W. Alexander & Sons Ltd.
1953
Leyland Titan PD2/12
Alexander L27/26R

W. Alexander & Sons Ltd Leyland Titan PD2/12 with Alexander lowbridge bodywork RB161 DWG 917, ‘Bus Lists on the Web’ have it listed as new to Alexander in 1952, ‘British Bus Fleets have RB160 DWG 916 listed at 1953, though not all of the batch are listed. But other sources on the web have it dated at 1954, clarification on this matter may prove interesting.

As can be seen below the RB161 fleet number plate is a small plate with the letters ‘BN’ which stood for the ‘Bannockburn’ depot.
It is seen at A-Bus in October 2014 on a trip in connection with the Bristol Vintage Bus Group running day.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Ken Jones

06/11/14 – 08:23

This bus is not in Alexander (Midland) livery, but in the W. Alexander livery that existed until 1961 when the fleet was split into three – Midland, Fife and Northern. The fleet numbers were then prefixed with M, F or N respectively.
This bus latterly ran in the attractive yellow and cream colour scheme of Alexander (Northern) and is seen in the attached photo along with sister NRB163 at Elgin depot on 6th September 1970, complete with E’ depot plate.

David Beilby

06/11/14 – 08:25

I have changed the header and copy to remove the (Midland) part.

Peter

06/11/14 – 09:06

W.Alexander & Sons Leyland Titan, DWG 917 was first registered on 4th June 1953. As part of the new vehicle licencing system the DVLA has a public website which shows if your vehicle is currently road taxed, it also shows when a vehicle was first registered, just google "vehicle enquiry service.gov.uk", enter your registration and chassis type to check if your vehicle is covered.

Ron Mesure

Whippet Coaches
1963
Bedford VAL14
Yeates C52F

Taken on Sunday April 21st 1963 at a somewhat wet Brighton coach rally this photo shows a Bedford VAL 14 with a Yeates Fiesta C52F body of Whippet Coaches from Hilton in Cambridgeshire Registration No 390 GEW. This was one of only eleven VAL’s bodied by Yeates at least six of which went to Barton Transport and were all fitted with dual doors with either 50 or 56 seats which would seem to make them D/P’s, that of course is open to question.
Whatever your view the Yeates bodied Bedford VAL was a fairly unusual combination and was in my view an attractive vehicle which would have benefited from a more restrained paint job.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Diesel Dave

03/11/14 – 06:36

This is a Fiesta body; the Barton ones were based on the earlier Europa styling. Possibly the siting of an exit door amid sloping window pillars may have been considered unsatisfactory.

Peter Williamson

04/11/14 – 06:47

If Dave is correct about Yeates bodying only eleven VALs and seven are accounted for here, could we possibly have details of who had the others?

Chris Barker

04/11/14 – 07:00

Charles Rickards of Brentford had AYV 92B, a Yeates bodied VAL.

John Hodkinson

04/11/14 – 11:26

Barton, Chillwell
963 963 RVO Bedford VAL14 1016 – Yeates 0010 C50D 6/63
964 964 RVO Bedford VAL14 1104 – Yeates 0011 C50D 6/63
965 965 RVO Bedford VAL14 1111 – Yeates 0012 C50D 7/63
966 966 RVO Bedford VAL14 1115 – Yeates 0013 C50D 7/63
967 967 RVO Bedford VAL14 1145 – Yeates 0015 DP56D 7/63
968 968 RVO Bedford VAL14 1146 – Yeates 0014 DP56D 7/63
969 969 RVO Bedford VAL14 1167 – Yeates 0016 DP56D 7/63

Gibson, Barlestone
54 179 CNR Bedford VAL14 1126 – Yeates 0020 C52F 5/63
58 407 EAY Bedford VAL14 1195 – Yeates 0021 C51F 10/63

Rickard. W2
AYV 92B Bedford VAL14 1181 – Yeates 0029 C52F 5/64

Whippet, Hilton
390 GEW Bedford VAL14 1060 – Yeates 0019 C52F 5/63

These were the only Bedford VAL with Yeates bodywork.

Ron Mesure

05/11/14 – 11:38

This may be a trick of the camera, but the odd thing about this body seems to be the high ground clearance which gives it a rather primitive lorry-look: this and as Dave says the (typical?) Yeates paint job is bucking the trend towards smoother, unfussy lines eg the Harrington Bartons…. and by-the-by why Whippet?- in northern climes, it is a poor man’s Greyhound (delightful though they are, he adds hastily) and "Whippet Quick" is not a phrase you want attached to your business.

Joe

05/11/14 – 15:40

I think it’s inherent in the design, it looks high. The Duple Vega Major looks low, sleek and right. To a lesser extent, so does the Plaxton Val. The other mainstream coach on the VAL, the Legionnaire, looked higher – as did the other minority body, the MCW Topas II.

David Oldfield

09/11/14 – 06:51

To not answer Joe’s question about the name "Whippet", unfortunately the book issued to mark the operators 90th anniversary says that the "the origins of the name are obscure" so presumably the present owners never asked their grandfather where he got the name from. They also own a non trading company called Bloodhound Bus Lines!

Nigel Turner

10/11/14 – 06:56

If Paul Carter, the author of the "Whippet" book, and of several other comprehensive East Anglian transport volumes, cannot positively elicit the origins of the name, then I doubt that anyone ever will. It has been suggested, however, that the name was adopted to give an indication of speed, and "Greyhound" had already been (over)used elsewhere to such an extent that the name was becoming rather a cliché, hence "Whippet". Originally, it was "The Whippet", but in more recent times, presumably inspired(!) by the Go Northern, Go Ahead, Go Whittle etc Academy For The Misuse Of The English Language, it has traded as "Go Whippet". As one living locally to this operator, I continue to be bemused by its radical changes of livery every few years. The only constant factor is the inclusion of blue in some form. Latterly this has become a rather unexciting shade that covers almost the entire vehicle, but individual buses have differing applications of the relief colour – this is just a simple yellow stripe on the latest acquisitions. All the Busway vehicles, Whippet and Stagecoach, wear the same livery, which is rather confusing to the public as the tickets of the two operators are emphatically not inter-available. The County Council did attempt to introduce a common ticket along the Busway, but this fell foul of rejection through inter operator rivalry, and has been abandoned. Another characteristic of the company is the policy of allocating individual buses to individual drivers – each driver keeps the bus for the entire working day. This may be a sound policy for coach work, but it mitigates against efficient bus utilisation. At certain times of the day, the bus stations at St Ives and Huntingdon are full of Whippet buses on layover.

Roger Cox

17/11/14 – 06:44

Whippet has been sold to Tower Transit – an Australian company.

Mark Smith

17/11/14 – 17:21

Back in 1952, Mr Lee was in talks with Eastern National about selling the business however nothing came of it. According to the EN records Mr Lee wished to retire but did not think his sons were capable of running it.

Nigel Turner

18/11/14 – 06:13

Even before that, in May 1947, and again in early 1951, Mr Henry Lee entered into talks with Mr Arthur Lainson with a view to selling out to Premier Travel. Now, nearly 27 years since the demise of the Lainson era Premier Travel, Whippet is still around, though I foresee some significant changes on the horizon once a financially hard nosed new owner takes charge.

Roger Cox

19/11/14 – 15:17

I think a sell off by Whippet has been on the cards for some time, Stagecoach would probably have bought them if it was not for the monopolies commission. At least it should now put Whippet in a stronger position in the Cambridgeshire bus scene & provide some competition to Stagecoach.
On a lighter note, I wonder if they will replace the Whippet with a Kangaroo!!

John Wakefield

10/01/16 – 05:52

A year or so on & Tower Transit have not made significant changes to Whippet, they are still only operating around the same amount of services, many tendered rural route supported by Cambridgeshire County Council. No new buses have been acquired although some ex London ones have cascaded down but these are ‘old’ vehicles including some short Dennis Darts on 03 plates. But they also have three 12 plate ADL Enviro 200’s branded ‘Puppy’s for use on rural routes. As at present they are no threat to Stagecoach. They have though produced a useful fold up timetable covering all bus routes.

John Wakefield

10/01/16 – 10:50

I like John’s comments about Whippet and the name for the ADL Enviro 200. Among my traffic duties with Southampton City Council was visiting applicants for disabled parking bays. On one occasion, I was ushered in and I saw the back end of a dog disappearing through a doorway. A few minutes later, one of the household asked, "Where’s Tyson?" "He’s in the back garden," was the reply. Now, Tyson, in the canine context, projects an image of some of the more vicious breeds. Eventually, Tyson condescended to return indoors. I saw a whippet. Clearly, the owner had a good sense of humour!

Pete Davies

27/01/18 – 07:05

Whippet have recently terminated a number of subsidised routes around Huntingdon and St ives which have now been taken by Stagecoach Busway and Dews.

David Ormerod

12/06/19 – 06:29

Whippet are hoping to celebrate in some way or another, it’s 100 year anniversary (sometime in 2019 but no one knows when!). I would love to hear from anyone with ideas how best we could celebrate this event(we will most likely pick a date in Aug 19 for our celebration). I don’t believe we will wish to go too over the top and the budget will be limited.

Pauline

13/06/19 – 06:29

Pauline (I assume you are in someway connected with Whippet)
The event that you could have chosen for the 100 year celebration was Bus Fest at Whittlesey in May, but that event is now past. You really should have arranged a date at the beginning of the year and ahead of the rally season. Most events have now been advertised in the various bus enthusiast publications and calendars. I do wonder if there is much interest in the company now since the take over by Tower Transit and more recently Ascendal. Sad that this old & respected established company was sold out of the Lee family ownership.

John Wakefield

14/06/19 – 06:30

Hi John
Yes, I am Office Manager at Whippet Coaches and (last week) was given the enviable task of organising an event to celebrate the 100 year anniversary.

No name given

North Western Road Car Co
1956
Leyland Titan PD2/21
Weymann L30/28RD

Until the arrival of ten of these in the North Western fleet in 1956, previous examples of the Leyland PD2 had featured traditional exposed radiators and bodywork by either Leyland themselves, or by Weymann, who had supplied six lightweight but otherwise classically styled bodies in 1953. This last batch featured the PD2/21 chassis with the concealed front – originally designed for Midland Red’s LD8 class, then adopted as standard by Leyland, even leaving the oddly shaped blank space above the grille slots intended for the BMMO badge. The PD2/21 was the less common air-braked variant of the more common vacuum-braked PD2/20. The bodywork was the lowbridge manifestation of the MCW organisation’s lightweight Orion, regarded by many as being particularly slab-sided and ugly, though personally I always felt that the equal depth windows (compared with the unequal ones of the highbridge version) at least improved the overall proportions.
It seems that they were generally unpopular with crews and most local enthusiasts, being accused of being very hard riding. They were quite a familiar site to me – particularly on Summer Saturdays when the usual ‘blacktop’ Tiger Cubs or Reliances were needed for greater things – as they would often pass through my home town of Halifax working on the X12 between Manchester and Bradford. Although this service passed our house, the limited stop conditions on that section left it out of bounds to us locals, so I never got to ride on one.
Although the other nine were scrapped, Neville Mercer has said that 666 was exported to Canada, so there is a remote chance that it could still exist. Similar looking examples were also bought by East Midland, and the Corporations of Luton and Southend.
Here 666 is seen on the parking ground off Wood Street in Stockport, alongside 258, a Leopard PSU4/4R with Duple Commander III C41F body of 1968.

Photograph and Copy contributed by John Stringer

29/10/14 – 17:07

When I worked at Sharston (near Northenden) 666 from Manchester depot, took me on the first leg of my journey home to Royton. It was on the 64 service to Piccadilly (from Ringway) almost every day. I hated it. The suspension was indeed very hard. I usually sat on the front nearside seat in the lower deck, which was not too bumpy. The North Western drivers always gave me a fast run into town – they made good time by ignoring one or two intending passengers. As for sound effects, the journey was accompanied by sneezing noises from the air brakes!
At summer weekends it sometimes appeared on X12, Manchester – Halifax – Bradford. I had the misfortune to ride on it one Saturday from Bradford to Oldham. The West Riding road surfaces made for a miserable journey!
Wouldn’t mind a ride on it now though!!

Peter G

29/10/14 – 17:08

John mentions that these lowbridge PD2’s were familiar to him as they regularly passed through Halifax on the X12. This one actually passed through Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1972, on its way west, it certainly took me by surprise when I caught a glimpse of it. I’m not sure if it still exists or not, or just where it might be.

Dave Careless

30/10/14 – 07:18

The problem of harsh riding given by the lightweight Orion and its clones was shared by other makes of chassis, all of which were sprung to carry the typical weight of traditional, decent quality bodywork.

Roger Cox

30/10/14 – 07:19

Not only were they hard riding, they were finished to a cheap specification, rattled a lot and the crews hated the rear doors. All in all not the finest NWRCC vehicles.

Phil Blinkhorn

30/10/14 – 07:20

It’s lovely to see a photo of the registration number KDB 666 as nature intended, adorning a North Western Leyland Titan. In the late 1970’s the registration number could often be seen around Harrogate, attached to a very nice green Rover 3500. The bus connection was maintained however, as the Rover was used by one of NBC/West Yorkshire Road Car’s senior managers.

Brendan Smith

05/11/14 – 06:29

I have a note of seeing this bus in Frank Cowley’s yard in Fallowfield, re-registered KDB 499, in January 1972. I wonder what that mark was transferred from?

Michael Keeley

05/11/14 – 11:36

I’ve long wondered if "KDB 499" was a real registration mark. Given the fundamentalist tendencies of many North Americans I can understand why Cowley (given a Canadian buyer for the vehicle) might have decided to remove the original "Number of the Beast" plate, but would they really have gone to the trouble of officially re-registering it with a similar mark? My suspicion is that the plate was for purely cosmetic purposes.
Back in the late 60s I saw a few withdrawn NWRCC vehicles being ferried to Cowley’s Salford and Fallowfield premises using the dealer’s "BA" trade plates, and once the PD2/21 had gotten there its next trip was on a boat. I’d also be interested to find out when the WYRCC staff-car received the registration. Was there a noticeable gap?
The PSV Circle’s NWRCC fleet history asserts that KDB 499 was a genuine registration, but as aficionados of these histories will be aware the level of accuracy in this is not up to their usual standard. Does anybody have a record of Stockport registrations?

Neville Mercer

06/11/14 – 06:08

KDB 499 may well have been a real registration mark but not to NWRCC for a PSV. They had KDB 631 to KDB 700, all but 661-670 being applied to Tiger Cub deliveries in 1956 and 1957.

Orla Nutting

06/11/14 – 11:42

Hi Orla, I think you’ve forgotten the batch of Weymann Fanfares that started at KDB 626, making a total of 75 vehicles in the block allocation. KDB 499 was presumably allocated to a private car, and I really can’t understand why NWRCC would go to the trouble of re-registering the vehicle before selling it to Cowley. Back in those days this would have involved buying the previous vehicle to wear the marks – a rather expensive manoeuvre merely to get rid of one old bus. There’s obviously another story going on here – the allocation of 666’s old registration number to the WYRCC staff car. I appreciate that "KDB" looks vaguely like a WYRCC fleet number, but a staff car would look nothing like a Keighley based Bristol double-decker! Why would anybody (especially a no-nonsense THC subsidiary) pay good money to do this?
Do we have any ex-WYRCC readers who can throw further light on this?

Neville Mercer

06/11/14 – 14:15

Ah, yes. The AEC Reliances. I had forgotten them.

Orla Nutting

07/11/14 – 13:17

Neville, the senior member of staff arrived in Harrogate from elsewhere in the National Bus Company empire, and the Rover came with him, already bearing its KDB 666 registration. Maybe he had a soft spot for this particular bus (666) or perhaps there was something of significance in the registration. Alas we’ll probably never know.

Brendan Smith

11/11/14 – 18:18

I’ve done some digging in my records and find that KDB 666 was on a Rover 3500 that came under West Yorkshire admin on 16/1/75. However, it runs in my mind that the NBC “senior member” was Robert Brook, and that he didn’t come to Yorkshire to join West Yorkshire, but to live. Certainly, it’s shown as being the “Chief Executive’s” car. At about this time, if you remember, NBC was also running an area office in Darlington, to which Bill Stephen had been “shunted” when he was removed as WY Chief Engineer, but whether that was where Mr Brook also worked I can’t now remember. I suspect he probably spent a lot of time commuting to London!

Trevor Leach

12/11/14 – 05:36

Presumably the Robert Brook who was General Manager of North Western at the time it was broken up? I seem to recall that there was another Robert Brook, although I might just have been confused by rapid ‘career moves’!

Nigel Frampton

09/04/15 – 07:05

I remember seeing a beige Rover in Cheadle in the late sixties or early seventies with the reg KDB 666. I loved occasionally having a lowbridge Titan on my journey to school. The routes 29, 30, 52 and 52A were predominantly Daimler Fleetlines, Dennis Lolines 2 and 3 and AEC Renowns (my favourite bus ever was AJA 121B one of the second batch with moquette upholstery on the upper deck) so a lowbridge Titan was quite a novelty.

Graham Bloxsome

23/05/15 – 07:05

There’s no mystery. Robert Brook was the last GM of North Western and he took the registration with him for his car when he left at the end of 1972. He also left with a photo I prepared for him of 666 as delivered in the old cream roof black wings livery. He and I left the Manchester area at the same time and he kindly let me speak to him in his office knowing my interest in North Western and as owner of CDB 206.

Bob Bracegirdle

01/09/17 – 15:14

I’ve just read through this thread and can definitely clarify, if there’s still any uncertainty, that Robert Brook was overall Chairman of NBC in 1978-80 at a time when Linda Chalker was Minister for Transport. My GM at the time would say ‘Oh dear, we’ve got another Dear Robert, love Linda.’ i.e. another memo from the Minister to our lord and master that had to be dealt with. Presumably Bob B’s ‘left’ didn’t mean retirement, or could have referred to another RB?

Nick Turner