More on Daimlers

This post is a substantive article, follows a day's worth of Twittering way back last summer...

Bournemouth Corporation wasn’t the only Dorset operator to buy *new* Daimler double decks. Hants & Dorset had six Fleetlines with Roe bodies, in 1971. So much of a surprise were they that people tended to look at the rear bustle as much as the modish entrance opposite the driver. All previous H&D double decks had, of course, been half cabs. Picture here taken somewhat later.

Some felt the Daimlers carried attractive bodies but in truth all you could really say about them was that they were ‘modern’ in appearance or ‘grand’ in stature. They couldn’t hold a candle to the first batch of VRs delivered to H&D the following year. Nevertheless, with the coming of the Fleetlines, the modern era had now definitely begun, even though on arrival they still carried both Tilling-style fleetnames & green livery.

The Gosport & Fareham Omnibus Company t/a Provincial had ordered the Fleetlines while still independent. Safely within the National fold from January 1971, the batch was swapped with six H&D-ordered dual-door 44-seat Bristol REs. The reason ostensibly was to convert Poole-Bournemouth direct services, replacing the last of the elderly Bristol Ks. For this purpose, two Fleetlines at Southampton soon joined the other four Fleetlines already at Poole.

There was another reason. There was a realisation within H&D’s controlling management that the future at Provincial was single deck. The swap was made to assist quickly what was then termed ‘OMO’ conversion of Provincial's fleet, coupled with a need to standardise along NBC lines as promptly and as cheaply as possible, in an incredibly antiquated fleet. It didn’t take too many more REs and subsequently Nationals to see double decks off the Hoeford premises, in the late summer of 1975.