GWR Publicity

GWR Publicity: gwrpublicity3875

This advertisement appeared in the Great Western Railway’s ‘Oxford and Shakespeare Land’ booklet published in April 1929, which was the last summer season that they operated Shakespeare Country Day Tours. On 15th April 1930 an agreement was reached with ‘The Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company’ (Midland Red) for this tour to be handed over to and operated by ‘Midland Red’ Road Motor Coaches (see 'publicity1654'). This followed the railway companies divesting their physical bus assets to various Bus Companies in whom they had taken a financial interest. In this case both the GWR and LMS companies jointly owned 50% of the shares of The Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company (Midland Red).

Following the changes in Road legislation (see 'gwrpublicity3876') the Great Western Railway purchased ten Guy FBB chassis to replace their obsolete Maudslay and AEC charabancs. John Buckingham provided the new charabanc bodies which could seat 32 passengers. The charabancs were used for excursions and on touring, but the bodywork was found to be too heavy for chassis resulting in reliability problems. The Guy FBB had a four cylinder inclined side valve engine and 4 speed gearbox. Details of the ten Guy FBB charabancs are provided in the table below:

In addition three Thornycroft A6 chassis were purchased and John Buckingham provided these with luxury charabanc bodies seating fifteen passengers. The Thornycroft A6 had a powerful 70bhp side-valve six cylinder engine. These luxury coaches were used on the Land Cruises from the summer of 1928, displacing the Maudslay ML3 charabancs (see 'gwrpublicity3874'). Details of the three Thornycroft A6 vehicles are provided in the table below:

Robert Ferris

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