Semi-automatic
And now an example of an FLF with semi-automatic transmission. They came late in the FLF's production life and were found only among the F registrations and the handful of Gs. We in Bristol never had any, our deliveries ceasing at E-reg. There is no getting away from the fact that the FLF was eminently unsuitable for the type of work on which it was used in Bristol ...but then, Bristol must have been the largest city in the country wherein the bus services were provided by a "company" operator. Elsewhere municipal operators had long ago found some way of taking the labour out of driving buses in urban circumstances. Mind you, in my experience it was the hard, springy brake pedal, with its distinct feel of air pressure resistance, rather than the clutch, that caused the legs to become fatigued. Really semi-auto was wasted on the FLF, operators such as Crosville and Eastern National using theirs on inter-urban rather than urban services. This was Eastern National no. 2919, photographed at Chelmsford on Saturday 29th March 1980.
Semi-automatic
And now an example of an FLF with semi-automatic transmission. They came late in the FLF's production life and were found only among the F registrations and the handful of Gs. We in Bristol never had any, our deliveries ceasing at E-reg. There is no getting away from the fact that the FLF was eminently unsuitable for the type of work on which it was used in Bristol ...but then, Bristol must have been the largest city in the country wherein the bus services were provided by a "company" operator. Elsewhere municipal operators had long ago found some way of taking the labour out of driving buses in urban circumstances. Mind you, in my experience it was the hard, springy brake pedal, with its distinct feel of air pressure resistance, rather than the clutch, that caused the legs to become fatigued. Really semi-auto was wasted on the FLF, operators such as Crosville and Eastern National using theirs on inter-urban rather than urban services. This was Eastern National no. 2919, photographed at Chelmsford on Saturday 29th March 1980.