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| View Original: | John Fishwick & Sons bus 3 (BCK 706R) 1977 Leyland Titan B15 prototype 05.jpg (1139x1093) | |||
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| Keywords: John Fishwick & Sons bus 3 (BCK 706R) 1977 Leyland Titan B15 prototype 05.jpg John Fishwick and Sons bus 3 reg BCK 706R a Leyland Titan B15 pictured operating the w Lancashire based operator's route 121 The exact date and location is not known See the wider image for possible location clues The bus was operated by Fishwicks during the 1980s until late 1987 This bus was the 5th of the five pre-production Titans built by British Leyland subsidiary Park Royal Vehicles in Park Royal London They also built the first batch of production buses until production switched to Leyland's expanded factory in the Lillyhall Industrial Estate Workington It was built in June 1977 and numbered B15 05 the name Titan not having been adopted as yet It had chassis number 7703050 but was redesignated 7705689 in the same month It was outshopped in plain red livery with black skirt It was in dual door highbridge 44 seat upstairs 27 down configuration production buses were mostly H44/22 In the grille area it had body coloured rounded headlight surrounds black inside which were visually separate from the understated flat radiator panel also body coloured This contrasts with the design used on production buses where the headlight surrounds and panel were styled into a continuous rectangular horizontal element painted black with smaller/narrower indicator/side lights It also had a prominent white lettered LEYLAND badge mounted directly beneath the front windscreen Hired by London Transport it was tested at Chiswick Works for 3 months and then entered trial service out of Chalk Farm garage code CF on routes 3 24 by which time it had also received further badges the 'dustbin lid' circular Leyland 'L' on the radiator grille and left rear and a small rectangular lettered Titan badge on the radiator grille panel corner and rectangular lettered Leyand Titan badges on the right rear It was also slightly repainted receiving a white surround along the upper deck windows losing the black skirt on the sides and rear but not front and gaining the white London Transport roundel on the offside staircase By October 1978 it had been returned to Leyland after which it also saw demonstrator service at other operators including Preston and Tayside who applied fleetnumber 100 It carried the same livery at these operators as in the London service but without the white roundel replaced by a large Leyland L logo applied above the driver's side window By 1981 it was on loan with Merseyside PTE wearing their full green/cream/black 'Merseyside Transport' livery and fleetnumber 0029 By this time the circular L grille badge had dissappeared At some point it was bought outright by Fishwicks who also took 2 of the other prototypes They painted it in their two tone green livery as seen here and gave it fleet number 3 By this time it had also lost its centre door possibly by MPTE In December 1987 it was purchased by London Buses division Selkent the arms-length operator covering south east London set up as part of the deregulation and privatisation process By this time Titan production had ended and sales outside London had been minimal The production Titans had in the vast majority been delivered new to London Transport numbered in their T-class series allocated to garages around the east and south east This bus was allocated T-class fleetnumber T1131 becoming the last numerical T-class No s T1-T1125 were new No s T1126-T1130 were allocated to Titans bought by London Transport second hand from West Midlands PTE in 1984 It entered service in the London Buses livery of the time allover red with grey skirt white cantrail line yellow door and with white/orange/red 'London Buses' lettered roundel The large LEYLAND badge on the front was removed presumably to make way for the 'pay driver/pay conductor' flap sign It instead received the now standard smaller stylised lettered Leyland badge on the radiator grille which was painted grey to match the inside of the headlamp surrounds but otherwise being allover red in contrast with the black stripe of production buses In April 1991 it was returned to Leyland for repainting and to receive a new engine returning a month later While at Selkent it also lost its rounded front light clusters in favour of the more rectangular production versions although there were not combined with the standard radiator grille In keeping with the earlier scheme these were also painted outer red/inner grey In February 1992 it was re-registered with cherished plate VLT 240 removed from the withdrawn 1960 built Routemaster RM250 which was scrapped in July 1992 In March 1993 in preparation for disposal it was re-registered again as TMX 535R and placed into store Two months later it was sold to a dealer who passed it on to Blue Triangle who repainted it into their livery In the next few years it saw further service with Beestons of Hadleigh Universitybus of Hatfield in white livery and Aintree Coachlines of Bootle numbered A5 By May 1997 it had been bought for preservation by Fishwick being re-registered to its original plate At some point it was restored to the livery of its original London loan period although the white LEYLAND badge was merely painted on By the 2000s this red scheme had become faded and the bus was put into a restoration program seeing the removal of nearly all the bodywork panels Crop of File Leyland Titan B15 05 jpg circa 1980 s Uploaded to Wikipedia by RXUYDC Transferred to Commons by User Oxyman using http //tools wikimedia de/~magnus/commonshelper php CommonsHelper Cropped by User Ultra7 Released into the public domain by the author other versions Leyland Titan B15 05 jpg en wikipedia RXUYDC John Fishwick and Sons bus company Buses in the United Kingdom photographed in unknown locations Buses in the United Kingdom with an unknown photography date Public transport buses in the United Kingdom Demonstrator buses in the United Kingdom Leyland Titan B15 buses in the United Kingdom 0000 05 R suffix registered buses in the United Kingdom BCK 706R Buses in Lancashire Green buses | ||||
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