Could anyone please point me in the right direction, I am trying to find the history of the bus manufacturing of Lancashire Aircraft Corporation and Samlesbury Engineering. The companies where based at Samlesbury in Lancashire. Fleet list or pictures would also be appreciated. Many thanks.
David Hutton
03/08/12 - 10:58
The Lancashire Aircraft Corporation was the main company of Eric Rylands, the
North's answer to Freddie Laker as a civil aviation entrepreneur. Besides the
facility at Samlesbury Aerodrome (half-way between Preston and Blackburn) the
company had maintenance bases at Blackpool and Leeds-Bradford airports where
it repaired, hangared, or reduced to scrap hundreds of ex-military airframes
in the immediate post-war era. The company also ran flying schools at BLK and
LBA, and then became a BEA Associate company - providing flights to the Isle
of Man on behalf of the nationalised carrier.
Rylands then went on to buy Skyways, a major independent airline in the
south of England, and this subsidiary later spawned Skyways Coach Air which
provided services from London to Paris and elsewhere in association with East
Kent. The air part of the journey ran from Lympne near Ashford to Beauvais
north of Paris.
Rylands engineering facilities at Samlesbury started to run out of
aviation-related work in the late 1940s and he diversified into bus and
commercial vehicle bodybuilding in his hangars there. Among the vehicles
handled were rebodies of pre-war double-deckers, a sub-contract to produce
Leyland double-deck body lookalikes, and the Samlesbury LowHyte design for
fitment to double-deck chassis. Although widely advertised at the time the
LowHyte body was notably unsuccessful - the only two examples that I know of
were the two Foden PVD6s supplied to Whieldon (Green Bus) of Rugeley in
1949/50.
The company also produced new coach bodies until 1951, the last examples
finding themselves on early model Leyland Royal Tigers. The master holding
company, the Eric Rylands Organisation, sold its northern airline operations
(including LAC) to Silver City Airways in 1956 and at around the same time its
hangars at Samlesbury passed to the English Electric aircraft company. Skyways
lasted until 1962 when it was sold to Euravia (later to become Britannia
Airways), and the former subsidiary Skyways Coach Air was later sold off to
the Transport Holding Company (and, eventually, to Dan-Air). The last
remaining fragment of the Rylands empire, Skyways Air Cargo, vanished around
1981.
Neville Mercer
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