Safeguard Coaches (Guildford)
1956
AEC Reliance MU3RV
Burlingham B44F

Safeguard of Guildford runs buses and coaches in the area and 200 APB is preserved by the operator, attending rallies at regular intervals. It is an AEC Reliance MU3RV with Burlingham B44F body, complete with the trademark "Seagull" motif. The first view shows her at Wisley on 4 April 2004

While the second view – taken on 10 April 2011, at Dunsfold – shows the fleetname.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Pete Davies

16/05/16 – 06:50

I have always admired this style of Burlingham saloon body, and it is good to see this vehicle in such fine fettle. I recall seeing it around quite often in Guildford on my visits to the town in the 1950s and 1960s. Safeguard sold this bus surprisingly early in its life in 1962 to the South Petherton, Somerset firm of Safeway, similarly named and similarly liveried, where it stayed until 1982. It then passed into the hands of a preservation group and spent a period with the Quantock heritage fleet, Taunton, before returning to Safeguard ownership. OBP has an item on a Safeway coach submitted by Ken Jones, together with an informative link that includes pictures of this Reliance; see Safeway Coaches – Dennis Lancet – ASV 900.

Roger Cox

16/05/16 – 10:02

Five weeks ago, I went to Ottershaw, Surrey, for a one hour meeting. At the end, I had a nose bleed, heamorrhage-style! I spent five days in Guildford Royal Hospital and watched Safeguard buses passing by every 15 mins. Seeing this activity and looking at their website, it was a great surprise that this long-lasting firm is still around and even blooming, it would seem. My memories of them date from the early 1960’s, when I worked by Guildford rail station. There is a photo of 200 APB on their website, decked out with wedding ribbon.

Chris Hebbron

16/05/16 – 17:56

Safeguard had a reputation for keeping vehicles for a relatively short time, always having a modern fleet, certainly when I knew them in the seventies and eighties.A well run and highly regarded company, still with a decent livery today.

David Wragg

16/05/16 – 17:57

Sorry to learn of your recent stay in hospital, Chris H. My father had three or four similar instances (involving Southampton General) Take care, young Sir!

Pete Davies

16/05/16 – 17:57

There is a fair bit of Safeguard News, some of it contemporary but also some historic on the loacl on-line newspaper. //www.guildford-dragon.com/?s=safeguard&x=5&y=8

John Lomas

17/05/16 – 06:56

Oh dear Chris, sorry to hear that Ottershaw had such a bad effect on you. It doesn’t happen to everyone though, i’ve lived there for 30 years without any problems!
Also surprised that you went to the Royal Surrey, given that St Peter’s Hospital is so close.

Grahame Arnold

19/05/16 – 06:08

Thx Pete/Grahame for your commiserations! St. Peter’s put a bung up my nose to stop the bleeding, but the Royal had an ENT Dept to cauterise etc.
I’ve been visiting Ottershaw since the 1950’s and the journey from Portsmouth, by train, was always worthwhile for a ride on the A & D Dennis Lance K3’s with their ‘Supertop’ 5-speed gearboxes, which enabled them to fairly scoot along from Woking to Botley’s Park! Thankfully, one’s been preserved.

Chris Hebbron

Rotherham Corporation
1957
AEC Reliance MU3RA
Weymann B45F

It looks like it could well be market day in this busy scene in Upper Millgate, Rotherham, looking into All Saint’s Square, in July, 1962. It’s quite likely that 162 is performing as a duplicate on the 37 service to Richmond Park, as this route was normally double-deck operated, in fact a rebodied Bristol L6B on the 37 is already waiting behind the Reliance, ready to pull on to the stand and load. Behind that is a 1954 Weymann bodied Daimler CVG6 on the Whiston service, and behind him yet again is another Daimler, a Roe bodied lowbridge example dating from 1957, on the Canklow route.
A 1949 East Lancs (Bridlington) bodied Bristol K is on the left of the picture, having discharged its passengers at the ‘Final Alighting Point’ and about to turn left into Bridgegate to make yet another journey to Chapeltown or Holmes, and further across the Square is one of its sisters on the East Herringthorpe stand, while peeping out from the offside of the Reliance is an earlier example soon to depart for Sunnyside on the 21 service.
The trolley wires emerging from Bridgegate were only used in an emergency, and joined the straight through wires from the Square, which was the layover point for trolleybuses on the short working 5 service to the Pumping Station. Just slightly over three years from when this picture was taken, the trolleybuses would be abandoned, the wires cut down and the green painted traction poles dug up and taken away. Nowadays this is all a pedestrian precinct, and with many of the shops relocated to suburban shopping centres and retail worlds, the town centre is rarely ever this busy any more.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Dave Careless

01/05/16 – 17:22

You may very well be right about market day, Dave, but town centres were always much busier fifty odd years ago, before out of town shopping centres, high parking charges for those who had cars, and so on. Oh, yes, and most folk would have used the bus. Great view – is the driver aiming to hit the lady crossing in front of him, or to avoid her? One would hope it’s the latter!

Pete Davies

03/05/16 – 07:12

Thanks Pete. My father took the picture with his then new Taron Eye 35mm camera of which he was very proud. Those six Reliances, of which 162 was one, were the first underfloor engined single-deckers in the Rotherham fleet, 160-165, with matching RET registrations, so I was quite keen for him to get a photo of one for me!
There was no central bus station in Rotherham in those days, and the buses left from stands dotted around the various streets in the town centre, and with all the shops, the steady stream of buses and trolleybuses, and the shoppers and the bus queues, it was a vibrant place. I just read the other day in the local paper online from Canada that WH Smith’s are closing their Rotherham branch next month, so although it wasn’t a large outlet, there will no longer be a book shop in the town centre. That would have been hard to imagine back in 1962.

Dave Careless

Hampson of Oswestry
1951
AEC Regal IV
Metro-Cammell B35F

"Yes, Jim, she is an RF, but not as we know them," as ‘Startrek’s’ Mr Spock might say. This AEC Regal IV of the normal RF specification has a Metropolitan Cammell B35F body and is seen in the livery of a later owner, Hampson’s of Oswestry, at Dunsfold on 10 April 2011, another of the rare occasions when ‘Wisley’ wasn’t at Wisley, before moving to Brooklands.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Pete Davies

17/04/16 – 06:52

Pete, I wouldn’t regard this as being a "normal" RF. This was one of 25 "Private Hire" RFs, the major differences between this and the standard RF being a length of 27’6" to the 30’0" length of the Standard RF and glazing in the roof.

David Revis

18/04/16 – 06:08

I always thought these stubby creatures looked somewhat unbalanced, compared with their grown-up cousins!

Chris Hebbron

18/04/16 – 07:12

Here are two in service with London Transport LUC 208 RF8 and LUC 225 RF25.

Anon

18/04/16 – 17:59

OOPS! Sorry, folks, but I hadn’t realised that, apart from the roof glazing, the dimensions of these vehicles were any different. I had always thought they were of normal length but with more legroom for the sightseeing public. There is a view of an RFW somewhere in the queue, another factoer in my description of ‘normal’ specification!

Pete Davies

18/04/16 – 17:59

At 27’6" long and 7′ 6" wide with only 35 seats and an unladen weight around eight tons (about the same as a 53-seat Leopard) these were not in high demand when withdrawn in the early 1960s, however two other firms who took to them Garelochhead Coach Service and Premier Travel, both of whom had narrow roads to serve. Both Mr Lainson and Mr Foy were also known to drive hard bargains.

Stephen Allcroft

18/04/16 – 17:59

LUC 213 survives in preservation with Wealdsman Preservation Group, Headcorn they are also listed as having LUC 212 & 216. Other survivors of the ‘Lucys’ as they were nicknamed are LUC 204, 210, & 219. 220 is also listed as a spares donor with Penfold of Meldreth, Cambs but may have been broken up by now since he sold LUC 204 to Dawes of Headcorn circa 2013.
Premier Travel of Cambridge bought& operated 8 of the LUC’s from LT in 1964 they were LUC 202/3/4, 206/7/8/9 & 211.

John Wakefield

20/04/16 – 11:17

The Garelochhead ones (courtesy Andrew Shirley’s GCS Bromley Garage website) were LUC214,215 and 224 numbered 39-41.

Stephen Allcroft

23/04/16 – 06:33

These private hire RFs were ordered before the legal maximum length was increased in 1950 to 30 feet. When the new limit became effective, it was too late to change the dimensions of the first twenty-five machines then under construction, and these, together with the Park Royal prototype UMP 227, became the only short wheelbase 27ft 6ins long Regal IVs ever produced. LTE quickly amended the specification for the subsequent six hundred and seventy-five RF deliveries. The short RFs were all withdrawn by LT during 1963, whereas the thirty footers ran on reliably for upwards of ten more years. The registration letters ‘LUC’ were carried by many members of the RFW, RT and RTL classes as well as the short RFs, and the name ‘Lucy’ was never applied in London service.

Roger Cox

23/04/16 – 13:27

Roger, I am quite relieved by your confirmation that "Lucy" was never used by LT staff. As a member of LT’s Bus schedules office at 55 Broadway in the late 1960’s and early 70’s I was surrounded by any number of feral bus enthusiasts and I’m sure that if that expression had been used I would have heard of it.

David Revis

23/04/16 – 17:47

The reason for their withdrawal in 1963 was a dire shortage of drivers at that time and the consequent need to concentrate manpower/overtime on keeping normal services going, causing LTE to abandon private hire work.

Chris Hebbron

24/04/16 – 07:05

David, I was a schedules compiler at Reigate at about the same time. We can preen ourselves on our skills in producing efficient duty schedules within the very tight constraints of the T&GWU agreements then prevailing. As an expatriate Croydonian in East Anglia, I don’t know about the current situation in London, but the present day schedules of the provincial big groups, unfettered by such agreements, are kids’ play to compile, and often inefficient into the bargain.

Roger Cox

01/11/17 – 07:14

I have read that the last ten of these 27 foot 6 inch long vehicles were modified to Green Line standards receiving route board brackets and overhead luggage racks. Quite when this was done I don’t recall.

Mike Beard

02/11/17 – 06:36

This vehicle is now back on the road having been repainted in original livery and mechanicals serviced as part of the Quantock Heritage Fleet.

Roger Burdett