Show us your buses

My modelling abilities have been temporarily curtailed, along with my on line presence and reading abilities; I had a cataract removed from my right eye last Tuesday and am having the left one done this coming Tuesday. I am typing this with one lens in my glasses and a patch over the right eye!! Once the left eye is done, I will have to wait for some reading glasses before I can see properly to read and type again - I will be doing a little of both but with severe limitations for a month or so.

I had one last gasp attempt at modelling though: I decided that the wheels on the Southdown Duple Commander coach were wrong for the vehicle it represents, as all the photos show proper coach trims fitted. A rummage through the spares produced some Pirate Models coach wheels from their Duple Dominant II kits, left over from the reverse swap I did when building a Metrobus AEC Reliance coach which had standard bus type wheels. The only reservation I have is that the Pirate wheels are about a millimetre larger in diameter than the LBC wheels. It's a bit hard to judge while they are unpainted, but I think it will look right once I have done that. I have also adjusted the way the rear wheels sit inside the wheelarches since this photo was taken.



Just for the record,here is the previously mentioned Pirate Models Metrobus Reliance coach (all white metal), together with Paragon kits for an Optare StarRider (resin) and Tillingbourne Valley Plaxton Bustler (etched brass and white metal), all built some years ago.

That Metrobus looks good Jeff. :thumbs

You take care of those peepers - you can't get replacement parts ……………..;-)  Hope all goes well on Tuesday.

Good luck with the op Jeff and get rid of those patches as i don't think pirates are allowed on here.:thumbs

Thanks Peter and Alan for the kind wishes.

Alan, does that mean I can't show any more Pirate Models kits??  :cool wink

We can always turn a blind eye.

:doublethumb

:cheers

Talking of Buses, when is somebody going to do something like this EFE 00 gauge one



in N gauge!, I did try a hack of a Bristol white metal one, but the more steeply sloped cab window, protruding destination box and slight roof extension at the front was a challenge, the radiator shape is also different to that of the Bristol, so not suitable for the front of the layout!

Mike: There have been a few N scale kits for buses and coaches but I don't know of anyone who has done that Leyland Titan TD1 in that scale.


Further to the last post, I have painted the tyres on the coach wheels for the Duple Commander bodied Southdown Leyland Leopard. I think they work in this new installation, in spite of the extra diameter. The rear wheels on the visible side are still protruding too far out but those on the off-side are fine, so just a litle more work to do before glazing can take place.




I have also started on another Little Bus Company resin kit, this time a Bristol MW bus with ECW body from 1958 or so, to go into Hants & Dorset livery. This kit was actually for a dual purpose vehicle but Tony Asquith )LBC) was very kindly able to swap the seat units for me from his small stock of spares. To make it accurate for an H&D vehicle, I need to add a rear destination box jutting out slightly from the curved roof line. I also drilled out the headlights but slipped on the offside one so need to make good with a small amount of filler; if I use some Milliput for the rear box I can also accomplish this task as well.





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All work done at this stage has been achjeved using an optivisor type magnifier because I can't yet focus on closer objects. I am typing this using a 60" TV set and an HDMI cable from my laptop, so apologies for any typos or other errors.

Very nice work Jeff. :thumbs  I don't know if you are aware, but Metrobus buses are now painted red all over, like any other London bus.  However, their other vehicles, i.e. vans, are painted in a new version of the blue and white livery.  Metrobus now appears to be very much part of the 'Transport for London' fleet.  'Transport for London' is what we used to know as 'London Transport' before it was taken over by the 'Mayor for London'.

Terry

Hi Terry. Essentially, Metrobus run a lot of contract routes within the metropolitan 'Transport for London' area so had to comply with the 80% red rule; a pity as the blue and yellow did look smart, with both the earlier darker blue and the later brighter blue shades.

While I can see why the 'red rule' was imposed fr operators wihin London, what the bureaucrats who imposed it seem to have forgotten is that London Transport, and London General before that, had quite significant areas of white or cream, and/or silver or brown (roofs), and that the former country area had green buses with gradually reducing areas of white/cream and silver/brown. In other words, prior to WW2, no buses in or around London complied with the current rule!!

:roll: :roll:

:twisted: :twisted:

Jeff, the 'old rules' no longer apply.  'Tfl'  is the 'all singing', 'all dancing' new face of London.  Speaking of which, we are about to endure a series of Underground strikes in memory of the late Bob Crow.  It's enough to make you weep.  The word 'sack' comes very much to mind.

Terry

A posed setting on an unfinished corner of the layout (in the longer term, this will disappear under track from the extension of the fiddle yard loops).

There are Hants & Dorset, Wilts & Dorset, Royal Blue and Southdown buses and coaches, most of which are kit-built.

In response to a friend who is about to produce a model of a Brisbane City Council (BCC) Leyland Panther, I posed these pictures of my other BCC buses.

The Leyland National was a repaint of an EFE model by a fellow modeller in Brisbane, who also scratchbuilt the Freighter bodied Leyland Leopard. For some reason he used a pale grey for the roofs, so I repainted those into a somewhat more acurate colour - the real ones used a colour called 'arctic white' but Humbrol #71 Oak is a pretty good match for that. The two blues are both just a little on the dark side but they capture the right character and I don't really want to repaint the whole things. 

BCC had seven of the Nationals to the Australian intermediate length of 10.9 metres so the EFE 11.3m version is a little over length, but it looks better than using a short 10.3m version. BCC had 40 of this style of Leopard, and 40 earlier ones with Charles Hope bodies.





The next bus was one I built from a Weico resin and white metal kit. It is actually of a Sydney PTC Leyland Royal Tiger but BCC had 10 of these Commonwealth Engineering bodies on AEC Regal IV chassis. The headlight positions and opening flap vents on the front were different to the Sydney bodies but I haven't modified the kit to reflect these changes … yet. Unfortunately, this kit is to 3.5mm scale so can't be posed with the other two buses. The colour scheme is as close as I could get to being accurate; these buses never wore the newer blue scheme. Apologies for the dirty windscreens - I cleaned the roof but forgot the screens, and only noticed it after looking at the photos!

Almost finished: my Little Bus Company (resin kit) 1934 London Transport 'Godstone' STL, an AEC Regent with all metal Weymann lowbridge body. I have finished it in as near as I can get to the as-delivered livery, complete with 'General' fleetnames.

I still have to touch in a few painting slips and add the destination screens and nearside headlight. It will then be entered in next week's Australian Model Bus Association AGM modelling competition.

First photo was taken before adding some of the transfers. The second shows it as it is at the time I posted this entry.

Another project from me: this one is also incomplete, with some ragged paint edges to touch up before adding the transfers. It is a partial repaint of an EFE Wilts & Dorset dual purpose Bristol LS / ECW, where the areas that would normally be red were painted cream. It was probably not deemed a success as it only lasted less than a year in traffic with this experimental livery.





I will be completing it before the end of the week as the annual AGM and modelling competition of the Model Bus Association of Australia takes place next Sunday (7th December). I have rushed it a little and the Tilling cream paintwork has come out somewhat rougher than I like.

:hi jack alert!

May I weigh in here and hi-jack one of the Blackburn Thread Hijacking Team's own topics?


I've seen Jeff's collection first hand and magnificent it is too.  I don't kit-build buses and have only a tiny fraction of what he owns but I do have around 60 out-of-the-box models some of which have recently gained little houses.

My collection, largely EFE with some Original Omnibus and Base Toys (toys they are not, though) pieces, largely comprises vehicles which appear at times around my layout, which will match the eventual future layout or which belong to fleets I have a close affinity with.  Thus Western National, Southdown and London (with red and green fleets) are the major players though with City of Portsmouth, Brighton Hove  District, Gosport & Fareham and Bere Regis & District among the others.

The London Transport red bus fleet now benefits from this Kingsway Models card kit which is actually of the old country area (green bus) garage at Crawley.  I've adapted it slightly and it will become a part of a London street scene over time.  This will sit in my workroom and feature the garage, a low-relief tube station, a sectioned escalator and tube tunnel display and an EFE tube train in the subterranean platform.



Most of the green London Country buses represent the short period between 1970-4 post-LT and pre-NBC corporate image when these operations had been hived off to stand alone under National Bus Company auspices.

These are now housed in a Bachmann resin bus garage of an art-deco style similar to some former Country Area garages.  I used the logos from the Kingsway kit to decorate the resin item and have placed a paper Peco sky back scene behind it.  This too will become a workroom diorama.  The bus stop is an EFE item which I have painted to resemble a concrete post with wooden-edged timetable frames and both red and green "fare stage" finials.  The supplied timetable is incorrect as they never had the yellowish background nor the red logo.



I found the card kit easy to build though it lacks some refinements and required additional brick paper to look even moderately complete.  

More kits are in the mail to house my Southdown Motor Services collection.  A bus garage and bus station will feature on another eventual scene incorporating at least one of my SR electric units which currently have no home layout.

Very nice, Rick. 

I don't mind others posting here at all; in fact, I really intended it to be free for all to post their model bus pics here. I simply didn't want to detract from Jim's excellent thread.

I did eye off that resin bus station, as I too thought it looked very London Transport-ish! I'm not as convinced by the Kingsway kits as they are too 'flat, as they come out of the box (no pun intended here). With a bit extra work, though, they do come up a treat.

Yes a little flat and at least this one required additions and a little modification to look the part but it's more a quick "fix" to give the buses some context as opposed to them sitting on the desk gathering dust.

I have the Southdown "Hayling Island" garage and "Haywards Heath bus station" coming which combined might present a representative Sussex scene for the apple green and cream fleet.

The resin model has roller shutter doors in the fully up position which can be seen above the departing buses.  I don't know of a London garage which had those.  You might just be able to see that I have stuck a spare part-door from the Kingsway kit at the back entrance to the Bachmann unit which gives it a more London-like appearance but doing that at the front would block too much of the entrance in my opinion.

Seeing all these excellent buses and coaches has given me an idea for a cameo or diarama, a coach on a winding mountain road followed by three mini coopers.

Does anyone know the make of the coach from the original Italian Job and is a kit available?