Watford, there was also also Cardiff with a sizeable number; the Merthyr fleet doesn’t quite qualify as ‘south of Watford’!
The Pound of Pound Tree is surely the place to which illegally parked, or similarly recalcitrant, buses would be towed; in order to suitably screen any double-deckers from public view, it would have been surrounded by trees, the traditional corrugated iron fence being insufficiently tall.

Alan Murray-Rust

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13/01/13 – 17:19

East Lancs bodies south of Watford must also include Southdown’s rebodied TD4 and TD5′s carried out between 1946 and 1950 of which there were a total of fifty nine plus of course their final batch of PD2/12′s Nos789-812 considered by many to be the best of the various body builders used on that chassis.
In later years East Lancs became much more popular in the region being bought by Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton and Plymouth municipalities all outside of the sites timescale I know.

Diesel Dave

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14/01/13 – 07:12

I must say, I like Alan’s theory of how the road got its name and Roger’s idea of a plantation of this sort of tree. It may be of interest that the bit of public open space to the nearside of the bus forms a gyratory layout, and is known – among bus crews at least – as WINO ISLAND. Guess why!
Thank you, Dave, for your thoughts on other South Coast operators of the EL (or Neepsend!) bodywork. Almost all of Southampton’s Atlanteans had the product and almost all are too new for these pages. I think the same applies to the Brightons and Portsmouths. The Southampton ones with other bodywork came from Plymouth and were well and truly clapped out when they arrived.
I look forward to Roger’s forthcoming "Southampton Gallery"!

Pete Davies

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14/01/13 – 07:13

I can’t imagine how I came to forget the Southdown examples of East Lancs, Dave. I saw them many times when I popped down to Brighton from Croydon. Thanks for reminding me. I agree that the Welsh examples should be included in our survey, Alan. Cardiff is certainly south of Watford, and I doubt that the people of Merthyr would consider themselves to be "northerners" or even "midlanders".

Roger Cox

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14/01/13 – 15:34

Southdown also had 40 East Lancs bodied Leyland Royal Tiger PSU1/13 saloons. The first 10 had rear entrances and the rest had centre entrances. All were later converted to front entrance OMO.

Roy Nicholson

Southampton Corporation
1933
Thornycroft Daring DDFC
Park Royal H28/26R

Here is a rare beast, an ex Southampton Corporation Thornycroft Daring. It was one of 9 such vehicles they bought, in penny numbers, between 1933 and 1937. They were all withdrawn in 1946 and sold. No.9 went to Safeway of London and, in the critical vehicle shortage days post-war, around 1949, it was pressed into service with London Transport. Note the LT roundel (on the radiator) that all such hired vehicles carried. I should add that it was very rare for London Transport to hire double deckers. The bus looks fairly presentable for one with an expected design life of 10 years, yet now 16 years of age, including the trials and tribulations of wartime minimal maintenance, even neglect. And there’s even a shine to the bodywork, which shows no signs of sag. Sad to say, it was not preserved.
Thornycroft buses were not that common – Southampton Corporation probably bought them because the company had factories in Southampton and Basingstoke.

Incidentally, the car following the bus is a Triumph Renown.

Photograph and copy contributed by Chris Hebbron

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Thornycroft Darings were very rare, SHMD Joint Board having the biggest fleet with just sixteen. Sadly, bus design was advancing so fast in the 1930s that Thornycroft were always just a bit "off the pace" being set by the technological leaders Leyland, AEC and Daimler.
The SHMD buses all had Gardner 6LWs, and Southampton’s last four 5LWs, but some had Thornycroft’s own petrol or (not very good) diesel. By all accounts the light chassis and big engine in the Joint Board buses made them very quick on hills, if noisy!
The SHMD buses also ran for sixteen years, and some were sold for non-psv use, so they were pretty tough. As far as I can trace, only one Daring survives, and that is a shortened instructional chassis in a museum in Sydney, the remains of a lonely export model!

David Jones

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It’s true that SHMD was a large buyer of Thornycroft buses – I’ve counted some 104 of various models between 1925 and 1936. There were a total of 13 Darings spread over 1933, 1935 and 1936, all with Gardner 6LW engines. The very last one to survive did not go until 1959! Maybe it was a ‘learner’. The unusual thing about some 1925 Thorneycrofts was that they had Vickers bodies. I never knew that Vickers built bus bodies; one always thinks that aircraft was their forté!

Chris Hebbron

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Sorry, definitely sixteen Darings at Stalybridge:
144 (ex-demonstrator with Beadle body)1933
145-149 (5) 1933/1934
150-155 (6) 1935
156-159 (4) 1936
147 & 148 were actually delivered with Thornycroft diesels, but SHMD knew a lemon when they saw one, and quickly swapped them for 6LWs.
Vickers built a good many bodies in the early/middle twenties, particularly on Thornycroft chassis; many were supplied to the GWR. The probable explanation is that at that period, bus chassis builders normally offered their products complete with a standard body which was sub-contracted to anybody with the spare capacity to take on the work at the time. Thus many Leyland TD1s with the standard Leyland body were actually built by Northern Counties and others to Leyland drawings. In later years this practice died out, mainly because operators had more idea of what they wanted and laid down more exacting specifications rather than just accepting what was offered.
Thornycrofts would have been on close terms with Vickers through the warship side of their business, as Vickers would have supplied most of the guns fitted to Thornycroft-built destroyers, so they were perhaps the obvious people to ask when bodies were needed. Vickers in turn would be desperate for work with the collapse of War Office orders for tanks, guns and aircraft at the end of the Great War.
Metropolitan Vickers supplied steel body frames to Manchester Corporation as late as 1933, but like many other early attempts at steel framing they very rot-prone and the vehicles concerned were rebodied sooner than should have been necessary. That seems to have been the end of Vickers attempts to build bus bodies.

David Jones

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I defer to you, David, on numbers! I assume that neither you nor anyone else has a photo of several of these Darings together!

Chris Hebbron

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As far as I know the record for a picture of Darings is the photo taken at Northern Counties in 1935, which shows all that year’s batch for SHMD; sadly they’re not finished, let alone painted! SHMD Darings do seem to have been very camera-shy!

David Jones

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17/10/11 – 07:26

Referring to Dave Jones` comment about Leyland, I always had the impression, due to similarities of design, that many Leyland bodies in the late 30s and 40s were built by Alexanders and Park Royal.

Jim Hepburn

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17/10/11 – 11:39

Indeed Jim, that’s true, and a good number of early postwar PD1 Titans had bodies contracted out to Alexander, Samlesbury and even one, in Samuel Ledgard’s batch of six in 1946, Lancashire Aviation – despite its aeronautical origin however, the latter was no more spritely than the other five !!

Chris Youhill

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26/05/12 – 20:23

I’m a bit surprised to find that there is no reference in the list to the left of either Hants & Dorset or Wilts & Dorset. Whatever has this to do with a Thornycroft bus? Well, The Red & White group – which is listed – had as a subsidiary Venture of Basingstoke. It was passed to Wilts & Dorset at Nationalisation. There’s a chapter on Venture in "The Definitive History Of Wilts & Dorset 1915 – 1972" (by Colin Morris and Andrew Waller). It seems that it was established as a means of getting staff home and back to the factory in their lunch break, hence a "venture" on the part of the company management. Mrs Thornycroft (JI’s daughter in law) is cited as being the inspiration.

Pete Davies

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27/05/12 – 11:30

Vickers of Crayford were one of the biggest builders of bus bodies in the 1920s, and they, also, produced the standard TD1 body for Leyland, the batches for Bradford being examples of this.
Southampton Corporation had many J type Thornycrofts in the 1920s, and also a batch of 6 wheel double deckers with English Electric bodies about 1929, so their small numbers of Darings were perhaps just a token order bearing in mind the earlier close relationship. SCT, in that period, were perhaps equally well known for contemporary purchases of Guy Arab models, with both composite, and metal framed Park Royal bodies, but they settled down after the 1936 orders, with the good old Leyland Titan, reverting to Arabs in the post war era.

John Whitaker

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28/05/12 – 08:08

Nottingham City Transport bought four Thorneycroft Darings with Gardner 5LW engines from Southampton in 1947. The four were OW 9932, AOW 263, AOW 264, AOW 265.
The NCT fleet numbers were 122 to 125 and the Southampton fleet numbers 6 and 60 to 62. These buses didn’t last long with NCT as all had been withdrawn and sold by 1949.

Michael Elliott