kitchens buses

BLAKEY · Post by **BLAKEY** » Mon 23 Jun, 2008 12:22 am

UNO HOO WROTE :-"I must say that the bit about single rear wheels came from my now-deceased brother-in-law, who was a solicitor, not a busman, but knew the importance of facts, and indeed was a mine of information, so I'm pretty confident he would be right. His brother (still extant) had every issue of "Buses Illustrated" and its successors from Issue 1 in 1949, and indeed lent them to me in about 1972. It's quite likely that he's kept them up over the years. I'll see if I can catch up with him and check.".........................................................................................................The plot thickens re the single rear wheels on the Atkinsons and a debate still exists. Study of photos of the Atkinsons in service with Ledgard clearly shows normal double rear wheels. A friend of mine who was a vehicle examiner tells me that there is very little likelihood of single wheels in postwar times, so what are we to think I wonder ??I too have every issue of "Buses Illustrated" and in the February 1968 issue appears my article about the end of Samuel Ledgard. I only wrote to Ian Allan to remind them of the imminent sale of the Firm and that they should commission an article - to my shock I received an immediate reply saying "hurry up and get it written." Nothing could have been further from my mind when I wrote to them but when I read the reply I thought "Why not ??" and went ahead with it.

Uno Hoo · Post by **Uno Hoo** » Mon 23 Jun, 2008 1:08 am

BLAKEY wrote: UNO HOO WROTE :-"I must say that the bit about single rear wheels came from my now-deceased brother-in-law, who was a solicitor, not a busman, but knew the importance of facts, and indeed was a mine of information, so I'm pretty confident he would be right. His brother (still extant) had every issue of "Buses Illustrated" and its successors from Issue 1 in 1949, and indeed lent them to me in about 1972. It's quite likely that he's kept them up over the years. I'll see if I can catch up with him and check.".........................................................................................................The plot thickens re the single rear wheels on the Atkinsons and a debate still exists. Study of photos of the Atkinsons in service with Ledgard clearly shows normal double rear wheels. A friend of mine who was a vehicle examiner tells me that there is very little likelihood of single wheels in postwar times, so what are we to think I wonder ??I too have every issue of "Buses Illustrated" and in the February 1968 issue appears my article about the end of Samuel Ledgard. I only wrote to Ian Allan to remind them of the imminent sale of the Firm and that they should commission an article - to my shock I received an immediate reply saying "hurry up and get it written." Nothing could have been further from my mind when I wrote to them but when I read the reply I thought "Why not ??" and went ahead with it.

Uno Hoo · Post by **Uno Hoo** » Mon 23 Jun, 2008 1:13 am

H'mmmm. The stuff about the rear wheels is interesting. Glad you did your article for "Buses". I have to put my hand up and say that while I would have read it, I couldn't remember its content, but it was reproduced in full in "Ledgard Chat" last year, and a good read.UH

Trojan · Post by **Trojan** » Mon 15 Dec, 2008 11:14 pm

BLAKEY wrote: No worry Trojan, but it will be appreciated "as and when." Thank you and, on the subject of mislaying things, I am paying the price here for not keeping things in order and my collections have got into awful arrears with not keeping on top of it - in my case a classic case of "a stitch in time WOULD have saved nine." !! Found it!

Uno Hoo · Post by **Uno Hoo** » Tue 16 Dec, 2008 1:25 pm

Hi TrojanThanks for the piccie!The bus is indeed a "Queen Mary", and one of the later ones as its upper desk front windows are the same type as fitted to the front-entrance Atlanteans bodied by Northern Counties (NCME) of Blackburn.Your post sent me searching through my copy of "The Leyland Bus" by David Jack. On p.327 there's a pic of one in Southdown livery, albeit with the older style upper front windows. This bus was delivered in 1965, so yours would date, I would estimate, from the later 1960s, a period when many front-engined buses were still being supplied alongside the later Atlanteans. Many operators distrusted the new-fangled rear-engined devices until their hands were forced by the Government's "Bus Grants" which effectively killed off the traditional buses, many being scrapped well before their sell-by dates because they could not easily be adapted for driver-only operation.

Trojan · Post by **Trojan** » Wed 17 Dec, 2008 12:57 am

Uno Hoo wrote: Hi TrojanThanks for the piccie!The bus is indeed a "Queen Mary", and one of the later ones as its upper desk front windows are the same type as fitted to the front-entrance Atlanteans bodied by Northern Counties (NCME) of Blackburn. It was an "E" reg I think which would put it as 19876/7

Uno Hoo · Post by **Uno Hoo** » Wed 17 Dec, 2008 1:05 am

Trojan wrote: Uno Hoo wrote: Hi TrojanThanks for the piccie!The bus is indeed a "Queen Mary", and one of the later ones as its upper desk front windows are the same type as fitted to the front-entrance Atlanteans bodied by Northern Counties (NCME) of Blackburn. It was an "E" reg I think which would put it as 19876/7 I think you mean 1966/7 (or were you keeping a lot of options open?).