Training bus.
Bristol Omnibus Co. training bus no. W135 standing at the spare bay at Bath Bus Station on Friday 18th July 1975. The instructor and his trainee drivers have almost certainly repaired upstairs to the staff canteen to indulge the busman's well-known penchant for tea.
This livery of cream with orange bands did not long survive the appointment of a new general manager who brought with him from the Eastern National company a more strident colour scheme of blue with red lettering. The vehicle, a Gardner-engined Bristol KSW with, of course, an ECW body, had begun its career in January 1955 as bus no. 8192 (SHW 362). Instead of the usual cutaway open platform, it has an entrance with a folding door operated manually by the conductor. This distinguishes it as being from the Company's "country" fleet. There would have been a 5-speed gearbox and a heater in the lower saloon ...features absent from the equivalent "city" vehicles. As part of the Company's complex arrangements for balancing the mileages of buses in its various sub-fleets, these "country" KSWs often spent their declining years on Bristol city services, where the narrow entrance and folding doors were a great nuisance, impeding the ingress and egress of passengers and dangerously blocking the conductor's view of the platform from within the lower saloon.
8192 carried its last passenger in August 1969, being relicenced as a training vehicle in October. It was finally retired on 30th November 1976 and broken up by Booth, Rotherham, in May 1977.
Training bus.
Bristol Omnibus Co. training bus no. W135 standing at the spare bay at Bath Bus Station on Friday 18th July 1975. The instructor and his trainee drivers have almost certainly repaired upstairs to the staff canteen to indulge the busman's well-known penchant for tea.
This livery of cream with orange bands did not long survive the appointment of a new general manager who brought with him from the Eastern National company a more strident colour scheme of blue with red lettering. The vehicle, a Gardner-engined Bristol KSW with, of course, an ECW body, had begun its career in January 1955 as bus no. 8192 (SHW 362). Instead of the usual cutaway open platform, it has an entrance with a folding door operated manually by the conductor. This distinguishes it as being from the Company's "country" fleet. There would have been a 5-speed gearbox and a heater in the lower saloon ...features absent from the equivalent "city" vehicles. As part of the Company's complex arrangements for balancing the mileages of buses in its various sub-fleets, these "country" KSWs often spent their declining years on Bristol city services, where the narrow entrance and folding doors were a great nuisance, impeding the ingress and egress of passengers and dangerously blocking the conductor's view of the platform from within the lower saloon.
8192 carried its last passenger in August 1969, being relicenced as a training vehicle in October. It was finally retired on 30th November 1976 and broken up by Booth, Rotherham, in May 1977.