Messages

@Squiz1971. Many thanks for info re. N155 BOF.

@karl724223. You are right in saying Mercs did not enter service new at Pensnett, but TWM stored a number of them for a short time prior to entering service.

At this time, Pensnett was still Travel Merry Hill using the green version of the livery, as seen on the then new Volvo B6LE.

Apologies for the poor photos, they are scans of old prints. Also, they may be the wrong way up..........sorry!

@horsencart Yes, excellent pictures.

I did not know N155 BOF had survived. I am very glad it has.

Strange to see the Mercedes Benz O.405N parked up disused. I bet quite a few of you remember them also being parked up there before entering service when brand new!

Derp: a phrase used when someone makes a mistake, or says or does something stupid or ridiculous. Reference: Urban Dictionary.

Thank you for that, and the reference to the Urban Dictionary. That's my bedtime reading sorted. Goodnight!

Yeah my bad being a bit of a derp  ::)

What's a derp?

I am feeling uneasy about this. It is not the first time a bus has hit a, presumably, overhanging tree on a London street and suffered severe damage. I would have thought it was the councils responsibility to maintain the trees such that there is sufficient headroom for a bus making use of a bus stop. If they do not, then should there not be a  road sign indicating restricted headroom at the edge of the road, much the same as if it were an arched bridge? If a bus driver pulls to the kerb (as they are strongly urged to nowadays) to drop off or take on passengers, surely they can expect to do so without destroying the bus? To me, this goes way beyond a drivers' responsibility to "be aware of possible contact with street furniture".

This problem is becoming well known because of the LT class being politicized. (I like the bus, but, official name or not, I refuse to call it a Routemaster)  Are any of the other hybrids having battery problems yet? I would be surprised if not, because, barring the milk float, time and time again throughout transport history battery technology has let us down. Either the range ends up far lower than predicted, or the battery life is far shorter. When oh when is there going to be a big trial with flywheel technology? I know TfL wish to go for all-battery operation in central London, but unless a large number of reserve vehicles are made available, with its inevitable cost, I see trouble ahead. Then again, anything that is politically motivated will be made to work no matter what the cost.

Re. B7L, If I remember correctly, it was the rear overhang, and the resulting swing out that London objected to for central London after experience with a fleet of Volvo B10Bs. I understand Dennis were put in the same position, as their low floor DD was to be based on the Lance SLF/ Arrow concept. With that requirement, the course of double decker development was changed. Later, the same body deemed articulated single deckers acceptable.

The windows lock shut automatically when aircon is on

....but someone keeps opening the front door!

The problem with air conditioning in a bus is that it is a one size fits all, and just having opening windows is indiscriminate. An overheating passenger on a not-so-hot day will naturally open the window directly above them, causing everyone opposite and behind to freeze while the original sufferer sitting beneath the window is untouched by the breeze and remains unrefreshed. Yes, I am afraid the whole subject needs a rethink.

The only thing I can think of is to adapt the forced air ventilation method used on coaches in pre air conditioning times. This allowed passengers to adjust their own individual settings, with a lower weight, complication and cost penalty than full air conditioning. and by the 1980s, they were working quite well. How the air is funneled in the front section of a low-floor single decker I will leave for someone else to work out.

According to the brochures, while the suspension on the front of the E200MMC is new,  the axle itself is the same as in the old E200, so I wonder why the difficulty? I know it sounds harsh, but surely this is too fundamental to be called a teething problem.

@MW

Hear they have Voith gearboxes, which is excellent news considering the poor reviews I've heard regarding ZF gearboxes on E200s.

If memory serves correctly, the gearbox options on the previous model E200 were Voith (D823, D854) and Allison (2100, T280R). I have ridden on a NXWM E200, but can't remember the sound; must have made a big impression! It was probably an Allison, but which, I don't know. The (integral) retarder on the latter tends to be more aggressive.

Not a breakdown as such, but 4655 was taken out of service on the 31 this morning in Sparkhill, after a passenger was sick on the floor  :-\

:o

Too much information!!!

They didn't weight over 11 tonnes and have five-litre engines. The gearbox is the problem in the StreetDeck, the MetroDecker has the same engine and a six-speed ZF and goes like the proverbial. Optare just need to sell some now...

Yes, the Voith does tend to "strangle" any engine to which it is attached. To travel on a MCW Metrobus over Clee Hill was somewhere between embarrassment and agony! The StreetDeck brochure states there is a choice of transmission (if they are available yet), ZF, Daimler G90 AMT, as well as the Voith. Hopefully, as different versions appear, we will see these buses perform as they should.  I didn't know there was a MetroDecker on the road. Any passenger insight would be greatly appreciated, and yes, the order book is looking a little sad at the moment.

Perhaps slightly off-topic because it is a film, but it was on telly last night. An early 60's British film called "A Kind of Loving" has been shown a few times on True Movies recently. Some of the scenes are inside the lower deck of a Guy Arab, some of which have the actual bus sound behind the dialogue. The shudder when the clutch is engaged, the gearbox whine and the blast of a Guy exhaust......wonderful!

The subject of bells has always been a strange one. Nowadays, when a passenger does not ring a bell, I feel it is someone who is self-centred, who thinks you should know what I want without me telling you. However, going back to the 60's, I remember there was an attitude from some conductors, both Midland Red and Corporation, of "leave the bell alone, only I press that!". Consequently when conductors disappeared, passengers rarely used the bell for fear of being told off, preferring instead to stand at the front in silence. 

Regarding passengers pressing the bell during a timing stop, I once witnessed a driver lean out of the cab of a single decker and ask if anyone was accidentally holding or leaning on a bell push button because the bell keeps ringing. Diplomatic or what?!

Fleetline accelerator.

The linkage between the accelerator pedal and fuel pump was a simple hydraulic system, as would be found on the brakes of a 1950s /1960s car without servo assistance. There was a small plastic reservoir (which I understand was usually in the cab) for the fluid, a master cylinder under the cab floor, and a slave cylinder mounted on the engine next to the fuel pump. If the bus had been run at full power (sometimes not for very long!), power would tail off due to air either being present in, or leaking into the fluid pipe. If releasing and re-applying the accelerator did not work, the driver would have to reach down and pull the pedal up manually. For some reason, the Leyland engined examples did not suffer in this respect as much as those with Gardner engines.

Gearbox life and barry619.

I do not seek to lecture on this, but to encourage thought and debate on an over-simplification of what happened at the time.  Yes, some drivers did treat these devices in an unsympathetic way, but from what I saw, most did not, but with the passage of time, it seems to now be taken as fact that the gearbox problems suffered by the Fleetline and Bristol VRT were all down to driver abuse. This is simply not true. The proof is that many other types of vehicles including Daimler CV, Leyland Titan, Leopard, Atlantean, and various AECs and BMMOs all operated successfully with what was fundamentally the same type of gearbox. No-one would suggest that a driver would change his habits due to a different type of vehicle, so something else must be considered, eg vehicle weight, high temperature environment, under-development of the unit for that vehicle, and even tight scheduling.  I would even suggest that most of the fully-automatic systems applied to these gearboxes, including that on the Routemaster, did shift up when under load, and actually made it impossible to match the revs up or down.

I do not pretend to know the internal workings of a Voith or ZF auto. It has been many years since I saw such diagrams, but I do appreciate there are no brake bands. If I recall correctly though, the gearing does not work on a layshaft, so I assume it must have some form of epicyclic gear. I am more than happy to be corrected on this.

barry619, it is your last paragraph that troubles me. It is the inference that driver abuse alone has caused sudden catastrophic failure of gearboxes, which is what I have taken you to mean by "wrecked". Has this frequently been the case? I did speak at length to engineers/mechanics at the time, (yes, I was very nosey!). The consensus was that, while it would help if drivers were more careful, in the end they simply wore out.