London General B-type bus, 1:32

[romanmodels]

great work Alan.

[Butelczynski]

Great detailing.Awesome work.

This bus box looks like it was made with plywood on wood formers much like trams and passenger rail cars.Only bench supports and staircase framing was steel and iron?

Halton railway Museum in Ontario has (or had) remains of a bus from similar period and up from frame everything was wood.

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by romanmodels

great work Alan.

Originally Posted by Butelczynski

Great detailing.Awesome work.

This bus box looks like it was made with plywood on wood formers much like trams and passenger rail cars.Only bench supports and staircase framing was steel and iron?

Halton railway Museum in Ontario has (or had) remains of a bus from similar period and up from frame everything was wood.

Thank you both. I think that the bus bodies at that time were almost entirely wooden, and probably solid wood planks rather than ply for the cladding. Even the main chassis rails were wooden, though clad in thin (only 4mm) steel flitching on each side. Good stuff, wood.

[AlanG]

Now for the main advertising area!



These panels are just layered on to the upper deck box.



Time at last to complete the body shell. The upper deck fits between the canopies, but still missing its right-hand outer covering.



Then the stairs go on, and the right-hand outer sheet goes on to cover up the joining tab.



I'm getting rather excited!

[rifleman]

that really brings it to life dam fine work sir

[Vermin_King]

Extremely nice build, sir

[Beachead]

Looking great! Cool vehicle too.

[AlanG]

Thank you all.

The B-type was a remarkably elegant vehicle for something primarily utilitarian. It seems especially so when compared with the rather weird-looking things produced less than ten years previously.

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I have mentioned before the oddity of the front wheels on B340. Unlike all the old photographs I had seen, which showed wheels apparently fabricated from steel sheet with welded-on strengthening ribs, B340 has rectangular-section forged spokes. What is even weirder is that the left-hand one has 8 spokes, but the right-hand one has only 7.

The Thackray book I have mentioned before throws some light on this, though it still remains a bit of a mystery. Throughout the 1914-18 war AEC continued to construct large numbers of B-type chassis, mostly for transport lorries for the British War Department and for export to Russia. A batch of 150 "No.7" chassis was built in late 1916, intended for Russia, and the book has a small photograph of a line of these awaiting shipment. This shows clearly that they had 7-spoke wheels on the right-hand side and probably on the left-hand side as well, though that is not so clear.

In early 1919, a batch of 250 buses was built using the same No.7 chassis, and a fairly large photograph of one of these, B5015, also appears in the book. I have also found it on the London Transport Museum web site.



It had 8 forged spokes on the left, and 7 on the right, just like the present-day B340. Several other details on the photograph match B340 better than any other photograph I have seen, so I suspect that the restoration used many parts from one of these late chassis, if not the whole chassis for lack of a suitable earlier one.

What remains a mystery is why these chassis should have been fitted with mismatched wheels.

Anyway, here are my (fabricated) front wheels.

[Mike Stamper]

Alan,

I thought I'd send you this link, although I guess you will know it !

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Specia...eral&fulltext=

Cheers
Mike

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by Mike Stamper

Alan,

I thought I'd send you this link, although I guess you will know it !

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Specia...eral&fulltext=

Cheers
Mike

Well thank you Mike for giving me even more excuse to waste time! Yes, I had come across Grace's Guide before, and always spend far too much time following up fascinating but ultimately useless topics. No self-control, me.

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On to the rear wheels. These are a bit more complicated, because of the Y-shaped spokes.



The fork of the "Y" comes out a little messy, but fortunately the inside is covered by the brake drum, and the outside by small flat plates which provide a flat bearing surface for the drum fixing bolts.



The complete set: