Design, Build & Operate

On Sunday Omnibuses pondered a possible connection between Stagecoach and bus builder Alexander Dennis Ltd.

There have always been links between the bus operating and manufacturing sides of the industry, to various degrees and this is only natural. You would expect symbiosis where the fortunes of one arm are inextricably linked to the other.

For example, Liverpool Corporation would itself complete frames manufactured by bodybuilders. In the 1960s, it later bought several hundred Atlanteans with Metro-Cammell bodywork to Liverpool’s own design. Nearby was the so-called St Helens bonnet front end, on Leyland Titan PD2s.

GMPTE and Nottingham City Transport similarly were famous for unique bodywork. GMPTE’s developed from SELNEC’s standard double deck design (and before that Manchester City Transport’s Mancunian*), for Atlanteans, bodied by Northern Counties or Park Royal. There was an urgent need to replace the plethora of types and styles inherited upon SELNEC’s creation. Nottingham’s raked fronted front and heavy bumpers managed to configure a staggering 77 seats in a dual-door layout – three ahead of similarly sized 30ft double decks with only one passenger door.

Then there was the famous bond between London Transport and Park Royal, in the production of 2,760 RM Routemasters, a London-specific model.

These tie-ups go back to early times. Take the National Steam Car Company Ltd which, in 1909, found a ready market for its own vehicles when it started operating bus services in London.

The Bristol Tramways & Carriage Company manufactured its own commercial vehicles, selling them only among fellow Tilling/nationalised fleets, until restrictions were lifted. Reconstituted as Bristol Commercial Vehicles, the last chassis (an Olympian, before production moved to Leyland’s Workington plant) was produced in 1983.

Former BET subsidiary the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company (trading as Midland Red) had supplied itself with buses, until its production ceased in 1970, in part owing to the transfer of its most profitable garages to WMPTE, diseconomies of scale and the coming of the Leyland National.

It was the Leyland National, though, that was the most obvious embodiment of the operating and manufacturing industry in co-operation. A joint venture later to include Bristol and associated Eastern Coach Works, the Leyland National was a company and project owned by both the National Bus Company and British Leyland, guaranteeing the National both a ready market among NBC subsidiaries and seeing off Leyland’s suite of single deck buses.
_____

* The spell checker suggests " Manchurian" for this word!