Still got yours?
We all got one of these. A Bristol Omnibus Co. National is illustrated on the cover, but I think the booklet was distributed throughout the NBC. I don't know why they thought they had to "scramble" the destination and registration number. The bus, no. C1406, was licenced for training on 8th January 1973, some weeks before Bristol's first Nationals went into service on 25th February. It didn't itself enter revenue-earning service until 1st July. I would conjecture that the cover photograph was taken during this early phase of its career. Incidentally, for you locals, I think it shows the bus stop lay-by half way across the Downs, between the top of Blackboy Hill and the White Tree. Browsing through the publication many forgotten details come back to me: that the horrible Chapman seat, which always made the base of my spine ache, could be swivelled (I don't think I ever used this feature); and round the back, next to the coolant filler cap was a "three position toggle switch"; a little red light flashed in the "test" position if topping up was required. I hadn't known that there were long and short variants of the roof "pod", or that the 11.3-metre vehicle had a more capacious fuel tank (45 galls) than the 10.3-metre (37 galls).
Still got yours?
We all got one of these. A Bristol Omnibus Co. National is illustrated on the cover, but I think the booklet was distributed throughout the NBC. I don't know why they thought they had to "scramble" the destination and registration number. The bus, no. C1406, was licenced for training on 8th January 1973, some weeks before Bristol's first Nationals went into service on 25th February. It didn't itself enter revenue-earning service until 1st July. I would conjecture that the cover photograph was taken during this early phase of its career. Incidentally, for you locals, I think it shows the bus stop lay-by half way across the Downs, between the top of Blackboy Hill and the White Tree. Browsing through the publication many forgotten details come back to me: that the horrible Chapman seat, which always made the base of my spine ache, could be swivelled (I don't think I ever used this feature); and round the back, next to the coolant filler cap was a "three position toggle switch"; a little red light flashed in the "test" position if topping up was required. I hadn't known that there were long and short variants of the roof "pod", or that the 11.3-metre vehicle had a more capacious fuel tank (45 galls) than the 10.3-metre (37 galls).