Mending A Battered BMMO D9 at Stafford

This photo was taken late in the Sixties after one of  the Midland Red Stafford D9's had had a bump whilst on the long 865 to Dudley via Walsall. I don't know what happened here but the roads crossing Cannock Chase are particular accident black spots with speeding cars, dips in the road and of course straying deer, not to mention hard to see big red double-decker buses. Unlike the one beside it this bus was an earlier example built with wings around the wheel-arches and as far as I know 5316 also at Stafford was the first one so treated..

Kutter bodied Pollarbus in Copenhagen

Finland on the fringes of Northern Europe and close to Russia is a country most of us don't get to partly perhaps because it's expensive and much of the year cold but it did have some interesting coach bodybuilders which could be enjoyed as they often appeared in Copenhagen like this example by Kutter.

Sunny Buses

I'm sorry but I cannot tell you very much about this coach from Finland I photographed two years ago at the Berlin Zoo coach park.

A Koivula

No KOIvula is nothing to do with Koi Carp it's the colourful Finish language as is the Destination 'Rovaniemi'. One thing I am certain of is that the small expensive Nordic country was a bit off the beaten track otherwise we would have all flocked there to see it's interesting buses and coaches that all had a distinctly local flavour like this Lahti 320 Scania coach seen in Copenhagen in 1982.

Ellen Smith

Two stalwarts from the mid-Sixties languish at the side of the Ellen Smith Garage at Wardlesworth near Rochdale in the early Eighties. Both are Leyland Leopards one with a Plaxton Panorama body whilst Harrington Grenadier CDK 448C lived on as a diecast EFE model for collectors. At the back are even earlier Tiger Cubs and maybe the odd AEC Reliance too from this well known thirteen vehicle fleet.

Ikaalisten Scania Ajokki

Copenhagen of course is not a bad place to see coaches from all over Scandinavia including Finland which tend to be rather more elusive further down in Europe compared with let's say Sweden. They often carried very different coachwork too like this rather boxy unusual looking Scania bodied by Ajokki and belonging to Ikaalisten Auto Oy seen in sunny 1982