Corgi's 2020 vision

A Happy New Year and Happy New Decade to all my readers. As has become customary, I'm starting 2020 with a review of Corgi's recently-announced bus models for this year, which were revealed on Monday. There are at least some OOC buses among the 118 announcements so that is an improvement over 2019's tally of zero, but they are once again an uninspiring crop so I won't be buying any of them, and needless to say there are still no new castings.

No new buses from Corgi

A Happy New Year to all my readers. It's become traditional at this time of year to review Corgi's newly-announced bus models so 2019 will be no exception. There is a surprise in this release, a myriad of exciting liveries and new castings to suit all tastes. Hah, if only...given their past form you should know not to get your hopes up like that. This will be a very short article as the number of new models in the Original Omnibus Company range for the first half of the year is...

The Thame Time Traveller

I've previously bemoaned the lack of interest in the modern-day bus scene on this blog. Thanks to accessibility legislation, all the interesting old step-entrance buses are now illegal to use on normal stage services and are confined almost exclusively to school runs, where they are difficult to photograph and impossible to travel on. Thus it was with great pleasure that I learned of an enthusiasts' tour on Saturday 5th May, organised by Chris Martin (no, not that one) of the Leyland Olympians Yahoo Group. Called the Thame Time Traveller, the aim was to sample seven of the Olympian school buses that form part of the fascinating fleet run by Walters Coaches of Oxford on various runs through the Oxfordshire countryside.

Very rarely does anyone other than schoolkids get to travel on these big beasts

A Tricentrol tribute

With my interest in the present-day bus and coach scene on the wane, I've started researching some of the many firms who used to ply their trade in my area but are sadly no longer with us. Very little evidence of the group's existence now remains and younger readers may never have heard of them as they went out of business about 30 years ago, but throughout the 1970s Tricentrol was one of the biggest and most familiar names in Bedfordshire and beyond. The Tricentrol empire was a substantial business, comprising not just a large fleet of coaches but also many other ventures in the car sales and truck industries managed from the head office in Dunstable, but has now vanished almost without trace.

I'm too young to have ever actually seen any Tricentrol vehicles in the flesh and not much has been written about the coaching side of the business, so this article has been compiled from PSV Circle records and contemporary news reports and there may be some inaccuracies as a result. Special thanks go to Frans Angevaare from the Netherlands for allowing use of photos from his extensive collection.  Read on for more on the rise and fall of Tricentrol...

A typical Tricentrol Bedford in London on one of the express services
(Photo: Frans Angevaare)

Corgi buses for 2018

I've been meaning to write this for several weeks now but the announcement coincided with my busiest period at work and life has just got in the way since then, so better late than never, here at last is my review of Corgi's model bus release schedule for January to June of this year, revealed exactly a month ago. I didn't even bother reviewing the models from the second half of 2017 as there were only two of them and neither were worthy of note: yet another Borismaster and a second Harry Potter Gemini very similar to the one released the previous year. Things are slightly better this time around, with four all-new liveries, each available with a choice of two destinations. There are still no new castings though (unsurprising given the company's poor finances) and nothing of interest to me.

Wright Gemini, Brighton & Hove, Pride - all themes Corgi have already done recently

Unsung heroes: CVE Omni

Travel on any modern low-floor bus and you'll soon notice a fundamental design problem. With the engine mounted at the rear, a flat floor is impossible and while the front half may be nice and low there's always an awkward arrangement of steps or ramps up to the back seats. Wouldn't it make far more sense to put the engine at the front and drive the front wheels so it's completely out of the way of the passenger compartment? Such a vehicle did exist almost thirty years ago and had the potential to revolutionise the minibus industry but sadly turned out to be a bit of a flop that has disappeared into obscurity, so I've nominated it as my final unsung hero of the year.

H389 KPY is the sole surviving Omni in PSV service
(By Pimlico Badger - EMPHAST H389KPY, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25343829)

The mysterious MilMod

I hope my readers had a good Christmas and got the gifts they wanted. I'm a difficult person to buy for so the majority of my presents were model kits from myself to add to my ever-growing stash, including a couple that are particularly unusual and not at all well documented. I thought it was worth writing something to shed a little more light on the mysterious little-known firm of MilMod, whose approach to kit production is rather individual to say the least. 

The model kit market in 1/76 scale just hasn't been the same since the demise of BW Models on proprietor Barry Wright's well-deserved retirement a few years ago. The moulds for the huge range were sold in batches to various other firms and while some former BW kits have reappeared, others have yet to emerge and their fate currently remains unknown. Thanks to a bit of detective work, some have now been traced to MilMod, with several already available and others scheduled for release next year. I had never heard of MilMod before and they seem to keep a very low profile, so who are they and what are their kits like?

The Quest continues

More about Quest 80

I haven't had much time for blogging lately as the show season is now in full swing. Last Sunday I was back at Gaydon for the truck show, but I'm not going to do a full review this time as it was the same deal as the last two years. My star of the show last year was B.R. Whorton's near-unique Quest 80 tipper, and this time they went one better and had both of them in attendance. That meant what is probably the world's entire population of Quest lorries were in one place, and a chat with the gentleman looking after them for the weekend revealed some more information so I can add extra detail to my original piece about Quest 80.

Every Quest lorry in existence in one photo

Unsung heroes: Bedford JJL

Most of the unsung heroes I have featured so far are cars, but the very first one was a bus and today I return to that theme. It's fair to say the Dennis Dart is one of the major success stories of the bus industry, bridging the gap between minibuses and full-size single-deckers and creating a whole new class of vehicle, but a similar bus could have appeared on the market over a decade before the Dart's 1989 launch. This was the Bedford JJL, an innovative rear-engined purpose-built minibus that was first revealed in prototype form back in 1976 but never reached production, and in many ways was a Dart before its time.

Bedford's biggest missed opportunity or the right product at the wrong time?

Public transport, the Equality Act and the Supreme Court

A bad combination?

 

I have previously discussed my feelings towards the Equality Act as it applies to buses on this blog, and a recent development has reinforced my concerns about the appropriateness of the rules when it comes to achieving proper and justified equality. It relates to the shared bay on modern low-floor buses that can be used both by wheelchair users and those with babies in pushchairs and reached all the way to the Supreme Court. While not making it a legal requirement to give wheelchair users priority use of this bay, the court's guidance strongly implies they have a greater right to it than any other group by indicating that bus drivers must do more to persuade other users to vacate it than simply asking them, for instance by rephrasing their request as a mandatory requirement or refusing to drive on until they have complied.

As long as this remains a shared space that multiple groups have equal entitlement in law to use I can see no possible way to resolve a dispute such as this in a fair manner that doesn't discriminate against either party, so true equality cannot therefore be achieved and the result of this case seems inappropriate and poorly thought out with insufficient clarity and not enough legal substance. While bus operators claim to welcome the new guidance, in reality they have no choice as any public criticism of it would itself cause them to be labelled as prejudiced against the disabled, but as an observer outside the industry I have a number of serious misgivings: it sets a dangerous precedent that implies the disabled are entitled to greater rights than others and is likely to have far-reaching consequences to wider society, not just within the bus industry. 

New year, new model buses?

It's the beginning of a new year and a good time to look at what may be in store for 1/76 scale model bus collectors such as myself in the near future. Apart from the noble exception of Oxford Diecast, 2016 was a disappointing year for diecasts, with Northcord and Britbus virtually invisible, Corgi suffering financial problems and the near-loss of EFE. I bought no more than two or three new diecast releases during the entire year and the majority of my new additions were resin kits from the growing band of cottage industry producers who have a very different business model but seem far more willing to invest in new products. So far it looks like 2017 won't be much better, with Brexit having had an adverse effect on production costs in China, but I'm still hoping I might be proved wrong and something exciting will unexpectedly appear.

The Roger Burdett collection

I imagine most bus enthusiasts will know the name of Roger Burdett as he is one of the country's leading preservationists and has a large collection of interesting vehicles that can often be seen at events. Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting his premises in Coventry thanks to my friends in the West Midlands area of the Model Bus Federation and it was a most enjoyable evening surrounded by fascinating vintage buses that was well worth the slightly fraught 50-mile journey through roadworks and rush-hour congestion.

Gentlemen, your carriage awaits. Coventry 244 ready to give enthusiastic MBF members a trip.

Corgi disappoint again

Six months ago I bemoaned how disappointing Corgi's release schedule for the first half of this year was, and predicted that the Original Omnibus Company models to be released in the second half would be little better. The full release schedule is due to be announced tomorrow but the list of OOC releases was made available by another website today and it gives me no pleasure to say I was right and the first words that came to mind on viewing the list were 'dismal' and 'pathetic'. I was hoping this was incomplete and there would be more to follow, but nothing was omitted so there is even less variety than last time and this batch of releases is far worse than I imagined it could ever be. If you don't like modern Wrightbuses then there is nothing here for you.

A futile Quest

Quest 80 and the U-drive

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds the failures of the motoring world so much more fascinating than the successes. So much has already been written about the most celebrated and popular vehicles that there is nothing new to add, but those that failed to make an impact are far more worthy of study and raise so many interesting questions. Why did they fail? Could they have succeeded under different circumstances? And in some cases, what the hell were they thinking?! Today's subject tends to fall in the latter category: unsurprisingly you may never have heard of Quest 80 buses and coaches as they went out of business more than thirty years ago after building just a handful of vehicles, but their claim to fame (or should that be infamy?) was a notoriously cumbersome and inefficient drivetrain that frankly defied engineering logic. Read on to find out more about this strange and forgotten manufacturer and their range of blunderbuses.

A burning issue

Please don't set fire to your models!

Something I've noticed recently that is spreading among the younger members of the model bus community is a trend towards depicting a burnt out vehicle by setting fire to it. For many reasons this really isn't a good idea at all so I cannot condone such behaviour and I feel I must write something to warn of the dangers and hopefully put an end to this idiotic practice before someone gets hurt.

This makes me cringe. So dangerous and not even realistic.

The weird world of Atlas Editions

Today's post focuses on a company with the strangest business practices I have ever encountered. You may have heard of Atlas Editions as they advertise extensively; their business model is offering subscriptions to collections of items, principally diecast models but also such other collectables as ornaments and plates, with much emphasis on them being exclusive to Atlas and not available anywhere else, which isn't always true. Each collection begins with a loss leader at a very low price but subsequent goods are more expensive, and they will continue to send items at regular intervals unless you choose to cancel. This all sounds quite reasonable but Atlas often go about their business in strange, disorganised and amateurish ways that have resulted in them not having the best of reputations.

In my favoured 1/76 scale, Atlas have produced a number of collections: Eddie Stobart, Great British Buses, Trams of the World, Fire Engines of the World, the Greatest Show on Earth (funfair and circus vehicles), the World of Stobart, and Classic Coaches. I am personally subscribed to two of these (Greatest Show on Earth and World of Stobart) and my experience so far has been satisfactory, but there is an Atlas Editions Collectors group on Facebook where complaints vastly outnumber positive posts, and numerous threads about the company on consumer advice forums. Read on for more about the weird world of Atlas Editions and their bizarre ways of running a business...

More disappointment from Corgi

Today was the day that Corgi revealed details of their new model release programme for the first six months of next year. Once upon a time this would have been an exciting and keenly awaited event, but those days are long gone and as has been the case for several years I once again greeted the announcement with disappointment, proving how far they have been left behind by the competition. As a collector of 1/76 scale models, Corgi now have very little to offer me: the Trackside and Roadscene ranges showed promise but are both long dead, leaving just the Original Omnibus Company in this scale, and recent releases in this series have lacked sparkle.

How many red Routemaster models do we need?

Model fleet focus: United Counties

The United Counties Omnibus Company is one of those fleets that although significant in terms of size and area covered doesn't have the same cult following as certain others, such as Southdown or London Transport for instance. UCOC is one of the main themes of my collection and is an operator of great personal interest for three reasons: my home town of Buckingham is served by the company's successors, my father was brought up in Northampton, where the head office was located, and my maternal grandmother spent a short period as a conductress at Stony Stratford garage. Over the years I have collected all known factory releases by the diecast manufacturers, plus a handful of code 3 repaints and kit builds that will feature in a future article, so this piece provides a hopefully definitive guide to what is available. There have been a dozen 1/76 OO models to date, mostly by Exclusive First Editions and in Corgi's Original Omnibus Company range, plus one in N gauge. With one exception they should be fairly easy to obtain and don't command premium prices like some of the cult fleets.

Showbus part 2

Rather later than anticipated due to other commitments, here is the promised second part of my review of this year's Showbus rally at Woburn Abbey. Having already described the serious organisational problems in the first part, this one is rather more positive and concentrates on the exhibits themselves. At an event of this size, it isn't realistically possible to photograph everything, and I had seen several of the vehicles before at smaller local events so these were overlooked in favour of those I hadn't previously encountered. As discussed elsewhere on this blog, the big groups and their low-floor buses aren't of great interest, and nor are London buses, so I make no apologies for largely ignoring these too, and this review focuses on the vehicles that caught my eye.

This Plaxton Viewmaster was superb and one of my favourites.

Shambolic Showbus

A tale of woe from Woburn...

Showbus has firmly established itself on bus enthusiasts' calendars and claims to be Britain's biggest and best bus rally, but that claim must be in doubt after the experience of the 2015 event yesterday. In recent years it had settled at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, a well suited if expensive venue, but with the museum no longer willing to host the event an alternative had to be found and this year it returned to Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, where it had last been held in 1992. It had been nine years since I last attended a Showbus rally, but with Woburn being a simple 20 mile journey from home I felt it was worth a visit this time. Little did I know of the controversy that was about to unfold and ruin what had once been a premier event. Showbus has thrown off its old nickname of 'Showerbus' and taken on various new ones including 'Slowbus' and 'Shamblesbus'...