Bristol Omnibus
1959
Bristol Lodekka LD6G
ECW H33/27R
Here is Bristol Omnibus Bristol LD6G - 961 EHW - GL8507, new in July 1959, waiting in Gloucester King’s
Square for a driver to take out the bus on the short 50B service to York Road (The Cathedrals). Note the
Gloucester Coat of Arms and GLOUCESTER on side, applied to about 25 vehicles, part of the agreement when
Gloucester City Council leased out its bus services to Bristol Omnibus in 1935 and which continued
uninterrupted until Stagecoach took over the services from Western Travel, the privatised company
created by NBC. Bristol Omnibus and Gloucester City Council operated these services, overseen by a joint
committee. The bus itself was scrapped in Sept 1976.
Photograph and Copy contributed by Chris Hebbron
22/05/17 - 07:45
Interestingly Bristol Omnibus and Gloucester Corporation both held their own
Road Service Licences for the city (joint) routes. Applications in N&P were listed separately.
In York and Bristol, where similar arrangements applied, Road Service Licences were in the
joint names of the Corporation and company. N&P listings read "Bristol Omnibus Co. and Bristol
Corporation" and "West Yorkshire Road Car Co. and York Corporation".
Incidentally the bus is working service 508, formerly 8.
Geoff Kerr
22/05/17 - 07:46
A very interesting post Chris. Major Chapple had just left West Yorkshire to
take control of the Bristol enterprise, and his experience with the Keighley and York organisational
set-up must have proved of great value. Was the Bath situation set up in a similar fashion, or was
that a direct acquisition, with it being a company and not a municipality?
I am not aware of
the BET organisations making similar agreements with municipal fleets, but perhaps someone will be
able to tell us if that were the case?
John Whitaker
22/05/17 - 07:48
Scrapped after only 17 years…What a waste of a thoroughly sound,
ideal-for-the-job bus.
Or did the Cave-Brown-Cave equipment hasten its demise?
Ian Thompson
23/05/17 - 05:13
My recollection, John W, is that Bristol Omnibus bought, outright, both Bath
Electric Tramways Ltd and Bath Tramways Motor Co.. Whether these were municipal or private
companies, I don’t know. Again, this was about 1935/36.
Southdown and Portsmouth Corporation entered into a fare-sharing operation
after the war, having toyed with the idea pre-war.This agreement involved route-balancing at the end
of each financial year, a fascinating sight to see for bus enthusiasts. Buses were swapped, but not
drivers/conductors. Thus, Southdown buses, staffed by Corporation staff, appeared some years on
Corporation routes and vice versa. PD2’s were common to both organisations for some years and
usually swapped, but this was not always so, and I recall a Southdown Guy Arab II performing its
task one year.
Chris Hebbron
23/05/17 - 05:14
The Cave-Brown-Cave heating system, which consisted of the relocation of the
engine radiator in two sections to each side of the front of the upper deck, was fitted to quite a
number of Lodekkas before the inadequacies of the system led to its abandonment by about 1966. Not
only did the efficacy of engine cooling suffer, but the very concept of hot water continually
sloshing around at the front of the upper saloon meant that the vehicle interior continued to heat
up in the hottest of weather. The early Cave-Brown-Cave Lodekkas had a completely blank front panel
with no conventional radiator grille, but these were soon fitted with a front radiator to ease some
of the problems. I think that many had the C-B-C completely disconnected, but the equipment each
side of the destination indicator remained in situ. I, too, am surprised that this bus should have
gone to the scrappers so early, not least because it had a Gardner engine. The ‘in house’
Bristol BVW option was a pretty poor alternative that gave endless trouble from failure of its wet
cylinder liners - AEC was not alone in suffering this problem, but Dennis used wet liners
successfully from the 1930s, so it could be done.
Roger Cox
24/05/17 - 06:43
There was no municipal involvement at Bath (or Cheltenham). Bath Electric
Tramways and Bath Tramways Motor Co. ceased trading at the end of 1969, their assets transferred to
Bristol Omnibus Co., while Cheltenham District Traction was wound up in 1980, 30 years after passing
to Bristol control.
When the EHW series of Lodekkas appeared in 1959, with CBC heating and
hopper vents, there was a heatwave and reports of passengers passing out.
Geoff Kerr
24/05/17 - 06:44
Bath Electric Tramways and its motor bus associate business, Bath Tramways
Motor Company, were BET companies dating from 1904 that were sold to the Bristol Omnibus Company in
1936.
Roger Cox
24/05/17 - 06:46
I’m a bit puzzled by the comments expressing surprise that this bus only
lasted 17 years.
I would have thought 17 years was a reasonable innings for a bus of this
period.
No doubt its 6LW engine would go on to give many more years service ploughing across
the South China Sea!
Eric Bawden
25/05/17 - 10:57
Taking up Roger’s comments on the shortcomings of the Bristol engines I have
always wondered if these engines were foisted on the Tilling companies who would have logically
chosen the reliable and fuel efficient Gardener given a free hand. Was it that Gardner could not
keep up with demands or was it a face saver for Bristol to have at least some Lodekkas with their
own engines?
Philip Halstead
26/05/17 - 06:47
The AVW had an equivalent power output to the Gardner 6LW but dimensionally
was roughly the same size as a 5LW and an AEC 7.7L. From that you can immediately think that given
40s/50s materials something had to give ie AVW longevity given the close positioning of the 6 bores
and higher temperatures.
When running well the AVW was a good engine but unlike Gardners which
just go on and on even with reduced performance AVW bottom ends tended to go bang with no warning.
The BVW coming out at a time of heavier vehicles was never up to the job.
Roger Burdett
28/05/17 - 08:09
I always thought of BT&CC/BOC as a ‘wealthy’ operator. The policy was
that most vehicles were replaced at between 12 and 17 years. This compared with the ‘poor’
companies in the same group such as Western National and Thames Valley who kept buses for a lot
longer. Remember who was operating the last K & L types in service. I think the reason was
competition. Bristol had no competition whatever on urban services in Bristol, Bath, Gloucester,
Cheltenham or Weston. The ‘poorer’ companies had less urban routes, large areas of rural
routes and faced a certain amount of competition in places.
Peter Cook
29/05/17 - 06:58
Philip, Bristol had a history of building its own engines right from the
outset. Gardner’s economical Diesel engines came onto the scene in the 1930’s and Bristol decided to
offer them as an alternative to its own MW and NW petrol engines at that time. However, by the end
of the ‘thirties large petrol engines in buses and heavy lorries were in decline as the
benefits of Diesel economy and reliability came to the fore, so Bristol’s decision to build its own
Diesel engine would have been a quite logical development. The first of a handful of experimental
units was fitted to a Bristol T&CC Bristol K5G in 1939 and designated XOW (eXperimental Oil engine -
W signifying an engine under Bristol’s system of using letter designations for major units). A dozen
engines were then produced in 1946 incorporating various modifications (becoming the VW engine),
before production started in earnest, with the engine becoming the more familiar AVW, a 6-cylinder
8.1 litre direct injection engine developing 100bhp @ 1700rpm.
The 8.9 litre BVW engine went
into production in 1958/59, following trials with a handful of prototypes in 1957. It developed up
to 115bhp@1700rpm, although operators could have the unit derated to give 105bhp@1700rpm if
required. Unlike the AVW, which had an aluminium crankcase mated to a cast iron cylinder block with
dry liners, the BVW had a one-piece cast iron crankcase/cylinder block assembly and wet liners. West
Yorkshire’s BVW engines generally proved reliable workhorses, with many achieving over 300,000 miles
between overhauls. True the wet liners did require attention from time to time, as the neoprene
sealing rings started to perish with age. The usual giveaway was water weeping out of small
‘tell-tale’ holes on the side of the cylinder block - each cylinder having its own set of
holes. It was advisable to replace sealing rings on all six cylinder liners even if only one was
weeping, as the others being of similar age, would no doubt soon follow suit. As such things as
cylinder heads, sump, inlet and exhaust manifolds, water rails, hoses etc had to be removed in order
to remove one liner (plus its piston and conrod), it was certainly more expedient to only have to
remove these items once rather than up to six times as each cylinder’s rings failed in turn! (Yes it
does sound like common sense but…….!). The liners could be removed and replaced using a
hand-operated hydraulic pump, with the engine remaining in situ, and piston ring and bore wear never
seemed to be a real issue on WY’s BVWs, whether the Lodekkas so fitted had CBC or conventional
radiators.
Relating to the supply of Gardner engines, I think it is often forgotten that
although Gardner was a premium engine builder, it did not only supply much of the bus and truck
industry, but also supplied a sizeable section of the marine market as well. This not only included
manufacture of marine engines of various sizes, but also the manufacture of the reversing gear to go
with them. Gardner at one point also had healthy orders for the supply of engines for mobile
compressors and mechanical excavators. Although Gardner did increase engine production over the
years, I often wondered if maybe they just did not physically have the room for expansion at their
Patricroft works. This was already quite large, and incorporated aluminium, iron and brass
foundries, pattern shops, castings stores and machine shops, drawing offices, engine
building/testing shops, various stores and service departments, a power house, and a R&D department.
Most importantly there was a large canteen on the site, which I remember using on my first visit
there as a WY apprentice more years ago now than I care to remember. The apple pie and custard was
beautiful!
Brendan Smith
29/05/17 - 16:58
Thank you, Brendan, for your contribution on the BVW from someone with actual
hands-on experience. These are always useful, informative and welcome.
My observation is that
Crosville used the BVW on all except the last (F-reg) FLFs, and non were ever changed for Gardners,
so the BVW must have had something going for it. For me, the combination of BVW engine and Bristol
5-speed gearbox made the most pleasing and harmonious sound of any PSV.
Allan White
31/05/17 - 06:33
I would like to endorse what Alan W has said about the excellent contribution
made by Brendan. I was a regular user of the West Yorkshire Road Car Company services in the fifties
and early sixties and know what an excellent bus fleet they operated with tight control from
Harrogate. They operated over avery wide area including urban routes in Harrogate, Bradford, Leeds,
Keighley and York as well as many rural routes such as to the East Coast and Yorkshire Dales. I
always regarded WYRCC as an ex Tilling flagship company with an intention to always have a modern
image efficient fleet, so bus life generally was no more than 16 years. Sadly all these wonderful
attributes changed in 1968 with the imposition of the National Bus Company and later the demise of
the Bristol Commercial Vehicle Company and Eastern Coach Works in the eighties was the final nail in
the coffin.
Richard Fieldhouse
31/05/17 - 11:18
Richard, obviously some were better than others, but in general the same could
be said about most of the former Tilling Group companies, it certainly applied to United Automobile
Services in this area.
The vast majority of BET companies were also well run, but that all
went out the window post 1968 when NBC ‘No Body Cares’ sorry, National Bus Company took control. A
few choice ones that are not fit for publication, but its strange how nobody seems to have a good
word to say about that particular government folly.
As for the demise on Bristol and ECW?
The same thing happened to AEC, Daimler and GUY when they were all lumped together under the
control of British Leyland, not to be confused with Leyland Motors. After several years of
development the end result was the Leyland National. The later ones were actually quite a good
vehicle, but the early versions were an absolute abortion that would never have survived healthy
competition had there been any, but operators were given two choices, take it or leave it, because
there isn’t anything else. How could they have spent so much time and money on development and got
it so wrong.
This is only my opinion. However, at the time I was a driver for NGT at their
Percy Main Depot, although running at a profit was essential for the survival of the company, it was
run by people who knew the bus industry, and our vehicles were well turned out and maintained to a
very high standard. Enter the new regime of NBC, they are run by government appointed accountants,
most of whom have never been on a bus since they left school, but they know the price of everything
and the value of nothing. They apply the principle of find the lowest common denominator, as a
result, pride in fleets is destroyed, standards drop, and once well turned out fleets now just look
shabby and neglected.
Ronnie Hoye
01/06/17 - 07:20
The suffocating hand of NBC didn’t happen until the Tory government of Edward
Heath appointed Croda industrialist (and twice failed Conservative parliamentary candidate) Freddie
Wood in 1972. Croda was a company supplying chemical products to the beauty products industry, and
Wood was a believer in extracting high margins from modest sales volumes. He brought the Croda creed
to an industry of which he was totally ignorant, believing that those backward bus passengers
required a bland, countrywide brand to become aware of the services on offer. Buses should be sold
like supermarket baked beans by inventing a new, uniform, national identity. A public transport user
in Aldershot could only then appreciate the "products" on offer if a bus passenger in
Bristol or Buxton was given identical branding and operating standards. Crucially also, not just
profitability but notably good margins to satisfy his political overlords were the prime objectives.
Cost control (and corner cutting) became paramount. The rest is history.
Roger Cox
01/06/17 - 07:21
For whatever reason though Bristol engines were never made in large quantities
so operators were either ultra conservative or whole life costs were higher than Gardner/Leyland.
I have more knowledge of Gardner-Daimler comparisons and whole life costs definitely favoured
the former despite the inherent smoothness of the Daimler unit
Roger Burdett
02/06/17 - 07:10
Allan and Richard, thank you for your kind comments. I enjoyed every minute of
my eighteen years working for West Yorkshire (fourteen of those in the engine shop), and even in its
NBC corporate days the Company tried its best to maintain certain standards. Much of this was no
doubt due to the people in charge, including in later years Brian Horner, the general manager and
Tom Fox, the chief engineer. The Company did fall short at times when circumstances seemed to
conspire against it, and there were periods when buses had to be hired from other NBC subsidiaries
just to keep the show on the road, but such situations were not peculiar to just West Yorkshire at
the time.
Ronnie and Roger (C), you have both raised very valid points about NBC, the
corporate identity and the bone paring thrust upon it by Freddie Wood, and I tend to agree with much
of what you have both said. In the ‘seventies the mantra was often "big is
beautiful", and any large company worth it’s salt ‘had’ to have a corporate identity and
a logo, which presumably wooed Freddie Wood. British Leyland was another case in point, and
following all the various takeovers and mergers "became too big to be allowed to fail" as
the modern saying goes. So when it eventually did in 1974, it was taken into state ownership to
protect thousands of jobs. A shame then that this was not appreciated by certain sections of the
workforce, and in the bus and truck world the arrogant attitude of some members of British Leyland’s
senior management towards its customers probably did not help matters either.
Roger (B),
probably the main reason that Bristol engines were not made in such large quantities was to do with
the ‘closed market’ within which Bristol was required to operate. There was an expectation for
it (and ECW) to operate at a profit, despite being denied the potential to expand its market by the
private sector, so maybe Bristol endeavoured to produce as much ‘in-house’ as it possibly
could. On the subject of engines, it is interesting to note that while Bristol chose not to offer
Leyland engines in its buses and coaches through the ‘fifties until the mid-sixties, it did do
so with its lorries of the period. Could it have been that the Bristol AVW and BVW engines could not
provide the extra power required for road haulage operations? From a purely selfish point of view,
what a pity we were denied the opportunity to savour such delights as a Leyland-engined Bristol K,
L, LS, or Lodekka LD. It has also deprived Roger of carrying out one of his beautiful restorations
on such a beast. Unless the opportunity arises for a conversion Roger…..?!
Brendan Smith
03/06/17 - 07:20
Roger (Cox) has hit the nail on the head. NBC gets a lot of flack for
happenings which were not of NBC’ s making. I worked for NBC in the early years. People should
remember that "local" management was still staffed by exactly the same people who had
managed the companies in Tilling and BET days, and who were "bus men" through and through.
The "bean counters" and those who acted as middle men between NBC and the Government were
the problem,together with those who refused to see that the prime object of business is to make a
profit and not sponge off the public purse.
There was nothing wrong with NBC as concept, and
there was certainly nothing wrong with the Leyland National (as a concept) - it should have been the
finest bus ever built. However changes in political thought and undue interference from those
"on a power trip" is always a recipe for disaster.
NBC was conceived as a much
enlarged THC, and Central Activities could have been a highly profitable coach operation, but their
potentials were never realised.
The only saving grace was that the PTE s and
deregulation/privatisation were even bigger disasters (financially) than NBC !
Malcolm Hirst
24/10/17 - 06:57
Gardners were marine engine builders primarily. It was Bartons at Chilwell who
first used Gardner engines in buses - Simon Barton’s grandfather was the first to fit them!
Stolen Gardner bus engines have turned up fitted to ships. The Royal Hong Kong Police arrested a
junk in 1979 which was fitted with a Gardner 6LX which had been stolen from the burnt out wreckage
of Belfast Corporation Daimler Fleetline No. 714 (714 UZ) which had been hi-jacked and burned on
21st July 1972 at North Queen Street, Belfast!
Bill Headley
28/04/18 - 07:40
The route balancing described above between Southdown and Portsmouth also
applied in Bristol between the City services and the Country services when I was there in the 1960s.
In summer there were extensive weekend reliefs on Bristol to Weston-Super-Mare, which were turn up
and go with a constant queue, and City KSWs were loaned for this, possibly as much for staff
availability as for vehicle supply. To maintain the mileage balance Country service vehicles could
be seen from time to time on City routes. I don’t remember any "On hire to …"
notices were necessary in the window.
Bill
30/04/18 - 06:10
In response to Bill’s post above, I also remember the bank holiday’s on
service 24 as the Bristol to Weston-super-Mare route then was. Living on the Weston side of the city
we had to try to board on the outskirts of the city. We waited ages for a bus with any space and
usually had to stand the whole way.
‘On hire’ notices were not necessary as there was
no difference between the legal lettering of BJS (i.e. Bristol City services) and Country service
buses.
Country buses operating on BJS routes were known as ‘B fleet’ duties. Athough
they would balance the use of City buses on country routes at bank holidays, the primary purpose was
to balance up for mileage operated by BJS vehicles on parts of BJS routes outside of the city
boundary. As an example, at that time, Kingswood was outside of the city but had a BJS bus service
from the city centre. The mileage from the boundary to the terminus and back worked by a BJS bus
would be calculated and that amount of mileage would then be worked by a country bus on a BJS route.
I just find it odd that at a time when such things had to be done either on a comptometer or even
manually, they worked it out to the last furlong; now we have computers, I doubt whether anyone
would bother.
Peter Cook
