Highland Omnibuses Ltd
1952
Guy Arab UF
Duple C37F

Back in the days of half-cabs, most coaches were distinguishable from single-deck buses by their window line. On buses this was straight and level, but on coaches it usually formed a gentle curve from the focal point of bonnet and cab down towards the rear. Later, when the engine of heavyweight coaches disappeared under the floor, there was no longer such a strong focal point, and at first the coach building industry was undecided as to whether to continue in the old tradition or to produce something as straight and symmetrical as the new chassis. Duple hedged its bets and did both, offering a choice between the curvy Ambassador and the straight-laced Roadmaster.
Nicknamed the Iron Duke by those who built it, the Roadmaster was famously much more successful as a Dinky Toy model than it was in the real world, but it did have one big fan in the Red & White group, which purchased 21 spacious 37-seaters on Guy Arab UF chassis as well as a lone Leyland Royal Tiger. After withdrawal, some of the Arab UFs were sold to Highland Omnibuses, an avid Guy user, for bus work, where they formed an unusually sumptuous form of local transport! This one was photographed in Inverness Bus Station in June 1968.

To view a shot of the Ambassador body style click here.

Photograph and copy contributed by Peter Williamson

23/06/12 – 05:54

I find it surprising that some of the really obscure "real" vehicles seem to have been incredibly popular when converted to toy or model form. The Roadmaster is a classis example, along with the Dinky Commer/Harrington in BOAC livery.
I suppose it must have depended on the original operators’ preferences, but these Roadmasters look considerably different from those which Standerwick had, and on which the Dinky seems to be based.

Pete Davies

KWO 37 is a Duple WORLDMASTER not a Roadmaster. Ex Red and White. Similarities with the ‘Roadmaster’ are obvious.

Violets49

Southampton Corporation
1933
Thornycroft Daring DDFC
Park Royal H28/26R

Here is a rare beast, an ex Southampton Corporation Thornycroft Daring. It was one of 9 such vehicles they bought, in penny numbers, between 1933 and 1937. They were all withdrawn in 1946 and sold. No.9 went to Safeway of London and, in the critical vehicle shortage days post-war, around 1949, it was pressed into service with London Transport. Note the LT roundel (on the radiator) that all such hired vehicles carried. I should add that it was very rare for London Transport to hire double deckers. The bus looks fairly presentable for one with an expected design life of 10 years, yet now 16 years of age, including the trials and tribulations of wartime minimal maintenance, even neglect. And there’s even a shine to the bodywork, which shows no signs of sag. Sad to say, it was not preserved.
Thornycroft buses were not that common – Southampton Corporation probably bought them because the company had factories in Southampton and Basingstoke.

Incidentally, the car following the bus is a Triumph Renown.

Photograph and copy contributed by Chris Hebbron

Thornycroft Darings were very rare, SHMD Joint Board having the biggest fleet with just sixteen. Sadly, bus design was advancing so fast in the 1930s that Thornycroft were always just a bit "off the pace" being set by the technological leaders Leyland, AEC and Daimler.
The SHMD buses all had Gardner 6LWs, and Southampton’s last four 5LWs, but some had Thornycroft’s own petrol or (not very good) diesel. By all accounts the light chassis and big engine in the Joint Board buses made them very quick on hills, if noisy!
The SHMD buses also ran for sixteen years, and some were sold for non-psv use, so they were pretty tough. As far as I can trace, only one Daring survives, and that is a shortened instructional chassis in a museum in Sydney, the remains of a lonely export model!

David Jones

It’s true that SHMD was a large buyer of Thornycroft buses – I’ve counted some 104 of various models between 1925 and 1936. There were a total of 13 Darings spread over 1933, 1935 and 1936, all with Gardner 6LW engines. The very last one to survive did not go until 1959! Maybe it was a ‘learner’. The unusual thing about some 1925 Thorneycrofts was that they had Vickers bodies. I never knew that Vickers built bus bodies; one always thinks that aircraft was their forté!

Chris Hebbron

Sorry, definitely sixteen Darings at Stalybridge:
144 (ex-demonstrator with Beadle body)1933
145-149 (5) 1933/1934
150-155 (6) 1935
156-159 (4) 1936
147 & 148 were actually delivered with Thornycroft diesels, but SHMD knew a lemon when they saw one, and quickly swapped them for 6LWs.
Vickers built a good many bodies in the early/middle twenties, particularly on Thornycroft chassis; many were supplied to the GWR. The probable explanation is that at that period, bus chassis builders normally offered their products complete with a standard body which was sub-contracted to anybody with the spare capacity to take on the work at the time. Thus many Leyland TD1s with the standard Leyland body were actually built by Northern Counties and others to Leyland drawings. In later years this practice died out, mainly because operators had more idea of what they wanted and laid down more exacting specifications rather than just accepting what was offered.
Thornycrofts would have been on close terms with Vickers through the warship side of their business, as Vickers would have supplied most of the guns fitted to Thornycroft-built destroyers, so they were perhaps the obvious people to ask when bodies were needed. Vickers in turn would be desperate for work with the collapse of War Office orders for tanks, guns and aircraft at the end of the Great War.
Metropolitan Vickers supplied steel body frames to Manchester Corporation as late as 1933, but like many other early attempts at steel framing they very rot-prone and the vehicles concerned were rebodied sooner than should have been necessary. That seems to have been the end of Vickers attempts to build bus bodies.

David Jones

I defer to you, David, on numbers! I assume that neither you nor anyone else has a photo of several of these Darings together!

Chris Hebbron

As far as I know the record for a picture of Darings is the photo taken at Northern Counties in 1935, which shows all that year’s batch for SHMD; sadly they’re not finished, let alone painted! SHMD Darings do seem to have been very camera-shy!

David Jones

17/10/11 – 07:26

Referring to Dave Jones` comment about Leyland, I always had the impression, due to similarities of design, that many Leyland bodies in the late 30s and 40s were built by Alexanders and Park Royal.

Jim Hepburn

17/10/11 – 11:39

Indeed Jim, that’s true, and a good number of early postwar PD1 Titans had bodies contracted out to Alexander, Samlesbury and even one, in Samuel Ledgard’s batch of six in 1946, Lancashire Aviation – despite its aeronautical origin however, the latter was no more spritely than the other five !!

Chris Youhill

26/05/12 – 20:23

I’m a bit surprised to find that there is no reference in the list to the left of either Hants & Dorset or Wilts & Dorset. Whatever has this to do with a Thornycroft bus? Well, The Red & White group – which is listed – had as a subsidiary Venture of Basingstoke. It was passed to Wilts & Dorset at Nationalisation. There’s a chapter on Venture in "The Definitive History Of Wilts & Dorset 1915 – 1972" (by Colin Morris and Andrew Waller). It seems that it was established as a means of getting staff home and back to the factory in their lunch break, hence a "venture" on the part of the company management. Mrs Thornycroft (JI’s daughter in law) is cited as being the inspiration.

Pete Davies

27/05/12 – 11:30

Vickers of Crayford were one of the biggest builders of bus bodies in the 1920s, and they, also, produced the standard TD1 body for Leyland, the batches for Bradford being examples of this.
Southampton Corporation had many J type Thornycrofts in the 1920s, and also a batch of 6 wheel double deckers with English Electric bodies about 1929, so their small numbers of Darings were perhaps just a token order bearing in mind the earlier close relationship. SCT, in that period, were perhaps equally well known for contemporary purchases of Guy Arab models, with both composite, and metal framed Park Royal bodies, but they settled down after the 1936 orders, with the good old Leyland Titan, reverting to Arabs in the post war era.

John Whitaker

28/05/12 – 08:08

Nottingham City Transport bought four Thorneycroft Darings with Gardner 5LW engines from Southampton in 1947. The four were OW 9932, AOW 263, AOW 264, AOW 265.
The NCT fleet numbers were 122 to 125 and the Southampton fleet numbers 6 and 60 to 62. These buses didn’t last long with NCT as all had been withdrawn and sold by 1949.

Michael Elliott

24/11/15 – 06:13

Vickers built PSV bodies and railway carriages in the 1920s in factories at Crayford Surrey and in Nottingham. The works manager at Crayford in 1924 was Bill Black who was later Chairman of Leyland Motor Corporation.
Metropolitan Viockers and Cammell Laird later merged their coachbuilding interests to form Metro-Cammell, based in Birmingham, who worked very closely and later took over Weymann of Addlestone.

To Jim Hepburn,
Alexander built bodies to Leyland pattern from 1942 to 1948 or so. If you want a good idea of how a Leyland Utility would have looked, an Alexander TD4 rebuild would give a good idea.
Park Royal did not build to Leyland Outlines in the 1940s but other firms that did were Lancaster Aircraft Corporation and Samlesbury Engineering.
Massey Brothers built to the original Leyland steel reinforced Hardwood pattern into the late 1930s customers including Wigan Corporation and J. Fishwick & Sons.

Stephen Allcroft

08/03/17 – 06:15

When I was at Clifton College Bristol Preparatory School in the 1950’s we would be driven to our sports fields across Clifton Suspension Bridge in one of two Thorneycroft buses. They were impressively ancient, the driver sat outside with only a sort of porch roof to cover him. I remember a large fly off hand brake, a bulb horn and spoke wheels. I wonder what happened to these buses and whether anyone has a photograph of them with their College livery on their sides?

James Rooke

25/01/19 – 07:02

As a very belated postscript to the discussion on Vickers bodies, I recently discovered why Vickers stopped building bus bodies -sort of. In the mid-thirties they bought a major share in Metro-Cammell, having obviously decided that it was just easier to buy in the expertise than to struggle on alone. It’s all rather reminiscent of the way they bought Supermarines out to get hold of R J Mitchell, if rather less glamorous!

David Jones

01/10/19 – 07:07

Your correspondent James Rooke asks for photographs of the Thornycroft ‘buses which were used here for many years. The attached come from D. Winterbottom, Clifton after Percival (1990). p. 98; despite the caption the photographs were taken in 1965; at any rate the negatives we hold are of that date. ‘B.B’ means Beggar’s Bush, the site of playing fields on the other side of the Avon Gorge.

Dr C S Knighton

01/10/19 – 15:23

A possible explanation of the disparity between caption and negative dates.
The original negative, or even plate, had been lost so a photographic copy has been taken of original enlargements.
I have had this done, before the days of computer scanners, in order to pass photos of ancestors to other family members.

John Lomas

04/02/21 – 10:03

There were three of these Thornycroft model K buses when I was at ‘Clifton Prep’ in the late 40’s. One afternoon on the bridge returning from the playing fields the driver misjudged the width of the bridge which was narrow & the bus body struck the ironwork above the left front side glass which shattered. I was sitting at the back & had a good view of the incident, luckily no one was hurt. The wood floors were so worn you could look through & see the drive shaft revolving. The seating was along each side & across the back. The drivers used the starting handle, no electric starter. I was told they were 1926 models. About 1949 they replaced the damaged bus with a Bedford, the superbly durable model K [made 1939 to 1953].

Douglas

Thomas Burrows & Sons
1948
Daimler CVD6
Wilks & Meade C33F

This shot first appeared on the ‘Do You Know’ page and my thanks to Terry Malloy for his excellent investigating which has solved just what it was and who owned it.

Thomas Burrows & Sons were based at Wombwell which is about 5 miles South East of Barnsley on the road to Mexborough. They had a varied selection of vehicles and like most independent operators quite a few were second-hand, but this particular coach and its sister GWX 168 No 58 were both delivered new to Burrows in March 1948. Terry also came up with the information that both were withdrawn from service in December 1963 and that this particular coach was hired in 1952 by West Yorkshire Road Car for at least 2 Blackpool journeys. Maybe West Yorkshire hired it for the 1952 summer season if you know please leave a comment.

I have to admit I am not all that knowledgeable about Wilks & Meade the body builder of this coach but according to Terry again they were part of the Leeds based coach operator Wallace Arnold. If anyone can supply information re Wilks & Meade it would be appreciated.

Off at a bit of a tangent here but Wallace Arnold owned a few service bus operators, in the Leeds area they had Kippax Motors and Farsley Omnibus and in the Scarborough area they owned Hardwicks. I am not sure where Hardwicks were based but I know that dad and I circa 1963 went from Scarborough to the terminus somewhere in the Yorkshire Wolds and back again just to say we had done it. I know it was a Leyland Titan and I think it had rear doors.

I think somebody somewhere could probable do quite a good article about Wallace Arnold, could it be you perhaps?

A full list of Daimler codes can be seen here.

The vehicle might well have been hired to West Yorkshire, but not for an entire summer. This is what would have happened:
On summer Saturdays, West Yorkshire had an enormous traffic from Leeds to both the east and west coast holiday resorts. To cope with this, they set up a temporary overflow bus station in Saville Street, Leeds, and hired literally dozens of extra coaches from independent operators to act as duplicates to the normal stage carriage services. Passengers were directed onto these hired-in duplicates, and when they were full, conductors would collect the fares before each coach left, going direct, non-stop to the appropriate destination. This is, no doubt, how GWX 167 and its sister were used.

Roy Burke

Your mention of Hardwicks is interesting – though I could not have told you the name. I remember in 1966 going on a school geography field trip to Scarborough. If we are talking about the same company, the service went (like the clappers) along the A170 as far as Allerston. (Don’t ask me why it didn’t continue through Thornton le Dale to Pickering which was a mere 3 miles farther on and a much more obvious destination – but it didn’t!) Dark red all-Leyland double decker with platform doors as I recall it. I’m not sure if the depot might have been in Allerston.

Stephen Ford

A correction to my original copy I stated that Wallace Arnold owned a bus company in Scarborough called Hargreaves this was wrong my thanks to C Youhill for pointing out it was actually Hardwicks. He also added the following the routes information is most interesting.

The two PD2 double deckers were brand new to the outstation, as was a PD3 in 1966 which was joined in 1968 by its twin after original allocation to Farsley Omnibus. Also various Wallace Arnold coaches were downgraded for the service to Snainton, Hutton Buscel and Ebberston. A large contract to RAF Fylingdales was also undertaken from Scarborough.

Chris Youhill

Ref Hardwicks and Fylingdales contracts.
When Scarborough & District was formed following the changes with Hardwicks & United the contract was operated using two minibuses.
These were painted in a revised livery, fitted with semi coach seating, and were only allowed inside the perimeter of Fylingdales if driven by one of there own staff.  Scarborough & District drivers were not allowed on the property.

Terry Malloy

Hardwick’s operated from a depot in Snainton. They were started in a small almost farm building then moved twice till eventually to the depot they used until they ceased operations. I travelled to school for 5 years by Hardwick’s and knew all the drivers very well. Excellent service, not like some of todays buses.

Steve Adamson

Regarding the garage, In Snainton on a small side road off from the A170 (down from what was until recently Des Winks VW and is now a garage owned by a second hand car dealer) and before the Coachman Pub is a large garage with full height sliding doors. I recall this being used by Hardwick’s, though do check, I was 4 at the time. Hardwick’s operated from a small garage in Victoria Road Scarborough (now a car park next to the newsagent. The terminus was always Ebberston as far as I recall with the buses travelling via the A170 to the ‘top stop’ then going down the village and bearing left at the bottom to return to Snainton (almost passing the garage referred to earlier.

Martin

The reason why Hardwick’s service did not extend beyond Ebberston to Pickering was because this was in the days before deregulation. United Automobile held the licence and operated a Scarborough-Ebberston-Pickering-Ripon service numbered 128. Between Scarborough and Ebberston the United and Hardwick’s service travelled the same road. In regulated days operators were very protective of their services and competitors would be kept well at bay. The original Hardwick’s service started in the 1920s and therefore when regulation began they would have been granted the licence to operate their existing service which was just between Scarborough and Ebberston.
The front outline of the former Hardwick’s garage opposite the Coachman Inn in Snainton can still be seen on Google Streetview. The heightened roof section to take the double deckers can be clearly made out – the lower height doors on either side held the single deck vehicles. (Google maps and Streetview can be rather strange and, odd though it may sound, first key in ‘Croft Lane, Silpho, Scarborough’ to get started. The white lane forming a triangle with the A170 and B1258, near where the ‘Coachman Inn’ label is, is close to where the building stands. The Coachman Inn is actually on the opposite side of the road than the map shows!)
If you would like to see some old Hardwick’s timetables and photos of the double deckers someone has mentioned I invite you to take a look at my Fotopic site: here.

David Slater

26/05/11 – 07:02

Paul Carter, in his various volumes concerning operators in Cambridgeshire, states that the name of this bodybuilder is usually spelt wrongly – it should be Wilks and Meade. This firm built three double deck bodies on Daimler CVD6 chassis for Premier Travel in 1950. The quality of construction proved to be decidedly poor, and major rebuilding had to be undertaken by the operator very early in the lives of these vehicles.

Roger Cox

Thanks for that  I have corrected my spelling.

14/06/11 – 08:18

The contract to Fylingdales was operated by Wallace Arnold from Scarborough and Whitby. I lived in Snainton, and you could almost set your watch by the bus coming through, 7.25 am, 3.25pm and 11.25 pm. They were always in a rush. Hardwicks buses were started by George Hardwick in the 20’s I think. Some of the drivers I remember include, George Alden, Walter Ford, Eddie Stephenson, John Jennings, Sid Ward and Malcolm Chambers.

Steve Adamson

26/10/12 – 07:18

My granddad was Harry Meade (the Meade side of the Wilks & Meade partnership). My mother who is still alive and living in Yorkshire is Harry’s daughter.

Nick Freeman

26/10/12 – 10:08

Like many others, I’m always fascinated by little coincidences connected with bus and coach operation, so here’s quite a good one concerned with the massive West Yorkshire summer traffic to the East Coast for which the two Burrows Daimlers were often hired. West Yorkshire had a large amount of Bristol K6Bs, one series of which were registered GWX 101 – 130. When brand new, GWX 108 (751, later DB23) was converted by the Company into a double deck coach and was a beautiful vehicle in rich cream and maroon, with coach pattern lovely green moquette seating. It appeared regularly on service 43 to Scarborough, and so it is practically certain that GWX 108 will have been duplicated by, or at least shared the A 64 road with, Burrows’ GWX 167/8 on the coastal route at some time or other. I suppose some would say "Little things please little minds" – guilty as charged yer ‘onour !!

Chris Youhill

26/10/12 – 14:11

Well, Chris, you’re great on reminding us of nostalgic moments from our past. I have only a vague memory of DB23, having only seen it briefly in Rougier Street without a chance to get a good look. However, do you remember the rather less successful treatment of DB31 (LWR 417)?
As for your reference to WY’s massive summer traffic from Leeds, it reminded me of a (typical WY) scenario when loading passengers onto hired-in coaches. In addition to the stage carriage service to Scarborough, there was an express service, that cost something like 2/6d or 3/6d more. However, because there were so many stage carriage duplicates, the passenger experience was generally the same on either service. There were separate stage carriage and express queues in Saville Street, and we had strict instructions not to allow to two streams of passengers to get mixed up because the company didn’t want any passengers to realise they had paid more for exactly the same journey.

Roy Burke

27/10/12 – 06:02

You missed a treat Roy in not having a really good look at DB 23. I had a school friend who was "well in" at Grove Park Works and we were allowed to see it in there just as it was completed. It was a magnificent sight, never having even been in the open air at that time. We were very impressed indeed, and I always felt really sorry in later years when it was returned to service bus work and painted red.
I believe that DBW 31 (8’00" wide) had been in normal service a short while before being converted, and what a sad contrast it made with the other beauty. It was initially done in black with incongruous and cheap looking silver metal mouldings of an appearance far from professional – looking like something from one of the very smallest "streamlined modern" coach building concerns. The black areas were later changed to standard red which was no improvement at all. It was, to be fair, very rarely that WYRCC slipped up like that, their design and workmanship normally being impeccable.

Chris Youhill

29/10/12 – 06:51

I tend to agree with your sentiments Chris. Pictures I have seen of DB23 show it in the very attractive cream and maroon livery you describe. However, the livery inflicted on DBW31 was quite simply ‘over the top’, even for the flamboyant fifties. The style was just too fussy, and combined with the built-up front nearside wing, looked altogether wrong. To some, a little like turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear! West Yorkshire definitely slipped up there as you say, and one can’t help thinking that if they had applied DB23’s simpler coach livery to DBW31’s fuller lines, it would have lent a far more prestigious air. Definitely a case of ‘less is more’. I wonder what it looked like from the back….

Brendan Smith

08/02/13 – 06:29

I have fond memories of Tommy Burrows buses from circa 1968 when my impoverished wife-to-be and myself used to catch their 99 service from Wakefield bus station to Rawmarsh via Barnsley and Wombwell. It was a cheap summer Sunday afternoon out and quite a long ride time wise from Sandal, Wakefield to the Rawmarsh terminus. I believe the fare at the time was 5/6 (27.5p) return each.
At the time I was an apprentice draughtsman at Bison Concrete in Stourton, Leeds and used to catch the same Burrows 99 service home to Wakefield outside the works gates at 5.00pm.
I was attracted to the bright red livery of the Buses.

Michael Taylor

01/04/13 – 17:29

Regarding request for photos of United buses which operated the 128 Scarborough to Helmsley service and views at Pickering depot, I have uncovered this view of two of the Pickering based buses.
Copyright is Colin W Routh.

Ken Hoggett

06/04/14 – 08:28

Just a note about the Scarborough & District fleet name. This was originally used by E H Robinsons in the early 1900’s when they had the largest fleet of all weather charabancs in the North East based at the railway yard in Scarborough. These were mainly Plaxton bodied Lancia’s as Robinsons were the main agents for Lancia in the area. Robinsons were taken over by United in 1926 who inherited the S&D fleet name.

Chris Tinker

28/02/17 – 06:16

I’m a descendant of Thomas Burrows and recently found this article – it’s great to see such enthusiasm for days gone by.
Does anyone have any information about Thomas Burrows and his family that they would be able to share with me? Any memory would be appreciated.

Andrew Jackson

28/02/17 – 07:23

Andrew Jackson – if you go to the ‘Fleet Lists’ column on this site there is a substantial fleet list (my own compilation and not confirmed as correct) that covers most of the vehicles owned by Thomas Burrows. It would be great if any of your wider family have any fleet photos to share on here.

Les Dickinson

Vehicle reminder shot for this posting

29/10/18 – 06:02

Andrew Jackson-there will be a book coming out on "Tommy’s Bus" hopefully in 2019, if you contact me through this website I can give you more details. Look forward to hearing from you.

Stuart Emmett