What happened to the London 2012 handover bus?

[Royston Vasey]

The closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing involved a "stereotypical" London bus as part of the handover of the Games to London. At first sight, it appeared pretty much a stock first generation Enviro 400, although with blacked out windows, no upper deck obstacle deflectors and some odd panel gaps. It had the look of a prototype.

The upper deck then opened up in sections revealing an astroturf-clad interior and some ingenious stage platforms and performers including Leona Lewis and David Beckham were lifted out from the bus with hydraulic rams.

The production company Stage One produced a detailed white paper on how they did it with lots of images.

https://www.stageone.co.uk/wp-conte...Handover-2008-Beijing-London-Case-Study-C.pdf

THE BUS
The bus was to contain 200kW of hydraulic force,
60kW of lighting plus the necessary sound provision
for the performers whilst retaining the ability to be
driven around the Stadium at a speed of about 5mph.
A nine tonne Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 bus was
delivered to us in ‘kit’ form, comprising of a chassis
with wheels and an engine, with the rest of the
bodywork in a series of pallets.
Whatever processes we subjected the bus to within
the nine week build period, it was imperative that
it retained its original identity and iconic look and,
unusually, that all power and show control was
carried out from within the bus itself. In order to
create the power to do this, the original Cummins
six-cylinder diesel engine was disconnected and
used instead to drive a hydraulic pump, powering
two hydraulic hub motors.

So my question is, what happened to this bus? Does it still exist, in a production company warehouse or even museum or private collection somewhere? Were the chassis, nearly new engine and components salvaged either for rebuild or for parts? Clearly very little of the body would ever be suitable for service and by that point the pre-face-lift design was close to being out of production.

 

[gka472l]

I presumed it was scrapped, going from this pic on Flickr

2008 beijing olympics E400

the ADL enviro 400 that starred in the 2008 olympics in beijing now a shadow of its former self dumped in a scrap yard

www.flickr.com

HTH

 

[Busaholic]

It wasn't a 'proper' bus was it? It might have had the capability to run under its own 'steam'(!) for a short period at not much more than walking pace, but making it fit for any sort of passenger service would have cost the earth, and not able to be done with existing systems, so why would anyone bother?

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

Presumably someone was planning to do something with it, because it was shipped back to the UK instead of being scrapped in China. Perhaps the London organising committee expected to use it again in the 2012 opening ceremony but changed their minds.

 

[Royston Vasey]

It wasn't a 'proper' bus was it? It might have had the capability to run under its own 'steam'(!) for a short period at not much more than walking pace, but making it fit for any sort of passenger service would have cost the earth, and not able to be done with existing systems, so why would anyone bother?

Standard E400 chassis and kit but thereafter heavily modified and the drive provided by hydraulics. Interesting piece of engineering really!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Aug 2021 ==

Presumably someone was planning to do something with it, because it was shipped back to the UK instead of being scrapped in China. Perhaps the London organising committee expected to use it again in the 2012 opening ceremony but changed their minds.

I looked for references of it being used at 2012 opening but there was only a psychedelic Pearce and Crump type vehicle which happened to be on ebay last September for a couple of thousand pounds!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Aug 2021 ==

I presumed it was scrapped, going from this pic on Flickr

2008 beijing olympics E400

the ADL enviro 400 that starred in the 2008 olympics in beijing now a shadow of its former self dumped in a scrap yard

www.flickr.com

HTH

That is fairly conclusive! Thank you!

There's potentially a very low mileage Cummins engine in there for the scrappie to move on, but I guess the value was long since written down.

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

I looked for references of it being used at 2012 opening but there was only a psychedelic Pearce and Crump type vehicle which happened to be on ebay last September for a couple of thousand pounds!

The scrapyard photo was taken in 2010.

 

[Gloster]

As it said London-Beijing-London on the side, somebody may have been aware of the potential bad publicity if they left it to be scrapped in Beijing.

 

[Busaholic]

As it said London-Beijing-London on the side, somebody may have been aware of the potential bad publicity if they left it to be scrapped in Beijing.

Don't forget, London weren't expected to win!

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

The host city for 2012 was chosen in 2005.

 

[Mikey C]

Slightly disappointing it was scrapped so soon afterwards, though while special, it probably wasn't special enough for someone to want to preserve it.