What is this coach/bus

[overthewater]

What is the green coach behide the Citylink decker? It got bus doors which makes me wonder what could it be?

WesternScottish A162TGE dy018

Western Scottish M162 A162 TGE MCW Metroliner DR130/4 with MCW CH53/16Dt body, new April 1984 as Western SMT M162. In Scottish Citylink livery, seen at London Victoria.

flic.kr

 

[GCH100]

What is the GREEN coach behide the Citylink decker? It got bus doors which makes me wonder what could it be?

WesternScottish A162TGE dy018

Western Scottish M162 A162 TGE MCW Metroliner DR130/4 with MCW CH53/16Dt body, new April 1984 as Western SMT M162. In Scottish Citylink livery, seen at London Victoria.

flic.kr

Its a Leyland Tiger with Berkhof Everest coachwork from the London Country fleet, it is a coach used by London Country on its Greenline Network

 

[overthewater]

Thank you, I'm surprised they put bus doors on the coach.

 

[busesrusuk]

Here is a picture of one of these coaches, branded for the Flightline 777 service which ran between Crawley, Gatwick and Victoria. They were the BTL class and, IIRC, Ensigns were the importer of these coaches which as mentioned previously were Berkhof bodied Leyland Tigers. They were very striking coaches and were used mostly on the Green Line airport services:

Green Line BTL15

Crawley Bus Station

www.flickr.com

 

[GusB]

Were these coaches actually built like that? The door arrangement looks decidedly odd, as if it has been rebuilt at some point.

 

[JonathanH]

Double doors seem to be a feature of many other Green Line (and indeed other NBC operator) coaches of the era - https://www.flickr.com/groups/1520255@N24/pool/

 

[Djb1]

I'm not familiar with greenline operations / how they were registered in the 1980s, but could the doors be because it was a late "grant bus"?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The twin leaf doors were fitted to some of the Berkhof bodied Tigers that London Country received. I think the bus grant had essentially gone by that stage. However, Green Line vehicles had since the late 1970s featured coach shell vehicles. These were AEC Reliances followed by small batches of Volvo B58s and Leyland Leopards with grant type features such as dual leaf doors, all on Duple Dominant or Plaxton Supreme bodies.

The 1980s saw them receive Tigers in large numbers with the awful ECW B51 body, some Duple Dominants that were really bus grant style with their destination equipment etc, Plaxton Paramount etc. That's because they were working stage carriage work (albeit limited stop) and didn't want the delays of plug doors. It was all part of the bus grant where, to get government funding for new vehicles, coaches would arrive with certain features to be used on bus services for a proportion of the year.

The Berkhof bodies were a real departure and in the first batch, some had coach type plug doors, whilst others had dual leaf doors as illustrated. Looking on Flickr, think the ones with dual leaf were for the 747 Jetlink and 777 Flightline services. I recall that quite a number of those Berkhofs were subsequently rebodied by East Lancs as buses for Midland Red North; must've ended up with London Country SW and passed through Drawlane Group!

 

[busesrusuk]

If memory serves, then as stated above, the doors would be down to complying with bus grant specs to enable fleets to be replaced with some government subsidy. These particular vehicles must have been ordered/delivered towards the end of the bus grant era.

The vast majority of Green Line coaches had "express" type doors rather than the then normal swing type coach doors that operators doing tours/private hire type work preferred.

 

[A0]

The twin leaf doors were fitted to some of the Berkhof bodied Tigers that London Country received. I think the bus grant had essentially gone by that stage. However, Green Line vehicles had since the late 1970s featured coach shell vehicles. These were AEC Reliances followed by small batches of Volvo B58s and Leyland Leopards with grant type features such as dual leaf doors, all on Duple Dominant or Plaxton Supreme bodies.

The 1980s saw them receive Tigers in large numbers with the awful ECW B51 body, some Duple Dominants that were really bus grant style with their destination equipment etc, Plaxton Paramount etc. That's because they were working stage carriage work (albeit limited stop) and didn't want the delays of plug doors. It was all part of the bus grant where, to get government funding for new vehicles, coaches would arrive with certain features to be used on bus services for a proportion of the year.

The Berkhof bodies were a real departure and in the first batch, some had coach type plug doors, whilst others had dual leaf doors as illustrated. Looking on Flickr, think the ones with dual leaf were for the 747 Jetlink and 777 Flightline services. I recall that quite a number of those Berkhofs were subsequently rebodied by East Lancs as buses for Midland Red North; must've ended up with London Country SW and passed through Drawlane Group!

In the case of the B58, very small. Only 2 were taken. It was London Country (LCBS) trying to put the frighteners on British Leyland who'd determined customers who'd bought AEC Reliances would automatically buy Leopards, so LCBS took a couple of B58s and a couple of Leopards to evaluate which was best.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

The Bus Grant was introduced in 1968 but the concept it supported pre-dated that. This was the dual-purpose (DP) vehicle intended to provide a better quality journey on longer-distance bus services. Early examples were often ordinary service buses fitted with better seating, generally with higher than normal seat-backs, sometimes with a headrest (though this was normally too low to be of much use) and almost certainly using cloth (moquette) covers. Vehicle livery was often different to the main fleet too. The alternative was a coach with a more basic interior and fitted with a basic bus-type cab ie with cash tray and ticket machine stand (assuming OPO was in place) as well as destination equipment.

Bus grant allowed the DP coach to become much more common. As coach specifications gradually improved they provided a much better performing machine as a basis for DP vehicles and even with basic interiors (fixed back seats, lino flooring, bi-parting entrance doors, etc) could still double up as basic private hire vehicles. But the combination of coaches gradually becoming higher floored while accessibility to normal bus services needed to be improved would have inevitably killed the concept regardless of the grant scheme continuing or not. The Green Line Berkhof Tigers were perhaps the last hurrah.

However it could be argued that some of the various rail to air connecting road services continue to maintain the basic idea given the relatively high frequency operation of such services. There is also a small number of longer distance stopping services still operated with coaches though the vehicle interiors are not very different from "normal" coaches. Not to mention numerous school services.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

In the case of the B58, very small. Only 2 were taken. It was London Country (LCBS) trying to put the frighteners on British Leyland who'd determined customers who'd bought AEC Reliances would automatically buy Leopards, so LCBS took a couple of B58s and a couple of Leopards to evaluate which was best.

Indeed - both the Volvos ended up with Darlington Transport and were regulars on their Newcastle express. Just part of the phoney war that NBC enjoyed with Leyland at that time.

The Bus Grant was introduced in 1968 but the concept it supported pre-dated that. This was the dual-purpose (DP) vehicle intended to provide a better quality journey on longer-distance bus services. Early examples were often ordinary service buses fitted with better seating, generally with higher than normal seat-backs, sometimes with a headrest (though this was normally too low to be of much use) and almost certainly using cloth (moquette) covers. Vehicle livery was often different to the main fleet too. The alternative was a coach with a more basic interior and fitted with a basic bus-type cab ie with cash tray and ticket machine stand (assuming OPO was in place) as well as destination equipment.

Bus grant allowed the DP coach to become much more common. As coach specifications gradually improved they provided a much better performing machine as a basis for DP vehicles and even with basic interiors (fixed back seats, lino flooring, bi-parting entrance doors, etc) could still double up as basic private hire vehicles. But the combination of coaches gradually becoming higher floored while accessibility to normal bus services needed to be improved would have inevitably killed the concept regardless of the grant scheme continuing or not. The Green Line Berkhof Tigers were perhaps the last hurrah.

However it could be argued that some of the various rail to air connecting road services continue to maintain the basic idea given the relatively high frequency operation of such services. There is also a small number of longer distance stopping services still operated with coaches though the vehicle interiors are not very different from "normal" coaches. Not to mention numerous school services.

The DP was common in the 1950s and 1960s but were often bus shell vehicles like ECW bodied REs. As you say, the 1970s bus grant saw this change as operators large and small saw it as a means of getting a coach for the summer (as long as it worked stage work in the winter). OK Motor Services were a great exponent of this with Leopards grinding around Witton le Wear in December but out to Blackpool in the summer months.

The Berkhof Tigers weren't the last hurrah though on Green Line as they had some Duple 320 Tigers in 1985/6, also with two leaf doors.

 

[busesrusuk]

The Duple bodied Tigers known as the TDL class as seen here - smart looking vehicles:

Green Line TDL56

Eccleston Bridge, Victoria

www.flickr.com