NHA696

[daveevans2010]

Barker Street Bus Station, Shrewsbury on a local Town service. By the Leyland Leopard alongside, I'd say this was 1963 or 1964.

[TimBrown]

Barker Street Bus Station, Shrewsbury on a local Town service. By the Leyland Leopard alongside, I'd say this was 1963 or 1964.

Fleet no. 3696 reg. no. NHA 696 was BMMO type S10 chassis with BMMO 8 litre engine and 8 feet wide Metro-Cammell 40 seat single deck body B40F. It was lengthened from 27 feet 6 inches to 29 feet 3 inches sometime between 1951 and 1953 by Charles H. Roe, increasing capacity to 44 seats and B44F. Allocations were;

New to Shrewsbury 06/50, Bearwood 12/56, Ludlow 10/61, Shrewsbury 01/63,
Withdrawn 04/65.

My guess would be that the Leopard was fleet no. 5177, reg. no. 5177 HA a BMMO type LS18A with Leyland PSU3/4R chassis, Leyland 0600 9.8 litre diesel engine, four speed semi-automatic gearbox and Willowbrook 48 seat single deck body DP48F. It was converted for o.p.o. one person operation 11/68, and re-seated to B53F and re-classified as LS18 type 05/71.

It was new to Digbeth 04/63, 'Withdrawn' 12/73.
To WMPTE Moseley Road 12/73, Yardley Wood 11/75, Withdrawn 03/78.

Note the X96 route was nearly 100 miles in length and took around 5 hours via Wellington, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Birmingham, Coventry & Rugby. I travelled sections of the route but never covered the whole journey in on go.

[chason]

Thanks Dave for the interesting photo and Tim for the extra info (what a mine of info you seem to have). I always found the S10s very comfortable and I recall 3645 was allocated to Malvern garage for most, if not all, of its life. As for the X96, only a few miles short of the record distance of the X91 I believe, and another route operated by a couple of LS18As.