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One of the problems of driving a large vehicle in a city is having to constantly change gear. Add frequent stops for passengers, having to steer eight tons without powered steering when sitting next to a hot and noisy diesel engine, not to mention having to double declutch on each change - a process which could easily become hampered by a variety of road conditions - and the process becomes tiring.
In the 1930s almost all buses came with a crash gearbox, i.e. no syncromesh and the need to carefully time gear changes. This was not a problem in rural areas but even in the 1930s the cities were congested and were to become more so when the car boom took off in the 1950s.
Crossley, amongst their many forays into weird, whacky and wonderful technologies, were determined to find a workable, reliable and long lived method of automatic transmission for their vehicles and carried out experiments in the 1930s with their cars and also on a Rochdale bus, with a pre-selector gearbox.
Manchester's 501, a Crossley Mancunian with the first style of "Standard" bodywork, was delivered in 1934 with a Wilson pre-selector gearbox but was converted to a fully automatic Crossley Freeborn box in 1936 for a 3 month experiment. After a "successful" trial, the bus went back to the Wilson box before being converted to the crash gearbox the rest of its batch had been delivered with. "Success" was obviously relative.
A number of "Streamliners" on Crossley chassis were fitted for short periods with syncromesh, pre-selector and one example of an automatic box and Leyland Titan "Streamliner", 635, received a Leyland syncromesh box for over a year in 1939/40.
Leyland, in a bid to help ease the conversion of tram drivers to driving buses, had developed the so called "Gearless Bus" which transmitted the drive via a torque converter and had the benefit of having only three gear positions - reverse, forward start and forward run (or direct drive), engaged at around 20 mph. This led to many operators ordering the option on their Titans but the system gave trouble and though Manchester tested Stockport's TD4c in 1938 on route #1, none appeared in the next Leyland order from Piccadilly and Leyland dropped the option in 1940.
It came as a great surprise to many that when Crossley announced their post war chassis (DD42) it appeared with the option of a "Turbo Transmitter". This was basically a torque converter which also eliminated the need for the change from "start" to "run". Crossley also announced it had abandoned development of the Freeborn fully automatic system.
When the demonstrator (later 2960) entered service in Manchester in 1944 it was fitted with a Turbo Transmitter which was in and out of the chassis several times, being swapped for crash and constant mesh boxes, but was a permanent feature when Manchester bought the bus in 1947 - permanent that is until Manchester got fed up with having to change the Turbo Transmitter regularly (28,000 miles was the best mileage achieved by a unit) and with the concurrent problems with lack of power from the Crossley engine, swapped both in 1952 for Leyland units.
In the meantime, however, Manchester bought its first batch of "Post War Standards" with Crossley chassis and body (2890 - 2959/2961), five of the last six having Turbo Transmitters. Having had a difficult six/seven years in service they were all converted to Leyland engines and gearboxes in 1953/4. Eighteen of the 1948 batch of Crossleys had syncromesh boxes as did the whole of the 1949 batch - the last Crossleys received by MCTD.
Leyland continued to supply crash boxes on its chassis until PD2 3200 appeared in 1951, thereafter 4 speed syncromesh gearboxes were standard on all Leyland front engined buses in the fleet.
Of course there was a partial solution to the problem of gear changing under Crossley's nose. The Wilson pre-selector gearbox was available to them, they had tried it in 1934, but as the gear had to be first selected by means of a stalk on the column and then a pedal (which replaced the clutch) had to be depressed when the gear change was needed, Crossley felt this was nowhere near as good an idea as full automation.
Daimler thought differently and from the first COG5s delivered in 1940 (1254-1316) to almost the very last Daimler front engined vehicles to arrive in 1963, the pre-selector gearbox was specified for Manchester's Daimlers in all but two batches, which we will come to.
Manchester borrowed a Leyland PD2/15 demonstrator in 1955/6. This had a pneumocyclic semi automatic gearbox. When the 1958 PD2s with Burlingham bodies appeared, the last six were delayed and eventually arrived as PD2/34 chassis, the rest being PD2/40s. The reason for the delay and type change was that 3515-3517 were delivered with the Leyland pneumocyclic gearbox whilst 3518/9 had CAV electrically controlled Wilson automatic gearboxes and 3520 had a fully automatic box built by Self Changing Gears Ltd.
All these vehicles went into service on the #1 and #16 from Parrs Wood and it just so happened that their arrival co-incided with my starting grammar school so I rode on them a great deal. Jerky gear changes and mellifluous sounds were the feature of all of the automatic vehicles for quite some time after entry into service, 3520 being indistinguishable by ear from a London RTL which I was used to riding on.
The pneumocyclic geared buses didn't give any real problems and retained their gearboxes until SELNEC withdrew them from service. 3518/9 could be operated as either semi or fully automatic vehicles but 3520 had an advanced unit with a centrifugal clutch and anti roll back device. Reverse, first, second or third could be selected as could automatic and, to stop drivers trying to start in third, the power for selection of third was taken from the alternator which meant the vehicle had to be running at some speed.
Power to select first and second came from the battery but this gave problems if the battery became too low as the bus could not be started. As the bus had to be left at termini with all lights on, on winter nights - and driverless at that - there were many calls to the depot for a fully charged battery until the City of Manchester and Stockport Constabularies, along with the Northwest Traffic Commissioners gave a dispensation for the bus to be left with its engine running at the terminus as long as the handbrake was on and a chock, secured to the cab by a chain, was placed under the front wheel. The three automatic vehicles were converted to pneumocyclic gearboxes during their first major overhaul in 1964.
Daimlers 4588/4589 were fitted with Daimler Diamatic fully automatic gearboxes on delivery in 1961 and the rest of the batch (4580-4587) had air operated pre-selector gearboxes (similar to the Leyland pneumocyclic) and this eliminated the "change speed pedal" which drivers had to depress to change the previously selected ratio. This pedal had a nasty habit of kicking back if not fully depressed causing cuts and bruising.
None of these diversions from the norm deflected from the aim of having a standard bus again and the outcome of the long discussions with MCW about the Orion appeared in July 1958 with the first of 100 Leyland PD2/40s. These were different to the standard Orion of the time having a very upright front profile which made them look more modern, increased seating and more legroom on the upper deck and, internally, they were finished to a higher standard than previous Orion deliveries - though the fibreglass domes remained and, as with earlier batches, were prone to cracking.
They all had ventilators in the two upper deck front windows which were later removed when the domes needed replacement - the new domes incorporating a vent pad - and this change to one piece windows detracted from the look of the vehicle. Up to 3580 they were delivered in the red and cream livery which suited the Orion with its differing window depths on upper and lower decks. The all over red with a cream stripe on the rest didn't look as good.
Oddly no Daimler CVGs delivered to Manchester after the Orion redesign featured the upright profile, though they were of the same seating capacity as the Leylands and contained all the other upgrades.
Piccadilly's definition of "Standard" was stretched somewhat as sliding windows were used on most vehicles except 3571 - 3590 which had half drop windows. Manchester buses, with a very few exceptions, didn't have heaters. Even A F Neal - who was entitled as General Manager to a car - used to travel every day to and from home on the unheated #1 or #131 along with his customers and falling revenue due to a growing use of cars (many of which didn't have heaters as standard either) coupled with the boss's own observations led to a tentative move towards greater comfort.
Eleven of the batch had normal fan heaters fitted when delivered but when 3581/82 appeared in June 1959, they had Cave-Brown-Cave heat exchangers in grilles at the front and front side of the bus. Professor Cave-Brown-Cave of Southampton University had devised a method of engine cooling and bus heating which was based on a heat exchanger in the between decks area at the front of the bus. This did away with the traditional radiator - a dummy took its place - and the heat exchanger equipment was placed in the side and front interior panelling between the decks causing some obstruction to the front seats. Widely adopted by Tilling companies on Bristol Lodekkas, Manchester found some merit in the system as we shall see but 3581/2 were converted to a standard heater/radiator arrangement in 1964 and the grilles were blanked over though the intrusions into the front upper deck remained.
The Orions without heaters were fitted with fan heaters in 1963/4. The batch should have numbered one hundred and ten but the order for the last ten were changed to Leyland Atlanteans.
The Orion bodied PD2s gave good solid service well into the SELNEC era. Cracking domes apart there was little to go wrong. The double skinned interior and Manchester specified finish was a world away from the Orions demonstrated to MCTD in the early 1950s.
The last of the PD2/40s arrived in November 1959. Having taken no less than one hundred and fifty PD2s, ten Atlanteans and three CVG6s in the years 1958/9 - which made vast inroads into replacing Streamliners - MCTD took no new vehicles in 1960.
The ten Atlanteans led to trouble - something we'll look at later - and having ventured into 30 foot long double deck territory, the next orders were awaited with interest. Many municipalities were taking 30 foot long PD3s and CVG6s - many were specifying forward entrances and some were ordering more Atlanteans. Not MCTD.
Standardisation had been all but re-established and 1961 deliveries 4580-4589 were Orion bodied CVG6s - though as we have seen the batch introduced air operated pre-selector gear boxes and the Diamatic semi automatic gear change on two of the vehicles. The bodies came with vent free upper deck front windows and a vent pad in the dome.
They were the first vehicles in the fleet to have single piece driver's windscreens and demisters (standard on all the following deliveries of front engined double deckers) after a change in legislation and were the first vehicles in the fleet since 1933 to have offside fuel tanks, as well as being the first with reversed registrations - numbers before letters.
They also introduced roller vents to the side windows on each deck to supplement the sliding ventilators - adding yet another glass size to the stock list. In 1963 a load meter was fitted to 4580 - experiments with these continued into SELNEC times, and 4580/81 were also fitted with leather grab straps and rails in the lower saloon - something common elsewhere but not seen in Manchester.
The next deliveries were five Leyland Tiger Cub single deckers (46-50) which had 40 coach seats and were used mainly to replace the Albions (detested by Albert Neal) in all day service as well as for private hire, Manchester being a rare case of a municipal operator having a comprehensive private hire licence allowing it to generate business outside its boundaries, and airport work. They were downgraded to bus seating in 1966.
They introduced Park Royal bodies to the fleet, being the London coachbuilder's version of the standard BET design. Whilst modern in every visual respect they had old fashioned constant mesh gearboxes - not a problem with plenty of crash and constant mesh boxes in the fleet, but hardly in keeping with their looks. As an advance on the 1953 Royal Tigers and the Aberdonians, they were much welcomed by passengers and crews alike.
Next came 40 PD2s (3631-3670) with Orion bodies, this time PD2/37s, the difference from PD2/40s being the use of Leyland's 0.600 Power Plus engines. Orion bodies again, this time with push vents in the front upper deck windows - again most were eventually replaced by single piece glass and dome vent pads and these all had sliding side window ventilators. 3645 and 3657 had florescent interior lights, fourteen others had illuminated offside advertising panels and 3657 also had an experimental 90 degree turn staircase. All had heaters from new, the last of the batch arriving just before Christmas 1961.
During the year Daimler Fleetline demonstrator 7000 HP, in full Birmingham colours and with a Daimler engine, spent a period on loan and was used on route #40 - which meant journeys to and from school were changed from Wilmslow Rd to Kingsway again! It was an impressive performer - impressive enough to generate an order, albeit with Gardner engines.
1962 was a sparse year for deliveries - sparse but interesting. Two more batches of single deckers appeared. 51-54 were Tiger Cubs with Park Royal 36 seat front entrance bodies to the same BET design as 46-50, coach seats, a large boot and internal luggage racks over the front wheel arches. They were followed by 55-60 which had 38 coach seats, a front entrance and centre exit, and a large boot but lacked the internal luggage racks. This time both batches had syncromesh gearboxes. For use on private hire, airport and stage carriage work, the vehicles appeared in the airport two tone blue livery, the blues being separated by a silver band below the windows.
Arguably the most attractive colour scheme ever to adorn the BET design, the appearance of blue buses on the #31 and a range of one man feeder services, as well as rush hour Limited Stop routes and duplicates, attracted many letters to the Evening News Postbag page, some even suggesting the Department should change its scheme on all buses to the airport scheme. These vehicles were eventually downgraded to bus standard and repainted red in 1967, 51-54 being re-seated with 40 seats.
The only other deliveries were ten Fleetlines, out of a batch of twenty, delivery of the rest came in January 1963, a year which also saw a further batch of nineteen arriving in November/December 1963.
1963 should also have seen twenty five Daimler CVG6s and fifty PD2s, as we shall see the Department was still not convinced about rear engine vehicles . The first twenty five PD2s (3671-3695) appeared in the early Spring, this time without the push vent upper deck front windows. They were the last Leylands delivered with rear wheel trims and sported an amazing variety of opening side windows (sliding, rotary, half drop and quarter vent all appeared) and almost every bus looked different.
Two of the batch received illuminated offside ads soon after delivery and all had the now standard heaters. CVG6s 4630-4649 appeared next, with a mix of half drop and rotary window vents - but to a fixed pattern. These turned out to be to be the last Daimlers CVG6s in the fleet and should have numbered twenty five but the Department was made an offer, the acceptance of which it came to regret.
The Jaguar Group, of which Daimler was a part, had recently taken over the ailing Guy Motors and had built five Daimler chassis with Gardner engines and Guy constant mesh gearboxes with a normal clutch. It has always been a matter of conjecture as to which operator cancelled the chassis - many point to South Africa as the intended destination - but the Department got a knock down price and the vehicles duly arrived looking almost standard. Designated CCG6, the vehicles (4650- 4654) were shunned by Daimler depots, by now staffed entirely by drivers used only to pre-selector boxes.
Queens Road, with drivers used to crash gear boxes on their still numerous early post war Leylands, took them and found them very difficult to handle. They were normally confined to the depot and, when Devonshire Street Head Office asked as to their use, they would appear on route #4 to Heywood and Bamford which had long leisurely rural sectors.
The only rear entrance Daimlers ever allocated to Queens Road, they were moved in 1967 to Birchfields Road which tolerated them by placing them on the #20 which ran along Stockport Rd as a Limited Stop on the way to rural Poynton and Woodford and for a while on the #74, which had the backwaters of Parrs Wood Road to dawdle along. They survived into SELNEC days. As mentioned, they were almost standard but could be distinguished from the front by the wider than normal front radiator to the Manchester design adopted by Daimler.
This was needed because the chassis formers and dumb irons were wider apart to accommodate the Guy gearbox and this was standard for all CCG6s both for the home and export markets - the constant mesh box was specified by quite a number of operators.
Whilst much maligned, the buses had good ride characteristics and sounded very much like LUT's Guy Arabs.
The very last front engined vehicles delivered were PD2/37s with Orion bodies. 3696-3720 should have been delivered by the end of 1963 but Leyland had a full order book and they didn't arrive until the Spring of 1964. When they arrived they looked different again - this time it was the inclusion of two protruding vents on either side of the front at the level of the upper deck floor.
These were the vents for a modified and less radical Cave-Brawn-Cave heating system - the experiment with 3581/2 had not been in vain. Four of the vehicles had illuminated offside adverts and 3696 which should have been registered 3696 VM appeared as 889 VU from a series reserved for the City's ambulances, as the original registration had been allocated twice by the motor tax office.
Whilst the Daimlers were all delivered with rear wheel trims, these did not appear on this last batch of Leylands, the rear hubs carrying Leyland's standard hub caps last seen in the double deck fleet (apart from on the Atlanteans) on 3330-3369 in 1953.
The delivery of 3696 came exactly 34 years after that of 189, the first modern double decker ordered by the Department - also the first bus to replace a tram. Manchester's buses always had a distinctive look, not just within specific body designs but by the continuance of such items as destination and number indicator shapes, placement of interior fittings and such sensible ideas as horizontally splitting the lower deck panels so that any accident damage to the bottom half of the panels (where most accident damage occurred) meant a less expensive and quicker repair - something few other undertakings opted for.
It could be said that the last attempt at standardisation didn't come off, yet Manchester's Orions always looked distinctly "different". In maintaining its policy of traditional buses, Manchester eschewed 30 foot long rear or front entrance double deckers and, with few exceptions on post war Crossleys, platform doors.
It couldn't however, ignore the way the industry was heading and the advent of the rear engine will be looked at next.
Phil Blinkhorn
06/2013
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08/06/13 - 14:13
Thank you for this trip down memory lane, Phil.
It was the semi-automatic transmission fitted to 4588/9 (Daimatic by the way, not Diamatic) which was equivalent to Leyland's pneumocyclic gearbox, eliminating the "change speed pedal". The air-operated preselectors fitted to 4580-7, and to 4630-49, retained the pedal but eliminated its more aggressive propensities! This change from spring to compressed air operation came on the back of a shift in MCTD policy from vacuum brakes to air brakes for all new deliveries, and that was the significance of Leyland's PD2/37 designation. If Power Plus engines were introduced at the same time, it would be purely coincidental, since they would also have been fitted to PD2/40s for those operators such as Salford who continued to specify vacuum brakes.
For the 27-foot CVG series, Daimler used a chassis frame which tapered towards the front, which could be used for 7'6" or 8' wide bodywork. But for all other models (CD650, CVG6-30, CSG and CCG) a straight chassis frame was used permitting only 8' wide bodywork, and when the "Manchester front" was introduced in 1957, a wider version of it was needed to accommodate the wider chassis front on these models. It is true that the CCG6s were the only front-engined Daimlers to be allocated to Queens Road when new, but I don't think they were the only ones ever to operate from there. When the new Mancunians arrived in 1968, the garage allocation policy seemed to fall apart, and although my memory has been playing tricks of late, I am fairly confident that Daimlers galore (including CVG5s) were cascaded to both Hyde Road and Queens Road for part-day duties, even though this must have required a substantial amount of driver retraining.
Peter Williamson
08/06/13 - 17:52
Thanks for the additional information Peter and for correcting my error re Daimatic.
The policy regarding depot allocation by type between Leyland and Daimler (Crossleys just turned up pretty much everywhere) certainly did fall apart, but not to any great extent - as I recall it - until the Mancunians arrived. There may have been the odd exceptions with Daimlers such as the trial of a few 4400s with various engines and other fuel saving gizmos from Hyde Rd when new - but that was to let the works staff keep an eye on them.
More common, though still rare enough to be remarkable, was the infiltration of Leylands into Daimler territory. Northenden had a good number of PD1s and even procured some of Parrs Wood's 3300 Northern Counties bodied PD2s for a period in the early 1960s, prior to getting a larger bunch later in the decade. Princess Rd had a few post 1958 bodied PD2s, again for periods in the 1960s.
Ralph Bennett's idea was to have an all Mancunian fleet by the end of the 1970s so, as the vehicles arrived and prior SELNECisation, they, and earlier Atlanteans and Fleetlines could be seen with L plates as new and existing drivers had to be trained on semi automatic gear boxes.
As more drivers became proficient and the 33 foot version arrived, many Daimlers were displaced to erstwhile Leyland depots.
Phil Blinkhorn
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