Copyright Pete Davies

Wilts & Dorset Motor Services
1954
Bristol LWL5G
ECW FB39F

LAM 107 was built for Wilts & Dorset in 1954. By the time I photographed her, on a dull Sunday afternoon in March, 1976, she had been relegated to the role of staff transport for Husband’s Shipyard, of Marchwood. The village is opposite Southampton’s Western docks and the military base there was home to the MULBERRY harbour project for D Day. In this view, she had been modified to have an Eastern Coachworks FB39F body and was LWL5G mechanically. Her successor at Husbands was a Bedford VAL which had been new to Blue Bus of Willington.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Pete Davies

This was modified in 1959 to make it suitable for OMO. Apparently they were known locally as "conkerboxes" but I have no idea why.

Paragon

16/02/13 – 07:25

Well this one has obviously seen better days but I think that with this style of full front added, the standard ECW/Bristol L was transformed into a very nice, modern looking bus. I’m surprised it wasn’t done to a greater extent by Tilling companies, although some of them perhaps thought it was money that didn’t need to be spent!

Chris Barker

18/02/13 – 17:32

The comment about conkerboxes reminded me of my time with Bristol Omnibus Co. We called the L5gs with the nearside cab window adjusted for O.M.O.duties conkerboxes, rattling old crates as they were, completely devoid of any mod cons and very tiring to work on, the side window conversion resulted in a very painful neck at the end of a shift. I often wonder why I have never seen one so converted at a rally? By the way I believe that the conkerbox nickname related to the sound effects produced sometimes when engaging the "overdrive" 5th gear, a bit like a loose cannon ball in a steel tank. They really were noisy old things to drive, nice to see at rallies, but to have to drive constantly a real pain, luckily we only had a few of them to put up with, the rest of our steeds were LS5gs and MW5gs, which comparatively speaking were much more acceptable, of course they were all light years away from the REs yet to appear in the fleet.

Dave Knapp

14/02/14 – 17:07

On the subject of Excetera, the buses have personal number plates with letters ETC, the accepted abbreviation for "et cetera", but the company spells its name eXcetera. No idea why!

Andy