The forgotten Generation: British Low-Entry Single-deckers of the
1960s

How did the early rear-engined single-deckers affect you?

If you were in the majority, you'd have been wafted from your
village or town to a local commercial centre on one, finding it more
spacious and comfortable than its predecessors as it stopped along
the way at every small hamlet.

However, if you were in the second largest group you could have been
stuck with around fifty other people sitting and standing inside an
immobile one in say, Penge, Southgate or Sidcup, because: a), the
body had fractured the frame(or vice versa); b), engine, radiator,
half shaft or crown wheel had exploded because the automatic gearbox
did even fully-laden hill starts in second gear; c), the sixpenny
slot of the automatic ticket machine had jammed.

Alternatively, maybe you rode on futuristic urban examples. Were you
an overjoyed driver who congratulated the manufacturer? Or were you
a disgruntled mechanic, whose thoughts on the builders of the things
should not be printed!

Whoever you were there were over seven thousand of the things, they
ran for all sectors of the industry but in widely varied amounts,
and only in parts of Scotland could they be avoided totally. Today,
barely one percent survives in preservation, and memories of these
buses are fading.

There were eight chassis bodied by fifteen coachbuilders, the
purpose of this article is to look in detail at who built what for
whom, but first two myths need demolishing.

The first generation were anything but.

It's a term of convenience, tying them in with the early rear-
engined double-deckers to which they were more or less related and
distinguishing them from the Leyland National and its less
successful competitors in the 1970s and into the 1980s. First
generation, however, they were not, not in the world, not even in
the UK.

At the beginning of the last century the `horseless omnibus'
had the motor where the horse had been: out in front. By 1910
though, the Daimler Motor Company had built two double-deckers to a
Frederick Lanchester design with twin side-mounted engines (amongst
other novelties). As Alan Townsin recounts, "Further progress… was
halted by difficulty over a patent."

Similarities were apparent in the 1927 Faegol Twin Coach (again,
two side-mounted power units) but they obtained a US patent on the
side-engined layout and defended it vigorously. The Twin Coach
allowed for a front (driver-controlled) entrance, a feature other
builders sought to emulate. By the mid 1930s White had developed a
mid-underfloor layout, whilst Mack and General Motors standardised
on a transverse rear-engined design.

These developments were followed in Mainland Europe and in the UK.
By the mid 1930s Leyland tested a prototype single deck with
transverse rear-engine and Midland Red also built prototype coaches
so fitted. In 1938 Leyland and London Transport started work on a
version of the lightweight Cub chassis, with longitudinal rear-
engine and independent rear suspension. The forty-nine CR class
vehicles built to 1940 were expensive one-man-operated 20-seaters,
never properly developed and spent most of their LT careers out of
service.

Mid-underfloor vehicles were ready at AEC and Leyland (and Tilling
Stevens) at the outbreak of World War II but the conflict killed
commercial firms interest in building them until 1949/50. No one in
Britain but Leyland and London Transport had produced rear engined
single decks. Donald Sinclair had the Midland Red prototypes rebuilt
from rear-engined to underfloor-engined design, building production
buses so fitted from 1946.

Foden, like other manufacturers at the end of the War built its
passenger chassis to front-engined forward control layout, as was
the convention for full sized buses. When its competitors launched
mid-underfloor engined buses, Foden instead went for a transverse
rear-engined layout, maybe it was inspired by US practice but it
saved them the cost of developing a horizontal version of their own
engine and allowed them to retain their favoured cruciform chassis.
It sold reasonably in the UK & Overseas from 1951-6 but only one
home-market example was bodied as a bus. Foden's four-speed
sliding mesh gearbox must have been hard enough to use on coach duty.

To be continued,
Stephen