100 The London Bus
Yugoslavia. But to the frustration
of UK operators, not to the home
market.Acting for Edinburgh
This stalemate was broken by
James Amos, chairman of the
Scottish Bus Group, itself state-
owned in BTC control. While its
companies could – and did – buy
former London Guys, Amos was
also negotiating on behalf of
Moris Little, transport manager
at Edinburgh Corporation,
who was looking for low cost
lightweight buses to start full-
scale replacement of the city’s
tramway network.
Edinburgh Corporation had
been allocated six utility Guy
double-deckers in 1943 and
went on to buy a further 42
between 1945 and 1951 – all
with the bigger Gardner 6LW
engine. Although Edinburgh’s
double-deck preference for many
years had been the 6LW-enginedDaimler COG6
and CVG6 models,
Little’s interest in
Guys indicated a
change in direction.
His goal was to
get the tramway
replacement started
before making the
inevitable large-
scale investment in
brand new buses
to replace the city’s
370 trams.
Amos’s
intervention caused
the top people
at BTC to soften
their stance and
stipulated that
the buses should
be sold directly to
Edinburgh for use
on local bus work
and should not
be resold by the
corporation.
What Moris
Little wanted to
do was to scrap
the utility bodies,
modernise the
chassis and fit new
modern-looking
bodies. Edinburgh
was developing a
close interest in
lightweight buses, following
the tendency for most buses to
become increasingly heavy.
The city had AEC double-
deckers weighing exactly
8tons, and single-deckers that
weighed in at over 7tons, with
the inevitable effect on fuel
consumption. His target was to
produce double-deckers under
7tons and over the next few
years he achieved this goal.
Early in 1952 Edinburgh
Corporation engineers were
given the choice of available
London Guys and chose 60
that seemed most suitable for
conversion. They were collected
from London’s Edgware garage
in April and May of 1952 and
driven north for conversion. The
bodies were scrapped and the
chassis modified at the front end;
most utility Guys were built with
a longer bonnet to accommodate
either the 5LW or 6LW engines,so on the shorter 5LW-engined
examples the radiator was
unnecessarily far forward.
Edinburgh engineers shortened
the chassis and mounted the
radiator immediately in front
of the engine and in doing so
Edinburgh needed to allocate
new chassis numbers. The new
chassis numbers reflected the
year of conversion and the
fleetnumber of the bus, so the
Guy chassis on buses nos.301-60
became 195201-60. The chassis
were also widened from 7ft 6in to
the now-legal 8ft.Duple bodywork
For bodywork, Edinburgh turned
to Duple, based in Hendon in
London and best known for its
luxury coaches. Edinburgh’s
only previous Duple bodies were
29-seat Vista coaches on Bedford
OWB and OB chassis. Duple
had built double-deckers in the
postwar period and the general
design would follow the lines of
these but with an emphasis on
low overall weight.
This too was the era when
exposed radiators (like on the
London RT) were deemed to
be old fashioned and new look
‘tin’ fronts, hiding the radiator,
were in vogue. Edinburgh
and Duple came up with a
novel design that looked at
first glance like the full fronts
favoured by a few operators but
in fact what would have been
the nearside windscreen was
actually simply an aperture,
with a further aperture for
engine access above the front
nearside wheel. The lower front
was a rather flashy one with
brightwork that announced
to all observers that this was
definitely not a utility bus.
Duple built the pre-production
prototype and the second one
at Hendon, but the other 58
received lower deck shells
at Hendon before transfer
to Duple’s recently acquired
company, Nudd Bros & Lockyer,
at Kegworth in Leicestershire
where the bodies were
completed.
Edinburgh had bought the
chassis for the theoretical scrap
value of £250 each, with bodiesLives after London
ABOVE: Former
London Transport
G252 with
Northern Counties
bodywork receives
attention at
Western SMT’s
Cumnock depot.
GAVIN BOOTH