A selection of Corporation buses


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loppy asked about Inspectors, were they like "Blakey" ? No, not at all, a Blakey wannabe would appear very rarely but never lasted more than five minutes. Inspectors needed goodwill from the drivers

#68. Difficult to answer really ! AEC Renown has to be near the top of that list. We had at Bulwell Depot 360 to 379 & every one was different in some way. 363 had lovely light steering (rememb

Part 2. My favourite buses. There were many I liked but my two all time favourites would be in second place the Mk 1 Leyland National used on the central area free bus service. I did the odd shift on

Been reading up on AEC Regents & Leyland Titans: Would the AEC whining noise be caused by the Regent's having an epicyclic gearbox & Titans an ordinary gearbox?

Not quite, although you are right in principle, in saying that it is the gearbox rather than the engine that determines the transmission sound. You'll understand that I'm not an engineer, but this is more or less how it goes. Nottingham started buying AEC Regents in 1929, and those delivered up to 1932 had petrol engines. After that all were "oil engines" - i.e. diesel. The last were delivered in 1956, although there were some later AEC Renowns with similar engines, delivered in 1965.

Over the years there were different size engines and different gearboxes. Engine sizes were 7.7 or 8.8 litres up to the end of WW2. (I believe the 8.8 litre version was particularly specified for vehicles to replace trams on the Woodborough Road route to Mapperley (31, and also at that time 35, which started at Trent Bridge). From 1948 a larger 9.6 litre engine was available. Originally the gearbox was a "sliding mesh" type (often referred to as a crash gearbox), but from about 1936 the "Wilson" epicyclic pre-selector gearbox became available, and was specified for most of the NCT fleet until 1955. The 1955/56 deliveries had a synchromesh gearbox, as did the later Renowns. The sound of the crash gearbox (which Trent and Midland General also had) was somewhat similar to that of the synchromesh box (reproduced in the sound clip I linked a couple of days ago) but the earlier sound was, in my opinion, nicer and mellower. The pre-selector was totally different, pleasant (you'll know I'm a complete nutter now!) - but in the early 1950s it was virtually universal in the NCT fleet, so I tended to regard it as a bit boring.

The idea of the pre-selector gearbox was that the driver could select the next gear, before it was needed, when it was convenient to do so (there was a selector lever mounted horizontally just below the steering wheel). When he wanted to engage that gear he did so by depressing the change pedal (which was where the clutch would normally be) at the appropriate moment. The advantage was that in heavy city traffic the actual gear engagement was only a foot movement, leaving both hands free to steer - buses had no power steering in them days! The down-side was that it was a bit heavier on fuel than a manual gearbox (crash or synchro). Folk from that era might remember how there was a distinct "glump" sound accompanied by a hiss and a slight jolt as the driver engaged first - or more usually second - gear when waiting to pull away from a stop.

The NCT Leyland Titans also had a synchromesh box, which produced a rather different higher pitched whine from the Regents, with a distinct rasp to it. However Barton's bought some second hand Leyland Titans from London Transport, which had the same pre-selector box as NCT. These sounded just the same as the pre-selector AECs.

Here ends my dissertation !

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Thanks for info Stephen. All these combinations of engine & gearboxes are quite complicated but interesting (well they are to me anyway.) When I lived in Bestwood Village & in bed, I could always tell when a Midland General Bristol Lo-decker (B8) was pulling away from the end of Park Road by the noise it made..

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I remember once travelling into Nottingham on one of Barton's ex-London Transport deckers with a pre select gearbox.

Going up Derby Road, the lights at Lenton Boulevard were on red and we came to a stand side by side with another Barton decker with a manual gearbox.

When the lights changed, the pre selector bus which I was on just left the other one standing!

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Thanks for info Stephen. All these combinations of engine & gearboxes are quite complicated but interesting (well they are to me anyway.) When I lived in Bestwood Village & in bed, I could always tell when a Midland General Bristol Lo-decker (B8) was pulling away from the end of Park Road by the noise it made..

Didn't Bristol Lodekkas have several totally different engines, including Bristol's own, Gardner with different numbers of cylinders (odd as well as even) and Leyland?

I seem to think the Bristol engines were 2-stroke, though I may be imagining things.

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Yes, they did, although Leyland only came in late in the day. (I seem to remember Bristol Commercial Vehicles was taken over by Leyland Bus). However all Lodekkas sounded substantially the same as long as they had the standard synchro gearbox. However some were built and others retro-fitted with monocontrol gearboxes (semi-automatic, no clutch, miniature gear lever) and they sounded quite different.

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I think I'm right in saying that none of those you mention were two-stroke engines. Two-stroke engines were mainly associated with Commer vehicles, and I think some Foden buses, but that's about all, and were rather in a minority. Commer mainly made coach chassis in the 1950s/1960s, and I don't think produced any double deckers.

Bristol Lodekkas could have either Bristol or Gardner 5 or 6-cylinder engines, and as Stephen says, a few later versions appeared with Leyland 6 cylinder ones.

From what I remember of my bus enthusiast days (up to mid-1970s) nearly all chassis manufacturers still in business at that time ended up being taken over by British Leyland as it became! (Daimler being another).

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The Commer knocker, not heard one of them for years. Three cylinder 2 stroke I do believe..

When I lived in Chester-le-street a couple of local buses were single deck Bedfords with a bonnet, they had a very distinctive sound, not sure if they were petrol..

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Yeah I suppose we are. My train set used to give off a funny sparking smell, Dad said it was ozone, I thought it was the transformer shoving out too many volts. We could recreate Basford gas works by turning on the hob but not lighting it, I suppose health & safety would moan when the house blew up. :)

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Yeah I suppose we are. My train set used to give off a funny sparking smell, Dad said it was ozone, I thought it was the transformer shoving out too many volts. We could recreate Basford gas works by turning on the hob but not lighting it, I suppose health & safety would moan when the house blew up. :)

Alas, not true (well - I'm not sure about the alas bit!) The smell of natural gas, even with the added odour, is nothing like the acrid pong of coal gas (what was referred to as "town gas" - is that another something that our parents used to say?)

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Was it the actual gas we smelt when passing the gasworks though? If so, they must have been letting a lot escape.

I would guess it was more the smell of the production process itself. There were many other side-products of gas production, including coke, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and hydrogen cyanide.

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Yeah the side product gubbins must have given off a pong. I can remember the smell when I worked down the pit when you went though the air doors from intake to return airways, it hit you at first till you got used to it. They said each seam had it's own smell, the only one's I could tell apart were Deep Soft & Black Shale down Hucknall: DS had a mellow smell & BS had an acrid harsh smell. I couldn't tell the difference between Low Main, Piper & Waterloo seams down Moorgreen..

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Many organic sulphur compounds have a very bad smell, they can be smelt at very small concentrations of a few parts per million. I expect that was what the gas works smell was.

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Maybe, but the smell that came out of the gas stove if you left a ring on, or it didn't light, smelt pretty similar to Basford gas works. That should get the Health and Safety people gasping - a stove that didn't turn itself off if the gas wasn't lit. And of course, it was a favourite way of committing suicide.

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Coal gas was poisonous. Were as natural gas is not hence not many stick their heads in the gas oven these days. It is however over twice as powerful and therefore gives more bang for your buck if you get it wrong.

Colin

Reminds me of a thing Mam used to say: When she asked me why I did something stupid, (happened a lot) I'd say "because so & so did the same thing" she'd say "if so & so put there head in a gas oven, would you?" I'd then stand there with a gormless look on my face. :)

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