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Bradford RT Bus***FINISHED***


PeterB

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40 years ago I built an OO gauge model railway layout which I had great fun with until pressure of a growing family meant I had to pack eveything up and put it in storage where it remains to this day. Originally it was "set" in the area around my birthplace of Bradford in West Yorkshire with LMS and LNER steam locos, but expanded over the years to include BR steam and diesel locos and a few "foreigners" from the GWR and Southern Railways. One of the things I wanted for the "scenery" was a Bradford bus so my wife bought me this!

DSC05056

As you can see it cost her £5.25, but I gather Tower have stopped making bus kits and they are now going for £25 plus on e-Bay! In reality the buses of my youth were mostly AEC Regents but Bradford did buy a batch of second hand London Transport Routemasters in the late 1950's and I rode on them quite regularly. The design dates back to 1947 I believe but from the late 1950's onwards they began to be replaced and a lot were sold off. My school was a bit odd in that we "worked" on Saturday mornings but to compensate had an afternoon off during the week and many is the time I boarded one of these for the run up the hill from the town centre to my home 4 miles away at around 1.00 pm. At that time they were usually running virtually empty and made few stops and most of the drivers wanted to have a break at the terminus just down the road from my house so the went as fast as they could. During the journey they climbed 600ft, mostly during the last couple of miles, and the RT's were definitely faster that the Regents - they had a fairly hard suspension and it was almost like a fun-fair ride at times on the front seat upstairs whilst going down the stairs to get off was sometimes like a zero-G ride.

 

One slight problem is the colour scheme - back then Tower said white and blue - they suggested Precision LNER Engineer's stock blue which is no longer available, and it is true that Bradford did originally use off white and dark blue as they repainted some of their fleet in that on an anniversary, but when I was riding them they were cream and a lighter blue so I may end up mixing my own. They seem to have based their version on this which may be preserved.

Bradford Routemaster

 

This kit has been sitting around in my stash for 30 years and as it qualifies as unarmed I though I might have a shot at it.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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Another unusual subject and a change from the now familiar Revell one. I hope you are going to put the correct fabric on those seats!

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56 minutes ago, Colin W said:

Another unusual subject and a change from the now familiar Revell one. I hope you are going to put the correct fabric on those seats!

Absolutely and I will be checking its the correct tartan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 :fight:

Good luck Pete

Cheers Pat 

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  • PeterB changed the title to Bradford RT Bus

Seats - that could be a problem as Tower say the same blue as the exterior but I am not sure about that. Certainly the normal Regents had a fabric covering which was in a dark colour as my memory serves - a sort of dark blue or grey with a red fleck comes to mind. However the RT's might have had a "leather effect" in a shade of darkish blue but I can't swear to it. They were designed for relatively short haul around London and the interiors were a bit "utility" I think, designed to be wiped down easily perhaps. Actually I have now discovered that the RT was actually a variant of the AEC Regent III with a slightly modified body and presumably the same engine so quite why they seemed faster I have no idea - maybe it was just the drivers being most "enthusiastic" or perhaps they had different gearing as I believe the later Routemasters were meant to accelerate quickly due to the short distance between stops and the heavy traffic - Pat might know more about that.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

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Thanks Pat,

 

They were mostly the RM which replaced the RT but still interesting - quite decent acceleration at times.

 

Pete

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Another great choice Pete.  How are you going to recreate the smoke fog upstairs (or maybe that was just on my school runs ;))?

 

Cheers

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3 hours ago, CliffB said:

Another great choice Pete.  How are you going to recreate the smoke fog upstairs (or maybe that was just on my school runs ;))?

 

Cheers

Alongside me doing my homework (assuming it's set in the morning?) In my experience, Humbrol poly cement is EXCELLENT for fogging transparencies- maybe this is the kit it's been waiting for.

I'll admit I've already been on Kingkit to see if any others are available😉

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9 hours ago, busnproplinerfan said:

I have one or two of these, didn't know what blue to use. I hope the decals are still good.

As with the blue used on British Rail Diesels it was prone to fading but this is how I remember them.

Bradford bus-crop-crop

 

The  pic is of a later type and maybe they used a different paint - possibly slightly lighter. The black lining could be fun - decs hopefully.

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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The black lining can be decals, lots of kits come with a border around the decal sheet which is also a decal, should be ideal for the job.

And it's free, which as I know your a proud Yorkshire man will be extra enjoyable  :wink:

 

Cheers Pat 

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Cheeky sod!

 

I have 2 sheets of Hannants black line decs but in the past I have found that the really fine lines tend to fragment during placement - a touch of varnish of MS Decal Film may be called for.

 

Cheers

 

Pete.

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I think that of all the possible colour schemes for this particular bus kit, the Bradford one is far and away the most difficult with the possible exception of the St. Helens one. In fact it is going to be a real PITA I suspect because of the windows, but I will see what I can do. The cream should not be too difficult to mix but I am having fun with the blue! I have found so far no less than 8 shades of blue in my paint stash which are all potentially useful but I am almost certainly going to end up mixing two or perhaps three different colours to get the desired result and there lies the problem - they are all enamels and in my experience I will be lucky if the mix stays viable for more than 2 or 3 days no matter how tightly I seal the jar - even using a vac wine seal and sucking out the air only adds another day or so. So, once I start this will have to be a quick build but of course enamels do not dry quickly so it is going to be interesting.

 

For the record most of my blues are railway paints - Precision and Humbrol LNER Garter Blue and Rail Blue, Precision LMS Coronation Blue, Oxford Blue and Nanking Blue as used on the BR Midland Pullman, but I also have some Humbrol Authentic "Prussian Dragoon Blue" which might get involved as indeed might some Hu 48 Mediterranean Blue. It is currently looking like a mix of one or perhaps two of the blues with either a touch of white  or cream, or even perhaps both but it is early days yet! Anyway back to the mixing and testing - Nanking blue, Hu 48 and perhaps a small dab of cream looks promising. Just noticed that the steering wheel is missing so I guess I will have to make one myself - pity!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK, with my other GB builds drawing to a close it is time I made a start on this and my Canberra. The inside of the mouldings are covered with big ejector pin "turrets" or stubs, and they actually tell you in the instructions that they need to be removed, so that will be the first step. I will also need to fabricate something to goin the hole on the left hand side where the fuel filler was.

DSC05149

I think I have sorted out the paints - not perfect but should be close enough to the darker blue/cream finish shown in the pic of the RT. One of the colours I tried was a fairly recent tin of Nanking Blue from the Phoenix-Precision range but it looked a bit darker than the paint  I used 30+ years ago on my Midland (Blue) Pullman train. However I have now found a large tin of that original Precision "BR Pullman Blue" that is a bit lighter so I will use that together with Colourcoats Doped Linen and see what it looks like.

 

I do not know much about Tower Models, but they are based in Blackpool and I seem to remember they made models of  Trams. At some point they seem to have added buses and in a 1990 catalogue for W&H, a long defunct model shop in London, they list half a dozen trams and all 5 variants of the AEC Regent RT that they made - London Transport, Green Line, London County, St Helens and Bradford, which I think must have been released the same year and they said they were going to release the RTL shortly whatever that is. I believe that they sold the bus moulds to Peco and somebody else is now selling the trams - Tower now seem to be concentrating on trains.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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Started throwing paint at it.

DSC05155-crop

I have painted the inside and out in cream - may end up adding a bit of white to lighten it but we will see. Ok, it was nearly 60 years ago so my memory may be wrong but I seem to think that the normal AEC Regent fleet had seat covers in Mocquette - a fabric mix, used on bus and train seats, possibly dark grey with some coloured specks - red and blue maybe. However the RT Regents had what might be called Leatherette or Rexine which was a sort of vinyl and was popular until it was found that the seat covers contributed to a nasty train fire in I think the 1960's. Whatever, they were a slightly different blue to the paintwork, speaking of which I am still fiddling about with that blue but getting close - the panel at the top right is not quite dark enough. The floors and top of the steps were covered in a rubberised non slip material which I have painted dark grey.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

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OMG how did I miss this?! I'm a Bradford lad too! I feel I very vaguely remember these blue busses from when I was very young, but the green/cream Metrobusses had come in by the time I was taking the bus to school. The ones that headed north out of town to Keighley, Otley etc. were red though.

 

On 5/6/2021 at 6:14 PM, PeterB said:

My school was a bit odd in that we "worked" on Saturday mornings but to compensate had an afternoon off during the week

 

You weren't at Bradford Grammar by any chance?

 

Going to be following your progress with interest!

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21 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

OMG how did I miss this?! I'm a Bradford lad too! I feel I very vaguely remember these blue busses from when I was very young, but the green/cream Metrobusses had come in by the time I was taking the bus to school. The ones that headed north out of town to Keighley, Otley etc. were red though.

 

 

You were't at Bradford Grammar by any chance?

 

Going to be following your progress with interest!

Hi Tony,

 

I left Bradford in 1972 and although I went back to visit many times before my parents died I can't remember any red buses other than the old Ribble ones on the trans-Pennine routes and Hebble who were based in Halifax until about 1973, though now you mention it I believe there were some red ones going out to Keighley later though I can't remember which company they were. All the buses I travelled on were various shades of Blue/Cream though I doubt my attempt will be quite the right shade of either!

 

Oh, and yes it was BGS from 1960 to 1967 for better or for worse - good for the "Classics" with a view to Oxford or Cambridge entrants but not so good for science as the labs were years behind the "Comps" in terms of equipment at that time. It was a strange school back then - no swimming trunks allowed in the (unheated) pool for example, which caused a bit of an upset when the First XV rugby team came charging out of the changing rooms after a match one day and found the pool full of young ladies from the Girl's Grammar who had "borrowed" the pool as theirs was having maintenance done - nobody had told the boys. Of course the girls were wearing regulation one piece bathing costumes I gather. One of the rugby team was my old mate George who was as blind as a bat without his glasses and he actually had jumped into the pool before he realised it was occupied!😁 Perhaps it is a good job that the girls were actually in the pool and not in the open plan changing room when they arrived! I suppose it is a mixed school these days so they will have had to make quite a few changes I imagine.

 

Happy days!

 

Pete

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I was there a bit later @PeterB, 1978-1986. I lived in Buttershaw and later Wibsey, so used to take the 645 or 646 down to town then one of the red buses from near Sunwin House up Manningham Lane and Keighley Road. They stopped the Saturday morning thing just before I joined, but retained the Wednesday afternoons "off", though we were encouraged to do sport or whatever with the time - I joined the CCF. We were expected to wear swimming trunks(!) in the pool by then. I didn't know any different (well you don't, do you?) but even in my time it was quite er, backward, I'm sure, with the gowns, "masters", culture of casual violence towards students by staff etc. I don't know anyone else with a Latin O Level, put it that way. When I joined the sixth form so did the first girls, maybe 20 of them. Imagine what that did to our teenage hormones! As you say it's fully co-ed now and I'm sure very different. They even did away with the cack-brown blazers and replaced them with blue ones. I didn't have a terribly happy time of BGS to be honest, I was from a poor council estate family and earned my way to a subsidised place, but it was still financially very tough on my parents and going to the school with the better off kids and playing in the street with the estate kids made for a quite schizophrenic adolescence.

 

I left Bradford in '95 and after a few years in Manchester settled in Nottinghamshire. I get back up to Bradford to see mum and dad but this is very much home. 

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Hi Tony,

 

I could I suppose say "Snap" - I am from what used to be called the "Cooperville" estate to distance it from Buttershaw, and I caught the 46 as it was then - assuming the ruddy driver bothered to stop at the  shops at the end of Torre Road - having been sat at the terminus by Reevy Road for a while they would charge up the hill and some just went sailing past - perhaps they too did not like the sh*tty brown blazer! Speaking of which I too was a scholarship boy so no fees and free travel, but the cost of the school uniform was crippling to my parents. One year my mother bought me a new blazer but rather than pay through the nose at the official supplier she picked up a cheap one and transfered the pocket from my old one complete with badge. I ended up in a double breasted thing in a lighter brown other than the ruddy pocket - caused me a few upsets at the time but I guess it hardened me up. The lads were fine but I guess I gravitated to other scholarship boys who lived fairly close to me - a few within walking distance, one off Moore Avenue, a couple on Halifax Road and a couple over in Bowling - I used my bike a lot so the hills kept me quite fit! Back in those days the Trolley buses were still running so it was into town on the 46, walk across to the end of Broadway and catch a Trolley out up Cheapside. On Saturdays I used to drop into Carters to look at the kits on my way home.

 

The education was a bit of a mixed bag in my day - Latin O level in year 4, 4 more in year 5 - Scripture, English Language, English Literature and perhaps French. Though we studied History and Geography we did not take O levels in them - in fact the school was not interested in O Levels it seems as they would not even tell you your grades - the notice stuck on the door just said passed or failed. We did not take O levels in the subjects we were doing at A level either, but took the latter twice, once in year 6 as a sort of sighting shot so you could apply to Uni and then properly in year 7 - it was all geared to Oxford and Cambridge as I said earlier. Compulsory sports were either Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, and I hated cross country running through Heaton Woods. By the time we got back to the finish all round Manningham Park Lake I was knackered - in your time did they still make announcements at assembly that the park was out of bounds after somebody had fallen in the lake? Later, sports were voluntary so we got two afternoons off in return for our Saturday mornings and the holidays were nice and long - 4 weeks at the end of each term and 8 in summer. Did you still have to attend Founders Day" at the Cathedral? I always found that a drag. So the uniform is now blue - does it still have the same uplifting motto "Hoc Age" - "Do This!" - where on earth does that come from I wonder?

 

I left home in 1967 to go to Liverpool Uni and study Mechanical Engineering, and in 1972 got a job based in the Chester area, before moving to South Wales in 1979. My father died just after that but my mother stayed in Bradford until her death about 10 years ago, and I have not been back since then, though I still have a cousin who lives just opposite where the old "temporary" tram sheds were at Horton Bank Top. I think I have only visited Nottingham once, for a job interview in 1970 (GEC?) - I remember buying the Airfix 1/144 Vostock rocket there.

 

It's really is a small world!

 

Pete

 

PS In my day the head was the Rev J.P. Newell and he had just aquired a female secretary. Given that the swimming pool was glass sided so the naked little boys were highly visible, perhaps that is one reason they started to allow you to wear trunks Not that much could be seen as the very cold water caused your wedding tackle to shrink to nothing! Speaking of the swimming pool, in my day the room underneath it to the right as you went into the school was where the model railway society layout used to be - after the transformer blew up we had to vacate and everything including some very nice O gauge locos and rolling stock was packed in tea chests and put in the store room at the back of the left hand cloakroom - I somethimes wonder if it is still there! On the other side of the corridor under the pool was the "dungeon" where we had wood working classes.

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It is indeed a small world, @PeterB! Reevy Road (West - by the Cap and bells pub) is where I caught the bus too. The official BGS outfitters when I was there were Rawcliffes at the top of town, and I spent my birthday money on kits on the top floor of Carters on more than one occasion (funny shop. Sports and toys.) We had trouble with some of the bus staff, there was one conductor on the red buses who notorious, hated us. He'd deliberately stand on our feet. One time he said to a kid (Andrew Briggs IIRR) "I don't know, how much do your parents pay to send you to that fancy school?" and Briggs replied "More than you earn in a year, mate." He was even worse after that. The head in my time was D.A.G. "Dagsy" Smith, he was a genial type but was backed up by his fearsome deputy Mr. Crowther, a man you would not want to cross.

 

Yes they did put the park out of bounds for that reason. I was the kid who fell in the lake once - went through the ice (winters were colder back then, especially 800 feet above sea level where I lived!) There was once a rumour went round (no social media of course) that there was going to be a scrap with St Bedes so they put the park off limits, I remember seeing four of our quite large PE teachers patrolling the park in Mr Smith's Mini, hilarious. I sort of remember Founders Day but only remember going maybe once. Maybe they stopped it when I was there. Yes, it is still "Hoc Age". Not sure what Latin for "Or Else" is.

 

I didn't mind cross country, even though I was asthmatic I could hold my own, never quite good enough to make the team though.

 

I didn't have a full scholarship so my parents still had money to find, and I have three little sisters. It was tough. You're right, Oxbridge was what it was all about, and when I decided that I didn't want to put the financial burden of university on my family (even in those student grant days) the school completely lost interest in me (as it turned out I got a job as an export sales  trainee with a Bradford textiles company who put me through my degree and paid me to do it, which was nice). Most of the lads were alright but I had friends from a very different background to me. I had a mate whose dad had a printing business, lived in a massive house in Rawdon, he came to visit once and I remember his mum and dad's faces as they dropped him off in their Jag at our little council semi. But my mum was, and still is, fiercely proud, she swore she would get her family out of Buttershaw by my 13th birthday, and she did. There were a lot of Asian lads there, some were sons of doctors etc. but many were the sons of immigrants who were working themselves stupid to give their sons a quality education, bus drivers who'd work an extra shift on the taxis or in their brother's shop or whatever, I had one such friend who went on to fly Tornadoes in the RAF.

 

Surely this is the most serious case of thread drift ever witnessed on Britmodeller! 😉 Anyway, back to your bus! Have fun!

 

(Edit: found this. 3L, 1980-81. I'm front left. Our form master was a classics teacher called Donald West, who for reasons unknown was always known as "Fred". That's a nickname that hasn't aged well...)

 

spacer.png

 

 

Edited by TonyOD
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Thanks Tony,

 

It's my thread so I don't mind a bit of drift, and it was nice talking to you about our mutual experiences. Incidentally my Head - Newell had a large scale railway layout in the gardens of Clock House apparently though I never got to see it!

 

Or else - Utrumve perhaps? My father was in textiles all his working life, his firm Laycocks switched to mohair in the1960's I believe. Amongst other things he used to "programme" the Jaquard loom for test shots of new patterns.

 

Your comment about St Bedes puzzled me but I was looking at a map just now and I see that what was in my day St.Josephs Girls School now seems to be St Bedes & St Josephs so I guess they went co-ed!

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Newell had a large scale railway layout in the gardens of Clock House apparently though I never got to see it!

 

It was gone by 1978!

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

My father was in textiles all his working life, his firm Laycocks switched to mohair in the1960's I believe.

 

I was at W & J Whitehead in Laisterdyke. Actually I got the job through school, to be fair - the marketing director's son was in the year below me. He (the marketing director) asked Dagsy if there was anyone in the school with a flair for languages who might want to get into the field of export sales, and they suggested me (well, I wasn't going to university!). Stayed in textiles for 25 years.  So perhaps i was a little unfair when I said the school lost interest in me, I owe them for that. Whiteheads is long gone, sadly.

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

what was in my day St.Josephs Girls School now seems to be St Bedes & St Josephs so I guess they went co-ed!

 

Well there's a thing. St Joseph's was next door to us and St Bede's was top end of Lister Park. Being a good catholic boy that's where my dad went. 

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The colours are both perhaps a little darker than the real thing but they are quite close.

DSC05159

Ok, it is a limited run kit but the windows are very thick and optically rubbish - not to worry. I will now make a start at construction.

 

Tony, 

My memory seems to have improved overnight - of course there were red buses going down Manningham Lane in my time at BGS - they were operated by the Keighley subsidiary of the West Yorkshire Road Car Company and had a terminus in Chester Street bus station - I sometimes caught them on the way home and got the 46 just round the corner from there. Also the "Train Room" and windowless woodworking "dungeon" were on either side of the tunnel running under the Hall, not the swimming pool which was on the outside of the "quadrangle". Were they still insisting on singing "Oh Come All Ye Faithfull" in Latin every Christmas - in my day the Latin teachers and the Music master use to argue over whether it should be a hard or soft "v" in "venite adoreamus" - Latin or Italian!

 

Pete

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Hi

Just in case the rest of you are wondering what the heck this is all about, it turns out that not only were @TonyOD and I both born in Bradford in West Yorkshire, but that we both went to the same "Direct Grant " Grammar School which only took in about 150 pupils a year, albeit I was I think 18 years ahead of him. That is quite a coincidence but it gets better - our parents originally lived only about a mile from each other and even when they moved when he was 13 they were still only 2 or 3 miles away. As a consequence he initially used exactly the same bus route as I did to go to school - in my day 46 and in his renumbered to 646, and he got on just 2 stops down the hill from where I used to - I could see the stop from mine! No idea what the odds are against that happening but must be pretty ruddy high! I rather think that if I manage to put this bus together the route number is going to be changed to 46 to celebrate this! Of course this particular bus, the Regent RT was withdrawn in 1968, probably not too long after he was born, but so what? I never expected this when I entered the build into the GB - quite a pleasant surprise!😁

 

Pete

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