Monday 16 April 2012

Vintage Bus Weekend

This past weekend saw the North Norfolk Railway hold their Vintage Bus Weekend. In addition to the buses operating on five routes, there were a number of visitors in attendance too.

Unfortunately yours truly was unable to make either of the two days due to family commitments. However, Neil Chilvers provides a few pictures of some of the buses at the event.

The first photo is of former Eastern Counties Bristol RELL6G EPW516K.

Built in 1972, she moved to Cambus and subsequently Viscount during the the break up of the old Eastern Counties Omnibus Company. (ECOC)

She was then acquired by Busways of Newcastle which eventually became part of the Stagecoach Group. Saturday was her first trip out after restoration.

With this year being the 40th  year since the first pre-production Leyland National entering service, it  was appropriate that at least one should appear.

This is a series 2 example of the model with a longer body and modified engineering. 

SVV587W was new to United Counties in 1980 as is seen here in its original colour scheme

East Lancs Coachbuilders began a programme of rebuilding worn out Leyland Nationals as 'Greenaways' which were fitted with replacement Gardner engines. 

Eastern Counties Omnibus Company's WAH587S underwent conversion as a Greenaway in 1995.

The vehicle is now owned by Carters Coach Services of Suffolk who have spent some time restoring her and is seen here in Carter's livery.

On Sunday Neil captured the East Anglia Transport Museum's AEC Regent III KXW234 posing in front of Railbus LEV1.

The Regent was in London Country Green as RT3125 and was one of 7000 RT class of London buses.

LEV 1 was a joint experiment between Leyland and BR to combine the (worst) features of rail and bus.

The railbus is owned by the National Railway Museum and had operated on routes in East Anglia including the East Suffolk line between Lowestoft and Ipswich.

As mentioned earlier, some of the buses worked on free services throughout the weekend.

This is former Eastern Counties Bristol K5G 718 (KNG718) which is pictured on the 24 route between Sheringham and Cley on the Sunday.

It was an appropriate working as in its ECOC days it was based at Holt and Blakeney.

It was expected that former Great Yarmouth Corporation Reliance 85 (AEX85B) would also get involved in the action on Sunday but couldn't attend due to a water leak.

My thanks to Neil Chilvers for the pictures and the supporting information.

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