Copyright R H G Simpson

East Midland Motor Services
1945
Guy Arab
Roe L27/28

At first glance, this pair are identical, but not so. See the differing sizes, and positioning, of the headlamps, and also the deeper edge of the canopy on D37 (far Vehicle).
These were delivered in 1945, then rebodied by Roe in 1954. I cannot be certain, but think that the seating capacity was L27/28R, both before and after. See also the paper stickers inside the lower saloon, perhaps telling of timetable changes, or advertising EMMS’ other services, sometimes advertising for drivers/conductors.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Les Dickinson

14/04/13 – 08:23

Incredible, Les. Never seen these in original guise but have seen the rebodies. As usual, the new bodies were beautiful and beautifully made – but interestingly, they were quoted as being 26′ 9" long. [Was this done simply by building the body longer, or was the chassis extended?] Roe rebuilt literally hundreds of war-time Guys and Daimlers but the sad thing is that few, if any, lasted more than ten years with their new bodies. East Midland, Tracky, County and Woolen spring readily to mind as do the, penny numbers of AECs and Daimlers for Sheffield A fleet.

David Oldfield

14/04/13 – 18:39

and of course, Sheffield Guy 45 David, rebuilt by Roe for the B fleet.

John Darwent

14/04/13 – 18:39

During the war official dispensation was given for the current 26ft. length limit for two-axle double deckers to be increased to 26ft. 9in. in the case of Guy Arabs, in order for the optional long Gardner 6LW engine to be fitted, by allowing it to project forwards in a ‘snout’ rather than have to move the front bulkhead back.
As it happened, the majority of Arab II’s continued to be fitted with the shorter 5LW, but the elongated bonnet was used irrespective of which engine was fitted. All East Midland’s Arabs had the 5LW, so there would probably have been a lot of spare space behind those radiators.

John Stringer

14/04/13 – 18:41

They would be Arab I’s, but were they 5LW’s or 6LW’s? And Roe’s part in building austerity bus bodies was something I’d only recently discovered. Few of them ever seem to have made their way south of the Midlands. I certainly never saw one and it’s very much a recent discovery that they built any. Duple, Brush and Massey seemed the dominant builders and their quality was in that order, too, I’d hazard.

Chris Hebbron

15/04/13 – 07:44

East Midland took only twelve utilities during the war. The first, in 1941, was a Bristol K5G which went to North Western in 1946 in exchange for an Arab I/Roe. Next came two Arab I’s with Brush bodies, the remainder were all Arab II’s with Roe bodies. Interestingly, East Midland managed to obtain consecutive last numbers for the registrations throughout the war. Five of the Arab II’s received new Roe lowbridge bodies in 1954. There was a further Arab II which was taken over from Baker Brothers of Warsop in 1953 and also rebodied by Roe. All of them went in 1960 and six years does seem a sadly short life for a vehicle with a new body but of course the Atlantean was no doubt responsible for that.
The question of the wartime length dispensation for the Guy Arab is an interesting one, production continued after the war with the Arab II, then the Arab III, all built to the extended length before the maximum dimension was increased to 27ft. So if it was an emergency wartime measure, how come the dispensation was never rescinded after the war, was it quietly forgotten about? It’s surprising someone didn’t ask, if Bristol and Daimler can accommodate the Gardner 6LW, why can’t Guy!

Chris Barker

15/04/13 – 07:44

Chris H: Jasper Pettie’s "Guy Buses in Camera" states the following:
"[the first] 500 were known as the Arab MkI. Thereafter the Arab MkII was introduced, and all had the longer bonnet and outswept front mudguards which had featured only on the 6LW-engined MkI examples".
On that basis, if they are definitely MkI chassis, they must have had 6LW engines. If as John Stringer states all the East Midland Arabs had 5LW, then these are MkIIs.
Caerphilly had at least one Roe utility ArabII, which survived as training bus until at least 1966. It has curved valances to the canopy and platform rather than the straight ones on the EM view, but this could have been a subsequent modification. BBF records it as rebuilt 1957, but the only obvious difference is that the front top deck windows are rubber-mounted, and there are two sliding windows per side on the lower and three on the upper deck.

Alan Murray-Rust

15/04/13 – 07:45

Chris… If you check Peter Gould’s lists, it was Doncaster’s wartime Roe bodied Regents that seemed to survive longest- Does anyone know why?

Joe

16/04/13 – 07:29

Joe At least three of the Doncaster Regents were to full peacetime standards being delivered in 1941 all of the Roe bus output for that year were to the same pre war spec. It is possible that the 1942 Doncaster Regent was also built to this standard using sored parts. Certainly Roe produced a full utility body by January 1942 albeit on so called unfrozen chassis for Yorkshire Woollen and Yorkshire Traction.
As well as building utility bodies on Guy and Daimler chassis they also built a number of trolleybuses building 63 of the 438 buses produced.

Chris Hough

16/04/13 – 10:50

Thanks Chris. I recall that the survivors mostly had proper domes and smelt rather funny. The lists suggest that Doncaster took very few buses during the war and got rid of the Guys fairly quickly: anything with an AEC engine (Bristol, Daimler, AEC) hung on, and were usually Roe bodied. The trolley story is even thinner: a very few utilities, rebodied by Roe after the war (presumably the same bodies that found their way on to the post war Titans.)

Joe

Copyright R H G Simpson

East Midland Motor Services
1954
Leyland Tiger Cub
Saunders-Roe B44F

This batch was a favourite of mine. The Saro body looked so much better than many contemporary offerings. These were sometimes to be found on East Midland route 99 Chesterfield to Sheffield via Ford and Ridgeway. This picture is in the maroon livery but they looked even better in the chocolate, biscuit, and cream livery.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Les Dickinson

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11/01/13 – 05:46

I couldn’t agree more, Les. We didn’t have any at Percy Main, but the Northern General group had quite a number of these. I always thought they looked particularly good in Sunderland District’s dark blue and white livery, they always had the look that they were built up to a standard rather than down to a price

Ronnie Hoye

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11/01/13 – 05:46

Seeing the caption to this one has prompted me to look at the East Midland entries in the column on the left. Yes, the chocolate and cream style was distinctive. My only experience of Tiger Cub/Saro buses was with Ribble.
I note some comments about migrating managers who took their old operator’s livery with them. Readers will know that Southampton’s traditional dark red – cherry might be the simplest way of describing it – was supplanted on the Atlanteans with much more cream, and a lighter red. Bill Lewis brought that arrangement with him from Manchester.

Pete Davies

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11/01/13 – 08:09

The Saro bodywork was a much more good looking version of the BET specification which spawned thousands of MCW Hermes bodies that took a number of iterations to look only half as attractive.

Phil Blinkhorn

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11/01/13 – 15:58

Interesting to note that probably the three largest fleets of these Saro/Tiger Cubs, Ribble, East Midland and NGT all ended up in unrelieved dark red/maroon livery. Even so they still looked smart.

Eric Bawden

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12/01/13 – 06:23

Interesting too that, to the best of my knowledge, this type of body was never built on a Reliance.

Chris Barker

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12/01/13 – 13:55

Good point, Chris, I cant say that I’ve ever seen these on anything other than a Tiger Cub. According to the bus chassis lists, the NGT group had 31 in total, DCN 843/857 ‘Northern’ and OUP 655/670 ‘Sunderland District’ all delivered in 1954

Ronnie Hoye

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12/01/13 – 16:28

One type that did share the body was the SARO Integral which was Gardner powered which appeared around 1953.
If I remember correctly this was unique and the sole example went to Maidstone and District as SO68 registered as RKE 540 see www.flickr.com/
It ended up with Berresford Cheddleton who ran it in a livery that looked very similar to PMT between 1966 and 1968 with the fleet number 28.

Phil Blinkhorn

ps I’ve found a photo in Berresford’s colours www.flicker.com/

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13/01/13 – 07:30

…and preserved Guy LUF SARO demonstrator LJW 336!

Ian Thompson

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A Guy UF demonstrator was also similarly equipped: www.sct61.org.uk/
Very similar bodies were fitted to BUT trolleybuses for Dunedin and Auckland New Zealand (the nearest we get to a Reliance?) and less similar, less attractive, 33 ft long Daimler Freelines also went to Auckland, the first as a complete build, the rest – 89 in number – ckd. Though looking different due to the panelling I gather the framing was the same.
Chris’s assertion about the lack of the body on the Reliance chassis seems to be correct

Phil Blinkhorn

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13/01/13 – 07:58

Here is a shot of LJW 336, the Guy Arab UF demonstrator which was subsequently purchased by Blue Line of Armthorpe. This view shows it in 1969 at which point it had been just a store for a number of years. It seems surprising that it was on the heavier UF rather than the lightweight LUF chassis.

Alan Murray-Rust

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13/01/13 – 14:11

Since posting my shot, I have found a number of views of LJW 336 in preservation, which refer to it as an LUF. I took my information from the PSVC fleet history PB4, which lists it as a UF. This is what also appears on the SCT61 site that Phil refers to. However, I have been back to my copy of PB4; this includes the PB4A appendix, which I had overlooked first time round. This corrects the original info and lists it specifically as an LUF.

Alan Murray-Rust

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13/01/13 – 17:27

Alan, that makes a lot more sense though the Freeline as hardly a lightweight.

Phil Blinkhorn

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15/01/13 – 06:20

LJW 336 was a special Guy Arab UF which was developed as a test bed for lighter construction. The result of this development was the Arab LUF, for which LJW acted as a demonstrator. The only objection to calling it an LUF is that the LUF hadn’t actually been invented when it was built!
I’m not sure about Manchester being the inspiration for Southampton’s new livery. Bill Lewis may well have taken the lighter red with him, but I think I’m right in saying he left Manchester before the Mancunians arrived (I was working under him at the time), and in any case the Southampton scheme doesn’t bear much resemblance to the Mancunian livery. However, I remember Ralph Bennett exhibiting a Bolton Atlantean to the Manchester public before then, and to my eyes the Southampton livery looks like the Bolton scheme with Manchester colours.

Peter Williamson

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16/01/13 – 05:08

Peter, you may well be correct about the origins of the Bill Lewis style of Southampton livery. I suspect from what you say it is something of a hybrid: Bolton style so far as ‘what colour is where’ is concerned, but using the brighter Manchester red. It wasn’t just the Transport Department managers who had this idea of taking their old liveries with them: the then City Engineer in Southampton had come from Swindon, and brought that Council’s shade of blue with him.

Pete Davies

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

East Midland Motor Services 
1958
Leyland Tiger Cub PSUC1/2
Willowbrook DP41F

Not an operator I know very much about but on researching this particular vehicle it would appear that it started its life with a fleet number of C40. I have come across a photo of XRR 535 C35 which was in a livery of all Cream with a single coloured band below the window did this vehicle start life as cream coach? I am not sure what their prefix fleet letters stood for ‘C’ For coach ‘D’ for double decker I can guess at but ‘R’ ‘O’ ‘L’ which were for single deckers do not mean much to me. If you know please leave a comment. It would appear that East Midland at one time had a livery of Chrome Yellow for the body, Cream for the lower saloon windows and Chocolate for the upper saloon windows and roof I bet that looked good, has anyone seen a colour shot. The livery at the time that the shot above was taken was Dark Red and Cream but that changed to Dark Green in the early seventies.

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I recall the original livery which was very distinctive! It was almost art deco- very thirties- and then went into a sort of drab utility maroon. The green was presumably NBC….?

Joe

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I vaguely remember these vehicles from my Sheffield childhood (on the Derbyshire border, towards Chesterfield).
I quite liked the maroon and cream – because I was not then aware of the original livery, which had disappeared by the time I was old enough to be aware of these things. It is possible that this livery was derived from that of Underwoods – the firm which became East Midland under BET control. The original livery adorned a RM in the short time that they plied the roads of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
Over a period of time – in BET times – East Midland became joint owner, along with Yorkshire Traction and North Western, of one of the greatest coach tour operators – nearby Sheffield United Tours.
East Midland became one of my favourite operators – which I used regularly – and I was sad when NBC leaf green replaced the drab maroon. This was especially so when my favourite (J – M) registered RE coaches lost their cream and maroon for NBC corporate livery.

David Oldfield

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In 1977, long before the RM already mentioned, East Midland repainted an Alexander bodied Fleetline in the old brown/cream/yellow livery to commemorate their 50th anniversary. One of the 1965 batch, but can’t recall which one. It should also be mentioned that the famous bus photographer Roy Marshall (who once worked in Nottingham and was thus familiar with EMMS’s original livery) later became the General Manager of Burnley & Pendle and adopted the same colour scheme for several of that Lancashire undertaking’s vehicles including some Y-type bodied Leopards and at least one VRT3/ECW double-decker.
Going off at a slight tangent, Roy Marshall also did a stint as the boss of Gelligaer UDC’s fleet and when he moved to East Staffordshire (Burton-on-Trent Corporation as it used to be) he repainted this Midland fleet in Gelligaer’s old livery of green, red, and white – a vast improvement over the gloomy maroon and cream previously used by Burton.
Does anybody know of any further examples where migrating General Managers have ‘taken the livery with them’?

Neville Mercer

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Can’t remember which way round it was but Halifax and Glasgow shared a livery due to a demonstrator in one fleet being borrowed by the operator who liked the livery and adopted it themselves.
There is also the apocryphal story of legal action when someone saw the old Bostock’s livery, liked it, adopted it and upset Bostock’s.

I also vaguely remember the Fleetline, now that Neville mentions it.

Trivia: Can anyone explain why, with a head office in Chesterfield, all East Midland buses had Nottinghamshire registrations?

David Oldfield

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The 1965 edition of BBF5 says that the R prefix was for 30-foot long dual purpose vehicles, but that can’t be right because it shows all the bus-seated 30-footers with R prefixes as well. L meant long – i.e. 36 feet.
Joining Neville on his tangent for a moment, did Geoffrey Hilditch once set up a coach fleet at Aberdare using Halifax livery? Or did I dream that? The memory does feel very much like a dream . . .

Peter Williamson

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According to the Prestige Series book on East Midland (excellent B&W photographs by G H F Atkins; text by John Banks) the old livery was derived from United, who abandoned it in 1930 in favour of red and cream. The company was originally W T Underwood of Clowne, but with strong backing from United (virtually a subsidiary).

As for the alpha-numeric number series, the type-series letter seems to have been allocated in a rather haphazard fashion. Note that only the single-deckers were distinguished in this way. All of the double-deckers were just series D, irrespective of chassis or body manufacturer.

However, unravelling the tangle it seems this is how it went for the single deckers (Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin…) :

G – 50 x ADC 416A (Short Bros.) 1927 – series allocated to EM by United
M – 10 x AEC Reliance (Lowestoft – later ECW) 1929 – series allocated to EM by United
N – 10 x AEC Regal (Short Bros) 1930 (some rebodied 1939 with Leyland bodies taken from 1935 TS7s, i.e. type B)
L – 20 x AEC Regal (Brush) 1931 (of which 3 were coaches, designated LC)
L – ? x AEC Regal 4 (Brush) 1933-34
C – 5 x Leyland KP2 Cub 1934
B – 20 x Leyland TS7 (10 Brush; 10 Leyland) 1935 (4 Brush rebodied 1949 by Willowbrook re-designated type N)
B – 14 x Leyland TS7 (5 Brush; 1 Burlingham coach; 8 Leyland) 1936
E – 30 x Leyland TS7 (ECW dual purpose) 1937 (6 rebodied 1948 by Willowbrook re-designated type N)
F – 11 x Leyland TS7 (ECW bus) 1938
A – 10 x AEC Regal (Weymann) 1946
A – 14 x AEC Regal III (Third-hand ! Leyland bodies)  1947-48 (rebodied 1952 by Willowbrook and re-designated type K)
AC – 2 x AEC Regal III (Windover coach) 1948
H – ? x AEC Regal III (Weymann) 1949
J – ? x AEC Regal III (Willowbrook) 1950
R – All underfloor engine buses from 1952-62 (all Leyland chassis)
C (Second time round) – All underfloor engine coaches and dual-purpose from 1954 onwards.
L – ? x Leyland Leopard buses from 1963 (Willowbrook)
O – ? x Bristol buses from 1969 (ECW)

N (Second time round!) – various re-bodies (see above) also 10 second hand Leyland TS7s purchased from YWD 1949 and subsequently re-bodied by Willowbrook.

Please note that this is not comprehensive, and takes no account of vehicles absorbed through takeover. There were certainly 5 x Bristol L5G (ECW) in 1938 and 2 x Bedford WTB (Duple) in 1939, for which no type letter is quoted.

Stephen Ford

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Someone mentioned East Midland having a Fleetline in the old brown livery. This was in fact an Atlantean PD1/2 fleet no D177 registration BNN 177C.
Chesterfield corporation also had Nottingham registrations as well.

Alan Ridge

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Chesterfield Corporation had NU and RA registrations – Derbyshire CC.

David Oldfield

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R – All underfloor engine buses from 1952-62 (all Leyland chassis)
Some of these were in fact AEC chassis and the last 3 R496 R497 & R498 were AEC chassis and the same bodies as the L400 (400 RRR) series Leylands.
The O series were one batch of AEC Swifts O501 to O510. (NAL 501F to 505F then OAL 506F to 510F) Marshall Bodies,
Bristol RE’s with single doors. O511 to O522. ECW.
Bristol RE’s with single doors. O523 to O532. I think these had Marshall Bodies, I know that they had a strange 3 X 2 arrangement for the rear two rows of seats.
Bristol RE’s with single doors. O533 to O541. Leyland engines and Marshall bodies. I have not heard any news of it, but CRR 537J O537 was preserved, somewhere around Derby.
Bristol RE’s with Dual doors. O542 to O556. ECW bodies. I think O545 was the last red and cream East Midland bus, around 1975/6

Ian Couzens

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10/07/12 – 06:44

The question raised about registration numbers being issued in Nottinghamshire. It was from the days of the head office being in Worksop. Why on moving to Chesterfield it was not changed I don’t know. Hope this helps/ Don’t forget Clowne was also head office prior to Worksop.

Ian Bennett

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10/07/12 – 09:17

In response to Nevilles question above re migrating General Managers. When Vane-Morland moved from Walsall to Leeds he brought their blue livery with him prior to this the trams and buses were yellow and white or a deep Prusian blue rather than the flatter slate blue that became standard in the thirties.

Chris Hough

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26/07/12 – 07:44

The vehicle in the above photograph was taken over the pit at Worksop bus garage on Allen Street Worksop.

Mr Anon

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Vehicle reminder shot for this posting

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26/10/12 – 07:06

For those youngsters, who were deprived of the EMMS chocolate etc livery, I have appended some links to modern day efforts to replicate the livery.
www.flickr.com/photos/manofyorkshire/
www.flickr.com/photos/
www.flickr.com/photos/guy_arab_uf/
www.flickr.com/photos/deltrems/

John Darwent