Dewsbury Bus Museum
104 - FHL104
For today’s Guy Wulfrunian photograph, we have moved to one of the depots acquired by West Riding in 1950 when they took over local rival Bullocks & Sons. Featherstone depot was closed in the 1980s but is the location where we find a vehicle that was intended to have been supplied to Johannesburg Municipality in 1962 as their fleet number 976.
It is a demonstrator for a tri-axle high-capacity replacement for earlier conventional Arabs. Unfortunately for Guy, there was an extended dock strike at Southampton and the vehicle was trapped inside the docks for over four months, during which time, the operator had a change of mind and when it eventually arrived in South Africa, the customer refused to accept it, saying that it had arrived too late. It was returned to the UK later that year.
Commenting on the fiasco at the time, Sidney Guy, who had retired from the company in 1957, called it “an embarrassment”.
In 1962, the UK’s new Construction and Use regulations allowed buses up to 36’ to use the roads, so Guy sent it north to the Crossgates factory of Charles H Roe, who had built the body, to have the destination aperture altered and to have it re-painted it into the livery of the West Riding Automobile Company of Wakefield. West Riding was already a committed Wulfrunian customer, so they had agreed to take it for evaluation.
On its return to the UK, it had been registered in Wolverhampton as 7122UK but, on arrival in Wakefield, it was given the cherished registration number from West Riding’s Chief Engineer Ronald Brooke’s Rover P4 company car, FHL104. It did not carry a fleet number
After only two weeks use at Featherstone depot, and after two serious incidents where various items of street furniture on bends and corners were knocked over, the recognised trade union refused to allow further use of the vehicle so it was towed ceremoniously to Belle Isle depot where it languished for a few months before being dismantled for parts.
What a waste.
104 - FHL104
For today’s Guy Wulfrunian photograph, we have moved to one of the depots acquired by West Riding in 1950 when they took over local rival Bullocks & Sons. Featherstone depot was closed in the 1980s but is the location where we find a vehicle that was intended to have been supplied to Johannesburg Municipality in 1962 as their fleet number 976.
It is a demonstrator for a tri-axle high-capacity replacement for earlier conventional Arabs. Unfortunately for Guy, there was an extended dock strike at Southampton and the vehicle was trapped inside the docks for over four months, during which time, the operator had a change of mind and when it eventually arrived in South Africa, the customer refused to accept it, saying that it had arrived too late. It was returned to the UK later that year.
Commenting on the fiasco at the time, Sidney Guy, who had retired from the company in 1957, called it “an embarrassment”.
In 1962, the UK’s new Construction and Use regulations allowed buses up to 36’ to use the roads, so Guy sent it north to the Crossgates factory of Charles H Roe, who had built the body, to have the destination aperture altered and to have it re-painted it into the livery of the West Riding Automobile Company of Wakefield. West Riding was already a committed Wulfrunian customer, so they had agreed to take it for evaluation.
On its return to the UK, it had been registered in Wolverhampton as 7122UK but, on arrival in Wakefield, it was given the cherished registration number from West Riding’s Chief Engineer Ronald Brooke’s Rover P4 company car, FHL104. It did not carry a fleet number
After only two weeks use at Featherstone depot, and after two serious incidents where various items of street furniture on bends and corners were knocked over, the recognised trade union refused to allow further use of the vehicle so it was towed ceremoniously to Belle Isle depot where it languished for a few months before being dismantled for parts.
What a waste.