King Alfred Motor Services
1964
AEC Renown 3B2RA
Park Royal H44/31F

595 and 596 LCG are AEC Renown 3B2RA vehicles with Park Royal H72F bodywork from the fleet of King Alfred Motor Services of Winchester, and date from 1964. They are both seen during one of the famous Running Days on 1 January 2009. Note the different applications of the livery.

Photograph and Copy contributed by Pete Davies

07/08/14 – 17:16

Are you sure it’s different livery and not different light? [The mirror is in a different position though.] They are a rather splendid pair. We await developments with a replacement for the New Year running days.

David Oldfield

08/08/14 – 06:02

According to the FoKAB website the event will be 3rd(eve)/4th May next year

Ian Comley

08/08/14 – 06:06

David, Thanks for your comment. Yes, it most certainly is a different green. The two photos were taken on the same day and in similar conditions. I compare it to the different applications of Aldershot & District or West Riding against Southdown.

Pete Davies

08/08/14 – 06:07

I do believe that 595 is lighter green.

Mike Morton

08/08/14 – 06:08

On my computer screen the greens look fairly similar or "why bother with two such similar colours" but on an ipad ("Retina" screen?) they look distinctly different.

Joe

08/08/14 – 06:09

Like David, I suspect that this is a trick of the light. I saw the King Alfred (R. Chisnell) fleet pretty frequently, and rode on it occasionally, when I lived in Hampshire from 1966 to 1975, and I recall only one shade of green being used. In fact, I did attend an interview in 1971 to see about a job in the Traffic Dept., but I was less than impressed with the outfit at that stage and didn’t pursue the matter. It was no surprise when it simply folded two years later.

Roger Cox

08/08/14 – 06:10

King Alfred did change their livery in the last years of operation. The upper picture of 595 LCG has the later (final) livery, all the same shade of green. The lower 596 LCG has the earlier livery with the darker shade of green at lower deck level. I think I have stated this correctly, unless the old grey cells are misfiring. (There was a coach livery too in the fifties and sixties, described as "eau-de-nil" – a sort of pale green, with a green stripe or flash related to bodywork embellishments).

Michael Hampton

13/08/14 – 07:05

According to "King Alfred Motor Services: the Story of a Winchester Family Business" (James Freeman & Robert Jowitt, Kingfisher, 1984), the later livery first appeared on the four Leyland Atlantean PDR1/2s (589-592) as a result of a mistake by the Roe paint-shop. Not only was the Brunswick green omitted from the lower panels, but the wheel centres were painted red – this was because these four vehicles followed on from a larger batch (101-125) of almost identical vehicles for West Riding, in whose livery they were mistakenly painted.
Apparently, the Chisnell family (the Directors of KAMS) were quite taken with the result, and decided to adopt the simplified livery (although, I think, without the red wheel centres) as the fleet standard.
This raises a number of questions! Firstly, how can a paint-shop get things so wrong? – even though the application of the KAMS livery was in the same proportions as WRAC’s surely the different destination apertures and application of KAMS fleet-names/legal lettering etc. might have suggested that the four Atlanteans concerned should have not received WRAC livery? . . . and what about final quality control? Secondly, the light green – was the KAMS light green exactly the same shade as WRAC green? – Freeman and Jowitts’ story suggests that the same light green was used on both the WRAC and KAMS buses.
So. Were KAMS offered a cheaper price by Roe if they took the four Atlanteans to more-or-less West Riding specification as a follow-on order? – the bodies are more-or-less identical except for destination aperture, an extra horizontal grab-rail behind the near-side windscreen on the West Riding bodies, and the Atlantean badge on the front of the KAMS buses. Were KAMS persuaded also to use West Riding green as being very close to their own light green? . . . and was that mis-interpreted in the Roe paint-shop as an instruction to use WRAC livery, full-stop?

Philip Rushworth