simon the viking
Guru
Now if you had started driving a double decker and ended with a single decker that would be a story! James managed itDid drive an RF single decker once...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzwXNvMyZd8
Now if you had started driving a double decker and ended with a single decker that would be a story! James managed itDid drive an RF single decker once...
Now that is cool.Saw a privately owned one, top deck converted allow a massive scalextric circuit.
But may not have been a Routemaster.
. I want to check out the fact that wikipedia claim that a bus could come in a 9.00 am and leave at night... original fully refurbished chassis fitted with different engine and body but same bus.
Thank you for your reply, I did get to the bottom of it in the end by speaking to a garage who owns 3, I included a brief description of the process that does match your post, so thanks for the confirmation! The 1600 word article has been accepted by the magazine and will be published in the new year!It didn't work quite like that. What happened is that the overhaul programme was planned and each vehicle in the fleet was due to have it's visit to the works every 4 years or so. On the date a particular vehicle was due in, a driver would collect it from whichever garage it was based at and take it to the works. At the same time, another newly-overhauled bus of the same type already in the works, would assume the identity of the incoming vehicle, so there was no break in the licensing. Anyone standing outside the gates to the works, would indeed see the "same" vehicle entering and leaving on the same day - except it wasn't the same vehicle at all. Most Routemasters, technically are "ringers", that is their true identity is not the what it's registration plate and bonnet number would suggest. Only a very small number of them have a kosher ID, because they were non-mainstream in some respect (such as the first and last ones built) and were overhauled as one-offs without body, sub-frame or identity swapping.
To facilitate this system, at any one time there would be maybe a dozen bodies and a dozen sets of mechanical units sitting as work in progress within the works. These parts came from the first batch of vehicles that were taken into the works at the start of an overhaul cycle, and were not dispatched from the works until the completion of that cycle, which could be several years later. These identities were delicensed for the duration and disappeared from London's streets for years, until they became the last ones left in at the end of the cycle, when they were sent out again. Very few if any of them would carry any of their original mechanical or body parts, the originals having been long since sent out carrying a different identity!
The system was known as the Works Float and is a subject in it's own right. It all came to an end around 1985/86 when Routemaster overhauls were scaled down as they had started to withdraw them, then the works closed and the facility to lift and swap bodies freely no longer existed. The GPO also operated a similar system , but without the in/out same day aspect, where vehicles were dismantled into their component parts then newly overhauled ones reassembled from kits of parts.
Interesting read, thanks for sharing...It didn't work quite like that. What happened is that the overhaul programme was planned and each vehicle in the fleet was due to have it's visit to the works every 4 years or so. On the date a particular vehicle was due in, a driver would collect it from whichever garage it was based at and take it to the works. At the same time, another newly-overhauled bus of the same type already in the works, would assume the identity of the incoming vehicle, so there was no break in the licensing. Anyone standing outside the gates to the works, would indeed see the "same" vehicle entering and leaving on the same day - except it wasn't the same vehicle at all. Most Routemasters, technically are "ringers", that is their true identity is not the what it's registration plate and bonnet number would suggest. Only a very small number of them have a kosher ID, because they were non-mainstream in some respect (such as the first and last ones built) and were overhauled as one-offs without body, sub-frame or identity swapping.
To facilitate this system, at any one time there would be maybe a dozen bodies and a dozen sets of mechanical units sitting as work in progress within the works. These parts came from the first batch of vehicles that were taken into the works at the start of an overhaul cycle, and were not dispatched from the works until the completion of that cycle, which could be several years later. These identities were delicensed for the duration and disappeared from London's streets for years, until they became the last ones left in at the end of the cycle, when they were sent out again. Very few if any of them would carry any of their original mechanical or body parts, the originals having been long since sent out carrying a different identity!
The system was known as the Works Float and is a subject in it's own right. It all came to an end around 1985/86 when Routemaster overhauls were scaled down as they had started to withdraw them, then the works closed and the facility to lift and swap bodies freely no longer existed. The GPO also operated a similar system , but without the in/out same day aspect, where vehicles were dismantled into their component parts then newly overhauled ones reassembled from kits of parts.
My dad was a conductor, then driver, and finally driver/conductor on Greater Manchester Transport buses, I can't quite remember them having rear loading buses but I know they had Leyland Titans when he started.
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As I got to an age where I could go to work with him at the depot it was then Leyland Atlanteans.
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Apologies for the digression from Routemasters, but bus threads don't come along so often in these parts.
That's wonderful! My dad worked out of Hyde Road depot, I remember the skid pan there and the dramatic demonstrations of what a double decker skid looked like!My dad was a mechanic for GM Busses (Hyde Road and Stockport Charles St). Some of my 'marbles' were old bearings ! I also have a couple of Atlantean name plates somewhere.