Apologies if this has been asked/answered before.
Has anyone ever satisfactorily explained why the BTC/THC (with the exception of some lightweight buses and coaches and vehicles ordered by other operators) stuck rigidly to a Bristol/ECW purchasing policy whereas the Scottish Bus Group dual-sourced from both within and outside the state sector. Was it something to do with capacity at Brislington and Lowestoft? Why did the Scottish Bus Group order vast quantities of outmoded lowbridge double deckers whilst at the same time buying eminently more suitable Lodekkas? Why did this dual-sourcing mainly apply only to DDs? With the exception of a couple of batches, the only SD Bristols bought were coaches, and then not with ECW bodies.
Michael Keeley
29/08/14 - 07:31
Don't know, Michael, but we can speculate. The way that the bill for nationalisation of public transport was set up, Bristol and ECW were prevented from selling outside the Commission. London Transport was brought into the fold and continued to buy their preferred AECs and Leylands. [It did open the door for ECW bodies on a minority of RFs and the whole of the GS class.] As you stated, Scottish bus group dual sourced and, of course, there were the famous Sheffield ECW bodied Leylands. The answer could lie in the history of Tillings which over the years bought Bristol ECW because it was their own in house manufacturer with whom they worked closely on design and specification. [.....and of course BTC/THC did buy successively Dennis (M)aces; Beadle (Morrises) and many Bedfords when Bristol/ECW were unable to provide a suitable model.
David Oldfield
30/08/14 - 05:53
Well, whatever the reasons were for the prevailing orders, the Companies picked a winning combination of rugged, reliable, unpretentious and handsome vehicles which gave good service to the operators and were a delight to most enthusiasts.
Chris Youhill
30/08/14 - 05:53
I believe that Bristol/ ECW had maximum vehicle production quotas set by the government so that they would not be competing with other manufacturers for additional business. This meant that the Scottish Bus Group might not have been able to buy more Bristols even if they wanted to.
Nigel Turner
31/08/14 - 06:13
London did buy AEC and Leyland but these were to their own specification and not a manufacturers standard offering.
The SBG had no history of buying Bristol/ECW prior to sale to the BTC and stuck with what they knew by and large. The bus that would have been snapped up on the open market was of course the Lodekka So keen were operators to get their hands on them that Dennis were allowed to build it under licence as the Loline.
In some respect the THC was a conservative organisation and chassis development reflected this Indeed the SBG were even more traditional in matters engineering and found the Lodekka ideal for their needs Indeed it was the standard decker for Eastern Scottish/SMT from the fifties onwards Alexander and Western also bought large numbers as did Central Highland for many years bought no new deckers relying on cascaded stock from other operators in the organisation.
Chris Hough
31/08/14 - 06:14
Presumably, Nigel, the SBG also had a strong commitment to the Alexander body building business in Stirling, later Falkirk. Even though this business was independent, it still had family connections in it's origins in Wm Alexander, the operator. The operations and body building sides of the company had been separated, so the body building remained independent. If that had not been the case, the Government could have ended up with both Alexander and ECW as state-owned body builders! Alexander-bodied Lodekka, anyone? Well, Alexander did body some Dennis Lolines for Aldershot and North Western, so we can see an approximation of a "might-have been".
Michael Hampton
31/08/14 - 06:15
You may well be right, Nigel, the criteria for any state owned industry seems to be, if it works well put as many obstacles as you can in its way, restrict production, no exports, and limit customers, E.g. Bristol/ECW. If it doesn't work, appoint a board of so called experts who haven't got the remotest idea of how the industry works, then throw millions of pounds of public money at it. I'm sure many operators, including some BET companies, would at times have opted for Bristol/ECW given the opportunity. With a state owned industry run a commercial basis, I.e. without government subsidy, surely the answer is not to restrict production or potential customers of your product, but to encourage others make theirs better in order to compete. Then of course you go from one extreme to the other, you put everything under the control of one organisation 'lets call it BL' kill off anything that looks as if it may have a future, ECW / Fleetline / Reliance Etc, then spend millions on developing a product that no one would buy if they had an alternative, and call it a National.
Ronnie Hoye
31/08/14 - 06:15
I can confirm Nigel that when the Tilling Company sold ECW and Bristol Buses to the British Transport Commission, the Transport Act laid down production quota conditions for each Company. This information is in the book: ECW, 1946 - 1965 by Maurice Doggett and Alan Townsin, greatly revered experts on buses during this halcyon period. I fully agree with Chris Y that the Bristol/ECW combination was a winner and the envy of many operators who could not buy this product due to the nationalisation regulations which applied to ECW and Bristol Buses during the fifties and early sixties.
Richard Fieldhouse
31/08/14 - 08:30
Prior to nationalisation, Alexander's bodybuilding side was separated out and sold to a new company, Walter Alexander & Co (Coachbuilders).
Things would have been different if ECW and the manufacturing arm of Bristol had been separated from the operating side in the same way. There would have been no restrictions on sales.
Does anyone know why two different solutions were adopted?
Geoff Kerr
01/09/14 - 08:45
One of the many things I have learnt on this site is that people are very fond of Bristol and ECW! To someone always very much on the edge of Tilling areas, these fleets viewed from the outside seemed to have a sameness and old-fashionedness which suggested the downside of big state owned companies. We moved from the antique looks of West Yorkshire in say York with their bible boards to the never ending diddy Lodekka in any colour as long as it was red, with its odd looking driving position and annoying electrical interference on your TV! Were they a driver's dream? The VR was late on the scene which only confirmed my jaundiced views as municipals had already wheeled out their unreliable but exciting Atlanteans, and then Fleetlines- and there were exciting new bodies, too, like Liverpool's. ECW bodies were handsome from side or rear, but from the front unadventurous and samey. Now I have learnt that such views may not be correct! Perhaps interaction with more varied buyers would have ensured longer term survival- but could Bristol/ECW compete on price?
Joe
01/09/14 - 08:45
Included in the statutory basis on which the BTC was set up was the stipulation that it would not be allowed to manufacture anything other than for its own use. Whatever the reason for including Bristol and ECW in the purchase of the Tilling Group, the BTC had to decide how best to run and use them under that restriction. I have always assumed that the post-nationalisation purchasing policy of the Tilling Group was imposed by the BTC as a means of ensuring a minimum demand for Bristol and ECW's products in the absence of normal market forces. In return, the manufacturers tailored the development of their products to the needs of the group.
Peter Williamson
01/09/14 - 18:46
It could be said that the BTC was continuing and developing a policy already in place within the pre-1947 Tilling Group. They had already been wedded to the Bristol/ECW combine since c.1935, apart from special needs supplied, e.g. by Dennis Aces, etc. In Scotland, the companies had more autonomy, although there seems to be have been certain unwritten(?) expectation for support for Alexander bodies, but perhaps less so for Albion, the Scottish chassis builder. But the canny businessmen who ran the group felt it better to separate the body plant from the operating companies. As it survives today, it must in retrospect be seen as a wise decision. In the 1950's and 60's, the various UK governments of whatever shade were content to let both BTC/THC and the SBG run things as they wished while they made a profit. The government's minds were too focused on railway losses, and modernisation plans. Only when the Wilson government arrived with Barbara Castle at Transport did politics begin to outweigh practicality - but that's another story.
Michael Hampton
01/09/14 - 18:47
Although a slight side-issue, this policy didn't seem to apply to the nationalised 'British Road Services', who seemed to buy just about every make of British-made lorry going, even after the initial hotch-potch of inherited lorries had departed the scene. Bristol introduced a fair range of their own lorries, including eight-wheelers and artics, but they never became the exclusive or even the dominant force. Why the difference?
Chris Hebbron
03/09/14 - 07:23
"Only when the Wilson government arrived with Barbara Castle at Transport did politics begin to outweigh practicality..."
I am not prepared to let that go unchallenged. A government that permits a Transport Minister with a significant interest in road construction (that, in complete contempt of parliamentary rules, he retained during his tenure of office) to undertake massive railway closures whilst investing in major road and motorway schemes to the financial benefit of his own firm, cannot be given a nod of approval. In the end this charlatan, whose seamy private life later became public knowledge, fled to Monaco to escape prosecution for tax fraud and never came back to Britain. That such a crook should have ever held public office is a national disgrace. We are now suffering the consequences of rail closures that should never have happened. Barbara Castle, while certainly making some mistakes in office, was not motivated by corruption like Marples. On the subject of Bristol/ECW, the manufacturing side of the Tilling group was voluntarily sold to the Labour government along with the bus operating companies from January 1949. The bus companies of both Tilling and BET had significant railway holdings, around 50% in many cases, which passed to the government with the nationalisation of the railways in 1947. The abrasive and opportunistic J. F. Heaton therefore decided to opt out of bus operation, but there was no pressure upon him to sell off the Bristol/ECW manufacturing concerns. He just saw an opportunity to take the money and develop business interests elsewhere by buying up a host of family owned manufacturing companies unrelated to the transport industry. I suspect that the government was a bit surprised to find itself involved in vehicle manufacturing, and simply allowed the old Tilling companies to go on as before with their rigid purchasing policies. After the BAT/Tilling rift in 1942, neither Bristol nor ECW had been major suppliers to bus operators outside the Tilling group, and, to appease the commercial manufacturers, further such sales became prohibited in law after 1949. The Scottish Bus Group had always sourced its equipment from the open market of vehicle manufacturers, and continued to do so.
Roger Cox
03/09/14 - 18:00
Roger mentions the sale of the Tilling Group to the BTC let us not forget that this was repeated by the BET Group who saw buses as something to get out of after the 1968 Transport Act. Throughout the BTC era some Tilling companies bought small batches of mainly lightwieght coaches, eg Southern Vectis so the group was not restricted to the Bristol marque totally as is often thought.
Chris Hough
03/09/14 - 18:00
Roger, thank you for your comment on my phrase about the Wilson government, and Barbara Castle's involvement. You have rightly taken a step back to observe a broader picture. I would agree that Barbara Castle was motivated by better principles. If I remember correctly, Harold Wilson had stated that he "couldn't hold the party without an integrated transport policy", and this is what Mrs Castle attempted to deliver. I had not considered Marples' impact on the THC/BTC scenario, possibly because at the time I was unaware of the issues around his post, and only became aware in later years. My thinking in the phrase about politics outweighing practicality was intended to convey the thought that in the 1950's, the three major groupings (BTC, BET and SBG) had been largely left to make their own decisions compared with later eras. It seemed to me that the amalgamation of BET and BTC/THC into the National Bus Company, and the creation of the PTEs, plus the bus grant, all led to a greater political involvement by those who were not involved in running the companies, and this was not always with the best results. Looking back in hindsight, I can agree with your comments on Ernest Marples, and add that one good thing that did arise from his policies and motorway building in bus terms was the Midland Red C5 coach!
Michael Hampton
16/09/14 - 07:49
Thank you all for your thoughts. The answer seems to be a combination of history and capacity. Apart from my main query about different policies, what particularly struck me was that most BET and municipal operators needing 13' 6" buses couldn't wait to be able to buy a low-height, as opposed to lowbridge, double decker and as soon as the Loline, Bridgemaster etc were offered, quickly turned their back on the lowbridge decker with one or two exceptions, mainly small South Wales municipals. So it has always puzzled me that the SBG, which standardised on an all-low DD fleet, and which had the option of the Lodekka all along - as Chris says, a bus other operators would have given their right arm for - carried on simultaneously buying lots of lowbridge PDs. I'm sure most people would agree the lowbridge 'decker is not particularly convenient for either conductor or passengers, and I wonder which the crews and passengers preferred. But interesting that SOL did more or less stick to the Lodekka.
Michael Keeley
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