I remember seeing this and taking a photograph of her an AEC Reliance with then ultra-modern curved BET style screen and it must have somewhat put the rather plain Midland Red S14's to be found in Hereford Bus Station to shame. By the Eighties it was still to be found quite close to the Welsh border having moved from Yeoman's but now it had moved from The Welsh Marches to the Forest of Dean. I must say it still looked smart here in service with Edward's of Joys Green and I would say it had a Willowbrook body.
I think the BET body style with that curved windscreen is a classic design, and it's pretty timeless. You could put that bus in a picture any time from the 1960s to the 1990s and it wouldn't look out of place.
ReplyDeleteMind you, I have a soft spot for that body style as many of my childhood adventures were on Midland Red's SDP variant, and even going into town if an SDP (or even bus-seated S24) turned up instead of a Leyland National then it was a red-letter day.
It was the earlier LS18's which rocked my boat much nicer ride than an S14.
ReplyDeleteI'm a few years younger than you (a 1970 baby!) so the LS18s had been withdrawn by the time I was old enough to recognise the buses I was looking at, which is a great shame as I like the look of the LS18s and I would have loved to have had the opportunity to ride in them.
ReplyDeleteActually, looking at the fleet allocations on midlandred.net, there were some allocated to Redditch 1977-79 which would have been used on the 147 group into Birmingham, along with some LS20s, so it's possible that I may have travelled on one without remembering it.
The next batch, the LS20s, were equally attractive to me and again it's a shame I don't recall riding in one, although as they were still in service in the late 1970s working out of Digbeth and one at Redditch I suspect I probably did; I simply didn't realise what it was I was on...
If only we'd had digital cameras in those days!
Hi Ross,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I'm a quite a bit older than you and even though the SON's had all gone by 1959 when I started the following year we still had FEDD's at Stafford and even an ONC coach. The LS18A's looked superb with their black tops as did all the Midland Red DP and coach types including the rather ugly S13. The first time I visited Redditch it had just has it's first D9's 4902-3. I must have had to go back to boarding school straight afterwards as I missed the arrival of the next pair 4904-5 at Stafford.
Oh happy days and not a Dennis Dart or National in sight!