Show us your buses

While I have been the only one posting pictures in this thread so far, please feel free to post your own too - I started this for everyone, knowing there are at least a few other bus modellers out there.

Continuing with themes, I rather like the white metal Burlingham Seagull kit originally produced by Anbrico, later taken over by Model Bus Company then absorbed into the ABS Streetscene range. I have built kits from all three sources. OOC subsequently released their diecast Seagull but I still like the kit ones.

This one was the second one I built but I modified the kit to match photos of the real Premier Travel (Cambridge) coaches AEC Reliance with roof hatches insted of sliding sections, plus the destination panel over the windscreens (Milliput). I mix my own blue for Premier Travel, using four parts Revell blue #4 and one part Humbrol Lime Green.



The next pic shows the Premier Travel one again plus the very first one I built in my fictitious Kingfisher Coaches livery of pale blue and cream. The third one in the pic is also in Kingfisher Coaches livery bit in revised form, inspired by the East Dorset fleet colours of Dick Lindsay (of the Model Bus Federation).

An oddball in the Kingfisher Coaches fleet is this Bedford VAL with Duple Vega Major body, built from a Fanfare Models resin kit. This was the early rather brittle resin with lots of little air bubbles in it - not a particularly nice kit to build.



I have pleasant memories of a school trip from Pound Hill (Crawley) to Arundel Castle in one of these vehicles belonging to Crawley Luxury Coaches, in a mid-green and cream colour scheme. I cannot duplicate the Crawley Luxury fleetname script style so had to settle for something more achievable.

Filling a small gap: I forgot to include this pic of two Bristol VR variants with ECW bodies in the Bristol segment.

It shows an EFE Bristol VR model in Southdown NBC leaf green that I modified to the earlier flat screen version. EFE have now announced that they will be producing the flat screen VR this year and have already shown an early engineering sample.

The one behind it is a kit-built VRT3 from the Pirate Models white metal kit.

 

These are the only pics i have of my buses at the moment and most of my stuff is in drawers or boxes at present, so here goes.

First we have a Kiel Kraft Green Line 'T' type kit which is on it's way to being a 'Northern' bus. (None of them are finished yet)

 




 

Next  we have three buses found at a car boot sale. Two Double deckers which are of different scales (But will be separated later) and a Plastic coach which is obviously for foreign travel as the door is on the wrong side.

 




 

I have a couple of these which haven't even been built yet (In red and Green)

 




 

A converted 'Greyhound Bus'

 




 

Finally, a bad picture that shows all of the former buses plus one of the red Kiel Kraft buses which started off as a double decker but had to be converted after a minor mishap and is now a single decker. Next to this we have two concept models which are straight out of the box and need building properly

 




No where near as good as Jeff's, but we all have to start somewhere :thumbs

 

Interesting buses there, Kev. The KielKraft kits are not particularly good in themselves but form a very good basis for kit-bashing and modification, in the same vein as my Tower Models kit-bashes.

Like you, I don't have photos of everything. Most of the ones I have posted so far are actually quite old (from the 'archives', one might say). I'll have to pose and take more pics myself, if only for insurance purposes.

Continental coaches are quite frequently seen touring Britain - I know I saw quite a few with doors (and steering wheels!) on the 'wrong' side!

That single-deck Routemaster looks very similar to RM1388, the Chiswick experimental one that was rebuilt after an upper deck fire and is now the subject of a limited edition EFE release. The KielKraft model is of an RML, though, the longer Routemaster so yours is a unique 'special' - probably one that Chiswick never revealed to the public and kept hidden inside the sheds, somewhere! :twisted: ;-)

Time for a few more buses! Going with the London Transport theme again but this time some more modern vehicles. I do have rather a lot of LT vehicles but I have yet to photograph some of them but I will do so to fill in the gaps later.

Not one of the later diecasts from EFE or OOC but, in fact, an earlier Seerol casting, redecorated and improved a little. I really need to paint those white plastic seats! It has white metal wheels added. It was not a bad casting overall but the biggest fault visually wth the Seerol model was the lack of a taper at the front end of the upper deck.





One from the early 1970s onwards: a DMS type Daimler Fleetline. This one is a modified EFE model with a replacement narrow headlight front grafted on (from a resin casting).



From slightly later in the '70s, another D/DM/DMS Leyland Fleetline, also a modified EFE model with a new B20 style rear bustle grafted on (from a resin casting). The back of this bus can also be seen at right in the pic above. I have also redecorated both buses a bit



From the later 1970s, complete with white upper deck window surrounds, a T class Leyland Titan TN15, built from a Pirate Models white metal kit. Also in the picture is an FS class Ford Transit built from the ABS Streetscene white metal kit.



Bringing us into the '80s and '90s, a bevy of Dennis Dart variants, all built from white metal kits except for the shortened EFE one (modified by cutting out one of the window bays). Models include a DW class 8.5m Wright Handibus (RTC Kits), DR Reeve Burgess (later Plaxton) Pointers (RTC Kits 9.0m plus the shortened EFE as 8.5m version), and a DT class 8.5m Carlyle Dartline (later Duple - from a Mark Hughes kit). Also in the shots are an MCW Metrorider from a Lowland Models kit and a non-bus Ford Transit van from ABS Streetscene.





I really do have to make a point of taking more photos of some of the types I have made or converted but, for some reason, not taken pictures of yet.

It is not until one sees the pictures of the buses ,that there are so many varieties.
 I do see the public transport types locally & generally notice the articulated ones.
My young grandson has mentioned when driving him home from school, "happy face, sad face, etc".
 School buses & the like, I do "see" them as they are big when they are next to you but I don't take note of the variances.

London Transport of old had probably one of the most standardised fleets anywhere in the world. Even so, there were still many variations within those standardised types!

I do find it amusing that LT could declare a sub-fleet of 120 buses as non-standard and dispose of them before their service life was over, as happened with the Cravens bodied RTs. There were approximately 4800 AEC RTs and 1631 Leyland RTLs, with all using bodies from various body builders (including the Cravens ones), with several variations within batches (such as the roof box ones) and all interchangeable between buses and chassis types. There were also similar looking wide Leylands of the RTW class, although these couldn't swap bodies with the narrowr RT/RTL types.

The DMS/DM/D class also had over 2600 buses in the class and there were two main body builders with detail differences plus the narrow headlight early versions and B20 late versions, with several minor variations in between. A lot of these were sold prematurely to other operators, because they didn't suit LT's method of overhauling bodies and chassis separately, hence they appear in many other liveries.

My favourite LT type was the RF, 1951 AEC Regal IV single deckers with MCW bodies to LT specification: of the 700 in the class, well over 100 have been preserved, mostly in the UK. They were heavy (heavier than the RT double decker!) and not very fuel efficient but were remarkably robust. That's probably why I have so many models of them too!

:cool:

My other 'favourite' fleet is Southdown. I have quite a few kit-built or modified/repainted buses and coaches in my model fleet, plus a good few more still under construction. Some of those have been shown in my workbench thread but I feel I can justify showing them here as well.

Opposite Middlehurst station on the old layout was a Southdown garage (built from an Alphagraphix card kit - this faded very badly). In the upper shot are quite a few buses from various sources. At left are two Leyland Royal Tiger coaches, one with Duple Ambassador body built from an early Fanfare Models resin kit and the other described lower down with a Leyland body. To their right is a Leyland Tiger Cub with Marshall body of 1962 (straight out of the box EFE), then the back end of a 1948 Leyland PD2 with Leyland body, built from an Anbrico white metal kit. The buses in the back row are all diecasts, two Britbus Park Royal/Beadle Leyland PD2s, one of which I repainted because the green was way too bright, a Bristol RELL with Marshall body converted from an OOC BET standard, and a Leyland Leopard with Harrington Cavalier body (EFE). I have two similar Harrington bodied coaches i am in the process of cutting up and splicing to amke a 36' long Cavalier. Southdown's similar Grenadier bodies all had the Cavalier front and back, which makes the other early EFE Grenadier released wrong.



And another view of similar vehicles but this time they are both diecasts from EFE (left) and OOC (right), although I do add adverts and modify things just a little. The back of the Duple Ambassador Royal Tiger coach is just visible ahead of the lorry, which is a modified EFE with a Langley Models Leyland LAD cab.




A few ancilliary vehicles lurk at the back of the garage - the towing vehicle is a straight out of the box OOC model while the Morris J van was a white metal kit from (I think) John Day, and the lower pic also shows a repainted Triang Minix Ford Thames van.







This OOC Leyland Tiger with ECW coach body has only slight modifications; the radiator has been replaced with a white metal item and the printed roof boards have been overlaid with plasticard ones.





Outside Middlehurst station are a kit-built 'Queen Mary' Leyland PD3 with Northern Counties body (Pirate Models white metal kit - a bit overscale and under-detailed) together with a repaint of an OOC BET standard 36' single decker. Just visible on the otehr side of the road is a Pirate Models (ex-Cotswold) white metal Guy Arab utlity bus.



Leyland Royal Tigers featured prominently in the coaching fleet before Southdown opted for the later and lighter Tiger Cub chassis. An earlier pic showed a Duple Ambassador bodied version and the Leyland bodied version seen on its own here.

The Southdown version of the Model Bus Federation kit (actually done for them by Mark Hughes) for an all Leyland Royal Tiger coach from the early 1950s. The kit has several alternative bits and I have a second one to build, which I will do as the later bus coversion with larger destination panel (included in the kit). These are slightly tricky kits to make as the roof cove panels are integral with the sides and join to a narrow strip forming the centre of the roof.



This one shows it before I had added the 'glass' wind deflectors at the tops of the side windows. It also shows all the defects!



As an aside, the MBF kit also comes as a Ribble (and other operators) variant too. I built one of these for a fellow Model Bus Association member. Differences in the trim strips at the front and on the sides warrant it being marketed as a separate kit.



A 1962 Leyland Tiger Cub with Marshall body built from a slightly modified ABS Streetscene (ex-Westward) white metal kit. It is seen still on the workbench but has now 'entered service' and actually won first place in the 4mm kit built section of our annual modelling competition (2nd photo added).







Something a little more modern: a modified and repainted EFE Leyland National representing post-privatisation days.




On the workbench:

A Leyland PD2/27 'Farington' body from a Little Bus Company resin kit.



A pre-war Leyland TD5 with post-war East Lancs body, also an LBC resin kit.



A Commer TS3 with Beadle body from 1957, another LBC kit. This one and the Duple Commander behind have now received coats of Apple Green.




The Duple Commander Leyland Leopard of 1967, yet another LBC kit.

After a longish spell of not doing anything with the buses, concentrating more on the trains and layout building, I have resumed work on the Southdown pair in the previous post.

I painted the seat units today and touched up some of the body paint work. There is more to do but they are looking somewhat more complete, nearly ready for glazing.

The First two photos show the Little Bus Company (LBC) Southdown Commer TS3 with Beadle body.





The next two pics show the LBC Southdown Duple Commander bodied Leyland Leopard. The white wheel trims form a light undercoat for the silver that is to follow.





And now, the latest arrival from LBC, a 1951 Bristol LS6G coach with ECW's early style of wrap-around windscreens. I was planning to convert this to a Royal Blue version with rear roof luggage rack but I have decided that this is a little too difficult to do. There is the possibility that LBC may produce the Royal Blue variant later, if there is sufficient demand. These pics show it with the castings cleaned up and primed: grey primer for the chassis and seats, white primer for the body as it will end up in Tilling cream with green mudguards as Hants & Dorset ran them.

They look really good Jeff. :thumbs

Do you ever use any of them "as is" or do you always dismantle and "tweak" them ?  If I were modelling London, I'd be swamped with offerings.  As it is, modelling West Yorkshire-ish, there's not too much around although I note EFE have just produced some West Yorkshire Bristol Lodekkas. 

Flipping heck used to drive these when i worked at Slavecoach until they got rid of them and replaced with some thing else cant recall what they where that took over from them. They had semi auto gear box, swine if you got the speed wrong when you changed lol; We also had bus,s called Darts, smallish and crap to drive, always pulled to the right first thing in the morning badly. Bit hare raising when cars where coming the other way, :shock:. They did slowly improve when warmed up, eventually they found the disc's were the wrong type but that took a few years until they released the drivers where booking them off the road even more when they started to get dangerous and the fleet was not quite big enough to replace them with a spare each time. Stagecoach never used to have many spare bus,s then due to their policy a idle bus is coasting money, so hence they hated any spares just sitting there not earning.

Phill

Hi Jeff,

More of the same please. I have a fleet of 4 Leyland Atlantean's and 6 Albion lodekka's in Yellow Northern livery. Nothing near the fleet you have but I can claim to have driven atlantean's, volvo's , Leyland leopards, olympian's, Nationals and darts when I worked for Lothian Region Transport in my student days. Great fun.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of diecast models of any of the above in LRT or the old Edinburgh Councils maroon livery.

Goods to see such a variety. Thanks for posting the photo's.

Cheers

Toto

[user=6]Petermac[/user] wrote:

They look really good Jeff. :thumbs

Do you ever use any of them "as is" or do you always dismantle and "tweak" them ?  If I were modelling London, I'd be swamped with offerings.  As it is, modelling West Yorkshire-ish, there's not too much around although I note EFE have just produced some West Yorkshire Bristol Lodekkas. 

Hi Peter. I do have some EFE/OOC/Britbus (etc.) buses that are more or less straight out of the box. I sometimes buy two the same then tweak one but not the other.

Many are tweaked or kit-bashed in one way or another.
Then there are the kits! I have a good collection of unbuilt kits still, and also some second-hand built models that mostly need rebuilding and/or repainting; these have mostly been bought very cheaply and if they fall apart in the mail, as a few have, so much the better for me and my plans for them!

All three of the kits I just posted are Little Bus Company resin kits which are very easy to build but still require the usual amount of care and attention in the finishing process (painting and adding transfers). I still have a good many white  metal kits too, and the odd plastic one.

phill wrote:

Flipping heck used to drive these when i worked at Slavecoach until they got rid of them and replaced with some thing else cant recall what they where that took over from them. They had semi auto gear box, swine if you got the speed wrong when you changed lol; We also had bus,s called Darts, smallish and crap to drive, always pulled to the right first thing in the morning badly. Bit hare raising when cars where coming the other way, :shock:. They did slowly improve when warmed up, eventually they found the disc's were the wrong type but that took a few years until they released the drivers where booking them off the road even more when they started to get dangerous and the fleet was not quite big enough to replace them with a spare each time. Stagecoach never used to have many spare bus,s then due to their policy a idle bus is coasting money, so hence they hated any spares just sitting there not earning.

Phill

Hi Phill.

The Darts like the one 6th photo down in my earlier post here http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=9449&forum_id=120&page=1#p174371? Stagecoach bought quite a few of the Darts with these Alexander Dash bodies, and a few Volvo B6s with the same bodies for comparison.

I remember Brisbane City Council (BCC) getting seven new Leyland Nationals. The drivers had great difficulty with the 5-speed semi-auto after driving mostly two-speed fully auto Leyland Panthers, or various Leyland Royal Tigers and Leopards and AEC Reliances with 4-speed fully- and semi-auto boxes (mostly just left in auto mode). The first forty Panthers also had the 4-speed boxes. The BCC compounded the problems with the Nationals by distributing them between three separate depots, so initially at least, one hardly ever saw them on the road!

[user=1505]toto[/user] wrote:

Hi Jeff,

More of the same please. I have a fleet of 4 Leyland Atlantean's and 6 Albion lodekka's in Yellow Northern livery. Nothing near the fleet you have but I can claim to have driven atlantean's, volvo's , Leyland leopards, olympian's, Nationals and darts when I worked for Lothian Region Transport in my student days. Great fun.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of diecast models of any of the above in LRT or the old Edinburgh Councils maroon livery.

Goods to see such a variety. Thanks for posting the photo's.

Cheers

Toto

Thanks Toto.

I can only claim to have driven one full size bus/coach and that was only very briefly. It was an MCW Metroliner, ex-National Express, that found its way to a private operator in the Western suburbs of Melbourne. My friend is technical editor for an Australian industry magazine and gets to road test buses and coaches every so often. If I am not working full-time, he invites me along to take photos as well but on that occasion, the owner of the coach gave me a drive as well.

Scottish buses are not well represented but there are a few around. Other than that, you can try kit-building or kit-bashing! I have bought quite a few cheap die-casts simply to repaint or hack about. As an example, I bought two very cheap EFE Harrington Cavalier coaches with a view to making one 36 foot version. I have marked the two bodies out and started cutting so it is a work in progress.

Thanks for the compliments.

:cheers

A little further progress on the Bristol LS - wheels, mudguards and seats are now painted. It still awaits another coat of the cream, plus all the chrome trim to be picked out.

Very neat job mate. Just one point, the reason why Stagecoach bought Darts and Volvo,s with the same body is because he bought the Factory (Dennis) that makes them but he never bought the body or engine side of the factory only the chassis side. With the deal that they use the chassis his factory make. Strange but true.He no longer owns the factory by the way, hence Volvo and Darts not being made anymore.
Sorry back to your thread, :oops:.


Phill

Hi

I tried to upload a couple of buses in Northern livery but was unsuccessful .I am  working from my I pad which may have something to do with it.

I'll post when I get back home.I mentioned them before. There is a Leyland Atlantean and a Albion as well.apologies for the bungled attempt.

Cheers

Toto

I can never manipulate photos or copy text, even, when using my tablet (an Acer Iconia). Such things always have to wait until I am on a 'proper' computer; eithr my desktop or my laptop!

I'll look forward to seeing those pics, Toto.

:cool: