Investigating buses

[A cropped version of the snap I started with]

This being the result of the chance encounter with a green RT bus noticed at reference 1 and snapped above, identified as such by Google Images and Wikipedia.

[London Transport bus RT3238 (KYY 967). Here, one of the upper windows has acquired an extra vertical bar, but I do not think that this disturbs the identification].

London Transport at one time had a very large fleet of these buses, which I believe were eventually superseded by Routemasters, which may have added doors to the back entrance.

 [Aldenham bus overhaul works by Graphion, 1963. From reference 2]

A history of which is provided by reference 2, that is to say from the London Transport Museum at Covent Garden in London and reference 3. Not to be confused with the London Bus Museum at Weybridge and reference 4.

However, the point at issue is the construction of the bodies of early buses. I had been told of a mixture of timber, steel and aluminium, all a bit complicated, but a story which was confirmed by Google’s Gemini. But had he got it right or was he just agreeing with me? This ought to be something that I could check without too much trouble, with the record of this checking following, having spread over a couple of days.

One story in my mind was the huge supply of scrap aluminium from the RAF after the second world war. A new story I have picked up was the huge supply of surplus lorries from the army after the first world war. And sometimes, getting the right sort of timber was difficult.

It turns out that there is lot of material out there. Lots of people have been collecting pictures of buses and information about buses and putting it on the Internet. But not so much material on the construction of their bodies – at least it took me a while to run some down.

A derivative of the largely lost hobby of train spotting? Although there are a few remnants to be seen at Clapham Junction. On the Internet, I also come across some die-cast enthusiasts.

A very short history of buses to 1960 or so

In the beginning, up until the beginning of the twentieth century, we had carts, charabancs – literally carts with benches – and carriages, mainly drawn by horses. The sometimes extravagant bodies of these charabancs and carriages were made of timber, leather and canvas: there might have been iron fittings and fixtures, but my understanding is that the frameworks were substantially timber. Perhaps fairly lightweight in the case of the famous covered waggons of Westerns – for which see reference 5. I also associate to wooden boats, not that dissimilar to a coach in shape, also frame and skin in construction.

With the arrival of the engine came a division into three parts: engine, chassis and body, often sourced – or at least specified – separately by the operators. And there were companies which specialised in the bodies, for example Duple Motor Bodies of reference 6. I further divide the body into the shell and its furnishings, particularly the seats or benches. It is the shell with which I am mainly concerned here.

In the beginning, the shell was timber framed and the panels were wooden, perhaps mahogany. The wooden panels were gradually replaced by metal panels, usually steel but also aluminium. This is covered at reference 7, originally from 1928.

In parallel, composite and metals frames were developed, with the first all metal buses appearing in the 1930s. But timber or composite frames hung on at least until the 1960s.

 

[Timber packings to bulkhead structures]

Double deckers also appeared in the 1930s, with the famous RT first appearing just before the second world war. More than 7,000 of these buses were produced for London Transport, a mixture of timber, composite and steel framed; a mixture of steel and aluminium panels. See reference 8, 

One of the big suppliers to London Transport was Park Royal Vehicles of reference 9. There is also the large archive exemplified by references 10 and 11, from which last, from the early 1950s, the snap of composite structure above has been taken.

The Lancashire United Transport Co. Ltd

Reference 12 is another labour of love, this time about the Lancashire United Transport Co. Ltd (LUT), a middle sized operator in a chunk of Lancashire roughly centred on Atherton, a bit to the west of Manchester proper

It is a catalogue of as many of the buses which passed through LUT as the authors and their collaborators could track down, presented in chronological order. Even more helpful for present purposes, the type of body of each batch has been noted down.

Small beginnings.

Still with the charabanc format here. With Ransomes from Ipswich, the people mentioned in these pages from time to time.

A timber framed double decker.

Class of 1932. All steel!

Class of 1934. A teak frame. The only such I have noticed. I believe teak was common enough in pleasure boats of the time.

Getting near the end of the line. I resisted the temptation to build a batch worksheet in Excel, let along a bus worksheet. Perhaps another job for a slow Friday afternoon.

Gemini’s story

After a fair bit of digging around, the summary offered by Gemini in a few seconds looks spot-on. The follow on about problems with mixing steel and aluminium looks OK too.

I suppose the trick is to know the sort of things that Gemini is good at and develop a nose for the things he is not so good at. But I am some way off making this trick.

Odds and ends

I have not looked at trams, which presumably went through a similar process. Perhaps cut short by their relatively short operational life.

A number of other companies came up and deserve honourable mention, even if they did not make the cut:

John C. Beadle (Coachbuilders), Ltd., Dartford. Now morphed into car distribution and sales

Gilford Motor Company Ltd. 1926-1933

Wray's Motor and Body Co of Walham Green, London (now Fulham Broadway).

There is an interesting piece about bus identification numbers at reference 10. A more complicated business than might at first appear.

The text.

The map. There is an interesting piece at reference 12 about a munitions factory at Risley Moss. The orange spot left marks the upper station in the inset right. And I thought that semi-secret MoD facilities were blanked out on OS maps.

I remember once that, having heard a story in the pub, we failed to find a big ammunition dump on the ground and that it was missing from our (print) OS map. But alive and well on gmaps (above) this afternoon.

And present, if a little discrete, on OS. Complete with railway. Presumably not narrow gauge like the railway which served the construction of our cluster of mental hospitals here at Epsom.

There was also mention of one E H Edwardes, one of the senior managers, a member of a prominent Axminster/Bridport family which is still visible there. I shall consult a correspondent who knows the area.

Conclusions

I have been quite struck by, starting from scratch, how long it took me to check out what Gemini had told me in seconds. But I need to reflect on what that tells me, if anything, about when Gemini is to be trusted. Perhaps ‘assistant’, a word favoured by many of those offering AI, is the right word. He assists, but one needs to keep an eye on him, to check his work, just as one would with a new clerk.

I have not been aware of all this construction stuff looking at a London bus, or even sitting in one. Perhaps I need to look more carefully next time I am near one or in one.

Also by the amount of stuff out there. I had known about railway buffs, but bus buffs were new.

PS: reference 7 seems to have been upgraded. Much better late Thursday afternoon than it had been on Wednesday. Maybe I was having finger trouble.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/schubert-with-momen.html. 

Reference 2: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/transport/collections-close-rt-type-bus-1954. A history of the RT bus from 1938-1978, from prototype to withdrawal from service.

Reference 3: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk. 

Reference 4: https://www.londonbusmuseum.com/. 

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covered_wagon. 

Reference 6: https://www.lthlibrary.org.uk/library/PDF-199-1.pdf. Duple motor bodies 1919-1989. Including a good collection of pictures of coaches from the middle two thirds of the twentieth century.

Reference 7: https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/20th-november-1928/29/bus-bodies-their-framework-and-panelling. Some good material here, but short of a zoomable image of the original magazine article. Perhaps you get that if you are a subscriber.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEC_Regent_III_RT. 

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Royal_Vehicles. 

Reference 10: http://www.brindale.co.uk/ach/prv_site/london_transport_aldenham.htm. 

Reference 11: http://www.brindale.co.uk/ach/prv_site/site_index/prv_site_frames.htm. 

Reference 12: Lancashire United: The fleet: 1900-1981 - Richard Allen, Michael Eyre, Peter Greaves - 2020. https://motgm.uk/documents/lut_the-fleet_v52_gmts.pdf.