Trivia: Rare and unusual bus and coach types

[Swanny200]

The same goes for the TAZ Dubrava coach. I seem to remember a Scottish operator using them on a London - Scotland service , not sure for how long though.

They were Merc 0303 clones, would have been a lot more of them sold apparently had the war and breakup of Yugoslavia not happened, IIRC a couple of them were rescued just before the war started, were not great machines.

Also looked and apologies if someone else has mentioned them what about the Van Roojen Odyssee, or the LAG tristar which looked like a competitor to the Optimo

 

[Belfastmarty]

Through consolidation in the industry, modern manufacturers are by-and-large set up for volume production, and coupled with the trend towards integral type vehicles (think Streetdeck) rather than coachwork on 3rd party running units (eg Volvo B5/Wrightbus), this leads to a situation whereby specials or one-offs are now much much rarer than in previous times. Looking back at local (to me) manufacturers, Alexander Belfast produced only 10 Fords with N-type bodies and 20 on Dennis Javelin, with a further 10 Javelins having Q-type bodies. Similarly the ungainly AS-type on Ford AO609 only totalled less than 30 units, with a solitary prototype built at Falkirk.

The early history of Wrights is littered with rare types, such as the 2 Leopards with TT coachwork and 7 Tigers with Contour bodies for Ulsterbus. Another interesting hybrid was Ford R1014 HIB2138 for which Wrights supplied the frames, but was finished by Sureline Coaches of Lurgan. Sureline also had 2 further Fords which had Seddon frames, but finished by Wrights.

Going further back in time, Potter produced only 16 single deck bodies on AEC Swift and another 16 on Daimler Roadliner (both for Belfast Corporation) whilst they also supplied 5 Leopards (to Y-type style) and 10 Bristol LH's to Ulsterbus. Earlier still, MH Cars built a solitary 3 Atlanteans for Belfast Corporation whilst when the UTA were building their own bus bodies the produced a solitary Bedford VAL, 7 VAS1s and 3 Austin T200s. One other local example which comes to mind is Cannon of Strabane, who produced a BEL150 midi-type chassis which received an E200 lookalike body.

 

[Edvid]

The (re)introduction of battery-electric buses to London has itself resulted in a few rare models, built by BYD unless specified otherwise.

A one-off K8UR was used on Go-Ahead London routes 360 / 153, then transferred to Uno for commercial work (primarily the Herts Uni shuttle) until last year.

Uno 1470 (LJ16EZS) Hatfield 22/11/2021

Explore Martin Ruthe's Transport Photos' 36568 photos on Flickr!

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Five K8SRs - the world's first (21st-century) electric deckers according to Metroline - were built for routes 98 / N98. Sometime later they moved to Uno and the surviving pair are used on the 699 and other TfL school routes; one of them has even made a cameo appearance on the commercial Hatfield-Luton X10!

UNO LJ16EZN

BYD Electric LJ16 EZN of UNO, Hatfield is seen here in use as a duplicate on the company's Service X10 between Luton Interchange and Hatfield, at Luton Interchange on 28th November 2023. The Service X10, introduced as a limited stop option to reduce pressure on the existing Service 610 but has...

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Three Irizar i2e buses were built, of which two were trialled on Go-Ahead London routes 507 / 521 (as were the previously-noted K9Es before them), then on route 108 until January 2023.

Go Ahead London Irizar i2e EI1 (YP15 NLM)

Stratford City Bus Station

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Outside London, CT4N took on a baker's dozen K9URs in 2016. Only two remain on the fleet list but at least two others have carried passengers this past month.

CT4N 982 on medilink 2

being round QMC meant i was able to spot some medilink but i only got this one. 982 rounds the corner from medical School on the medilink 2 to Queens Drive P&R 982 LJ16 NMX

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[joieman]

Outside London, CT4N took on a baker's dozen K9URs in 2016. Only two remain on the fleet list but at least two others have carried passengers this past month.

CT4N 982 on medilink 2

being round QMC meant i was able to spot some medilink but i only got this one. 982 rounds the corner from medical School on the medilink 2 to Queens Drive P&R 982 LJ16 NMX

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For some reason, none of the others track on BusTimes. The two that do track previously spent a stint on the SEGRO East Midlands Gateway employee shuttle (which does track on BusTimes) until being replaced by Yutongs earlier this year.