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

Devon General Omnibus & Touring Co Ltd 
1964
AEC Regent V 2D3RA
Willowbrook H39/30F

This very good looking Willowbrook bodied AEC Regent V of Devon General is I think about to start on its long distance run to Plymouth. It had not been in service very long when this shot was taken in the summer of 1964. It is on route 128 which was Torquay to Plymouth, the via blind reads Ivybridge and Totnes but on looking at a map it should be via Totnes and Ivybridge, still it will be right for the return trip. This route was one of the joint service long distance routes operated with Southern & Western National. Devon General also had an agreement with the largest city in their area Exeter, so Devon General buses did quite a few inner city routes and City of Exeter buses would be seen on some of the out of city routes.

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It is possible that the intermediate display is printed so as to show the places only once, thereby being "wrong way round" on every other journey.  This was a fairly common practice where operators quite reasonably sought to avoid wastage of the expensive material.

Chris Youhill

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It is a very smart body, perhaps slightly marred by the heavy look of the sliding windows.
Amazing how rear wheel ‘spats’ always improve the look of buses. Was this a common feature of Devon General?

Chris Hebbron

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

Devon General
1950
AEC Regal III
Weymann B35F

It is amazing how many buses after serving their time as public service vehicles were bought by private companies as staff transport vehicles. I have quite a few and I will title them by their original owner but they will also be categorised under ‘Staff Transport’ as well, thus giving another individual section of vehicles on the website. If you have any shots of staff transport vehicles send them along, if you don’t know the history no problem it can go on the ‘Do You Know’ page first I am sure somebody will know.

One of the problems with staff vehicles is that they just served a purpose of transporting workers, and their appearance really didn’t matter, hence in this case the overall single colour which makes it look rather drab. But if you ignore that you can see the lower body panels giving the Weymann flared skirt body and the distance between the windscreen and the top of the radiator which makes it look older than it really was. You can also see that the passenger doors closed inside the body at the top of the stairs rather than the bottom flush with the body panels.

A sister vehicle to the one above was sold on to an independent bus operator, when I am reunited with my old copies of Buses Illustrated I will add the details, all I can remember at the moment is that it was in a small market town and seemed to be an all white livery.