Could anyone please point me in the right direction, I am trying to find the history of the bus manufacturing of Lancashire Aircraft Corporation and Samlesbury Engineering. The companies where based at Samlesbury in Lancashire. Fleet list or pictures would also be appreciated. Many thanks.
David Hutton
03/08/12 - 10:58
The Lancashire Aircraft Corporation was the main company of Eric Rylands, the North's answer to Freddie Laker as a civil aviation entrepreneur. Besides the facility at Samlesbury Aerodrome (half-way between Preston and Blackburn) the company had maintenance bases at Blackpool and Leeds-Bradford airports where it repaired, hangared, or reduced to scrap hundreds of ex-military airframes in the immediate post-war era. The company also ran flying schools at BLK and LBA, and then became a BEA Associate company - providing flights to the Isle of Man on behalf of the nationalised carrier.
Rylands then went on to buy Skyways, a major independent airline in the south of England, and this subsidiary later spawned Skyways Coach Air which provided services from London to Paris and elsewhere in association with East Kent. The air part of the journey ran from Lympne near Ashford to Beauvais north of Paris.
Rylands engineering facilities at Samlesbury started to run out of aviation-related work in the late 1940s and he diversified into bus and commercial vehicle bodybuilding in his hangars there. Among the vehicles handled were rebodies of pre-war double-deckers, a sub-contract to produce Leyland double-deck body lookalikes, and the Samlesbury LowHyte design for fitment to double-deck chassis. Although widely advertised at the time the LowHyte body was notably unsuccessful - the only two examples that I know of were the two Foden PVD6s supplied to Whieldon (Green Bus) of Rugeley in 1949/50.
The company also produced new coach bodies until 1951, the last examples finding themselves on early model Leyland Royal Tigers. The master holding company, the Eric Rylands Organisation, sold its northern airline operations (including LAC) to Silver City Airways in 1956 and at around the same time its hangars at Samlesbury passed to the English Electric aircraft company. Skyways lasted until 1962 when it was sold to Euravia (later to become Britannia Airways), and the former subsidiary Skyways Coach Air was later sold off to the Transport Holding Company (and, eventually, to Dan-Air). The last remaining fragment of the Rylands empire, Skyways Air Cargo, vanished around 1981.
Neville Mercer
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