 Dennis Loline III (503)
The Dennis Lolines Arrive When Dennis Loline III 503 entered service with Aldershot & District on 1st January 1965 I don't think anyone expected that she would still be going strong some forty plus years later. The first thirty-four Dennis Lolines introduced into the Aldershot & District fleet during 1958 were basically Bristol Lodekkas with East Lancs bodies, built under licence by Dennis Brothers at their Guildford factory with a 68 seat wooden framed body, a rear staircase and an electrically operated folding rear entrance door. At least two of these early Lolines are still in existence today, parked at Peter Trevaskis's Normandy "Depot". The first front entrance Loline IIIs entered service in September 1961, replacing the 1949/50 batch of Dennis Lances. These new Loline IIIs had much less of their Bristol ancestry evident, with metal framed Alexander bodies, again with 68 seats, but with the stairs in the front and with an air operated sliding door. The original Lolines with rear entrances were warmly received by almost all road staff, but the new Loline IIIs were greeted with rather mixed feelings. They had rather limited headroom for taller conductors and, with the platform now at the front of the bus, conductors could not escape the gaze of twenty or so pairs of eyes watching every move that they made. As mentioned, the first batch of 19 Loline IIIs was bodied by Alexander in Scotland, with subsequent batches bodied by Alexander totalling 67 in all. However, the final batch of 50 Loline IIIs, Fleet numbers 481 - 530, including 503, were bodied locally by Weymann in Surrey at their Addlestone Works between July 1964 and April 1965. By the time that the very last A&D Loline III, AAA530C, arrived in May 1965 there were 127 Dennis Lolines in service with the company, working duties ranging from high intensity short urban routes in Aldershot and Guildford, long distance routes such as Service 14 between Aldershot and Winchester, London Express services and rail replacement work. 06:20 AM on Monday 1st May 1965 was a very important moment in time, for on this date the very last Loline III, AAA530C, fleet number 530 (not 503), entered service at Woking Garage operating the 06:20 departure from Woking Station to Yorktown, Duke of York, on Service 34. This proved to be the final Dennis vehicle, the last double decker and also the last half cab bus, ever to enter service with the Aldershot & District Company. However, for a brand new bus that signified the end of a particularly long era of partnership between A&D and Dennis Brothers, 530 did not have the most auspicious of beginnings. The exhaust pipe mountings became dislodged whilst the bus was reversing in Camberley Station Yard and the tailpipe, which dropped down on to the road, had to be tied up with wire scrounged from a British Rail litter bin for the return journey to Woking, where the bus was subbed and parked in a corner of the garage in disgrace. Despite a few minor early embarrassments such as exhaust pipes dropping
off, in general the Loline IIIs performance was particularly impressive.
During a road test carried out by "Commercial Motor" during 1962
Loline III, 447, managed to produce the best fuel consumption figures for
any double decker ever tested by the magazine, before or since. Fully laden
with the equivalent of 68 passengers, plus a driver and a conductor on board,
the bus achieved 12.75 MPG at two stops per mile and 9.25 MPG at six stops
per mile. Over an undulating 10 mile stretch of the A3 15.7 MPG was achieved
at an average speed of 32.4 MPH. The A&D Company average for a Loline
III in service was around 13.5 MPG. The comparable average for a modern
Volvo B10M double decker is around 6 MPG. Dennis Loline III, AAA 503C (503), was one of an allocation of twenty eight Dennis Lolines of all three types based at the Guildford Garage of the Aldershot & District Traction Company Ltd, and their successors Alder Valley South Ltd, during the period March 1958 until October 1980. By 1964 I was a driver at Woking Garage and several new Loline chassis were parked on the garage forecourt for what seemed like months during that summer until a dispute at Weymann's Addlestone factory was settled. These chassis had the magic numbers 503; 504; 505 and 506 chalked on them. Little did I think then that over 40 years later I would be the proud owner of 503. Weymann bodied 503 was the first bus completed after the 1964 strike. She was a rather later addition to the fleet, turning up midway through the final batch to be first registered for service on 1st January 1965. She should have gone on the road as 503 KOT on 1st August 1964, but the Weymann's strike delayed her arrival on the scene for several months. 503 therefore had the honour of being the very first vehicle to be registered in Hampshire with a suffix number plate, A and B suffixes not being used in Hampshire. Had A&D not had an arrangement with the licensing authorities whereby the fleet number and registration number were the same, 503 may well have been registered as AAA1C, which would have been even more impressive. Although normally allocated to the "Woking Block" of routes, covering services 29, 29A, 34, 34A from Guildford via Woking to Camberley, Blackdown Camp and Cove, 503 was also used regularly on other double-deck routes operated from Guildford Garage, particularly on service 23 via Cranleigh to Ewhurst, Bulls Head and sometimes on the Godalming area services operated from Guildford Garage. My first real acquaintance with 503 as a completed bus rather than a chassis was not until the summer of 1968. This also involved an exhaust pipe problem. By this time I had married and transferred to Guildford Garage. On one very hot and sticky summer afternoon I was the spare driver when I was detailed to drive the 14:25 Guildford to Petersfield Service 24 journey with Conductress Jean State. 503 was waiting for us in the Guildford Farnham Road Bus Station and we trundled off, eventually arriving at Petersfield Station gasping for the compulsory cup of tea in the Station café. We started back on the return journey and shortly after leaving Petersfield Station at 16:10 we picked up a standing load of Churcher's College students. This was obviously too much for the bus and as we reached Rake Stores the exhaust pipe came adrift, bounced on the road and managed to get stuck between the twin rear wheels. I used a telephone in Rake Stores to call Hindhead Garage for assistance and whilst we waited in the sunshine for help to arrive at least 50 of our young passengers descended on the shop to buy cold drinks and ice creams, completely exhausting the shopkeepers stock. The only other major event in 503's life during this period was a change of livery from her original A&D two tone green with a cream band, first in 1970 when Aldershot & District and Thames Valley merged to be renamed by some creative genius "Alder Valley" and she was repainted in the pre-nationalisation Alder Valley livery of dark plum red with a cream band and then again, shortly after nationalisation, when she was re-painted again in the NBC standard livery of poppy red with a white band. At this time she also gained a new fleet number, 847 in the Alder Valley fleet, complete with red "Tilling "style plates front and rear confirming this and her A&D comprehensive front destination box was replaced with a standard NBC triple track number blind, with a single ultimate destination screen.
Withdrawal from Service In the autumn of 1980 a decree was issued from Reading Head Office that in future all Alder Valley bus services would be One-Person-Operated (OPO). This decision was to result in all conductors either being made redundant, or being trained as drivers. My Uncle Geoff, who, by that time, had been a conductor at Woking for over 35 years, since being demobbed from the Army in 1946, trained and qualified as a driver at the age of 62 and spent almost three years driving as an OPO with the company before his retirement. At this time creative thinking was emerging from the Head Office Engineering
Department "Think Tank" involving fitting swivelling driver's
seats and the removal of the small window between the drivers cab and the
front platform on the Loline IIIs. This raised the somewhat bizarre possibility
of Lolines being converted to One-Person-Operation buses, presumably to
be operated by drivers with very long arms and swivel necks. Brighton &
Hove later tried a remarkably disastrous experiment along similar lines
with some of their half cab double deckers for a while. However, to put
it mildly, at Alder Valley this idea was not greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm
by the driving staff or by the trade union, and it was quickly and quietly
forgotten about. In December 1980, after conversion at Aldershot Central Works, she was duly allocated to the Company's Driver Training School at Aldershot and for the next two and a half years 503 had to suffer rookie drivers struggling to master the art of gear changing with her "crash" constant mesh gearbox, not to mention turning corners with her most definitely NON-powered steering. On one famous occasion, when she was on loan to Guildford Training School training Woking ex-conductors as drivers, one unfortunate individual who was struggling to negotiate a road junction at the top of Anchor Hill, Knaphill, mounted the nearside kerb with the rear wheels of the bus and dislodged a pillar box. This then rolled down the hill for about 100 yards; complete with the mail inside, before it collided with a Morris Minor being driven by a rather surprised district nurse. In October 1982 it dawned on Alder Valley management that by using the Lolines with their manual gearboxes as training buses they were unnecessarily providing new drivers with "Any Type" PSV licences, when all that was required to drive AV's fleet of semi-automatic vehicles, mostly Bristol VRs or Leyland Nationals, were "Automatic" PSV driving licences. Outside training for the PSV driving test was (and still is) extremely expensive with no guarantee of success. The only real beneficiaries of this "Any Type" licence policy were certain unscrupulous local coach companies operating vehicles with manual gearboxes. It was not unknown for managers of these companies to encourage prospective drivers who did not hold "Any Type" PSV licences to enrol with Alder Valley in order obtain a full PSV licence. Once they passed their test they would resign and start new careers as coach drivers with the "jitney" company. After a while the Alder Valley management twigged this cunning ploy and it was decreed that in future all driver training would be undertaken using semi-automatic Bristol VR vehicles, with the successful trainees only receiving "Automatic" PSV driving licences. This policy was fine until several years later when a fleet of Ford Transit minibuses arrived, complete with manual gearboxes and not nearly enough drivers with "Any Type" manual licences could be found to drive them. The abolition of manual gearbox vehicles from the driving school seemed to spell the end of 503's seventeen and a half year association with the Aldershot Company, but again, 503 was the lucky one. Whilst her sisters were sold or scrapped, 503 was selected for preservation. Showtime During the early part of 1983 503 was again taken into the Alder Valley Central Works at Aldershot where she was stripped down to her bare body frame and had her engine removed ready for a "no expenses spared" body and engine rebuilt. Great trouble was taken to only use genuine "as original" materials and this included a repaint using Parson's special "Aldershot & District" dark green, light green and cream paint. After being repainted the original sign-writer, still in the Company's employment after 40 years service, applied the A&D fleet name on her sides in cream paint and gold-leaf. Her seats were re-upholstered with moquette material cut from the original roll and authentic leatherette trimmings. However she still had to wait for a few more years before her original "A&D" style destination box was refitted, complete with 1965 style destination blinds.
After this restoration had been completed, she returned to Guildford Garage to start a new life as a show vehicle, resplendent in an Aldershot & District livery set off by black lining more reminiscent of the early 1930s than the intended 1965 style. At first she stood gleaming in a roped-off section of the garage guarded by Trevor Scard, the Engineering Foreman. However, the novelty soon wore off and, before long, 503 was in constant demand for special private hire duties and show work. On occasion in an emergency, much to the chagrin of Trevor Scard, she even performed again on local bus service duties with inspector acting as conductor. Between 1983 and December 1990 503 remained with Alder Valley South,
still as a full Class Vl vehicle. Initially she remained based at Guildford
Garage but, when this closed in September 1985, she went to the new AVS
garage at Manfield Park, Cranleigh, where she was to remain for over five
years until December 1990. She became a familiar sight at bus rallies as
far afield as Leicester, Swansea and Kidderminster, special events such
as Show Bus, Cobham Bus Museum Open Days, London Transport Museum Open Days
and other events, including Mid Hants Railway theme weekends under the watchful
eye of James Freeman, who was at that time seconded to the Mid Hants Railway
as projects manager. Len Wright obviously had a soft spot for the old bus and 503 was not part of this sale, as he retained ownership of the bus as part of his remaining AVS fleet. She was therefore transferred to the Alder Valley South Garage in Halimote Road, Aldershot where, for the next three years, she lived in the garage originally built for Foden steam wagons well before the First World War. Although 503 remained with the Alder Valley South company, the sell off of the Surrey garages to Drawlane really appeared to be the end of a long association between 503 and Guildford/Cranleigh staff, some of whom had worked with her almost every day for over the previous 25 years, and who suddenly found themselves working under a completely alien environment as part of the Drawlane (London & Country) Group. However, Len Wright again came to the rescue and generously agreed to support the formation of a special society known as the "Friends of 503". The aim of this society was to ensure the continued well-being of the bus and to enable Alder Valley staff at Aldershot and ex-members of Alder Valley South staff based at Guildford and Cranleigh, who had been forcibly transferred to London & Country with the sale of the AVS West Surrey operations, to continue take an active role in her future. In 1992, after several earlier unsuccessful applications, 503 was selected to take part in the Historic Commercial Vehicle Society's prestigious annual event the London to Brighton Historic Commercial Vehicle Run. In April of that year considerable engineering work was done on the bus and after passing her annual DTp (MOT) test without any problems she was taken to Ensign Bus's works at Southampton where she was completely repainted by hand in her original Aldershot & District Traction Co Ltd livery, still with the black lining, ready for her big day on the first Sunday in May. I still have a vivid memory of being in high sprits behind the wheel of the bus when we set off from Crystal Palace at around 7 o'clock in the morning on what must have been the hottest first Sunday in May ever, only to get stuck in traffic a few miles along the A23 at Purley. As we waited in a stationary queue of traffic I felt a sharp bump at the rear. I got out of the cab to investigate and found that a young man in a Ford Cortina had run into the back of the bus. He started to suggest that the bus had rolled backwards, but he soon changed his mind about this when around thirty irate "Friends of 503" appeared from inside the bus, some of whom had to be restrained from lynching him. In early 1993 Len Wright sold the remainder of Alder Valley South business to Stagecoach, but again he retained ownership of 503. This time the bus was transferred to his Bracknell based Q-Drive Holdings Company, Beeline, (the old Alder Valley North), and on 22nd February 1993 503 was formally allocated to the Beeline Garage at Bracknell. However, so that she could continue to be looked after by Friends of 503 Society members, a special arrangement was agreed with London & Country Buses for her to be garaged at her old home at Cranleigh Garage, by now operated by London & Country's subsidiary company Guildford & West Surrey Buses. For several years during the mid 1990s, Len Wright continued to pay for the maintenance and some of the fuel costs, but by now he was happy to leave 503 under the complete control of the Friends of 503 Society. In early 1994 the idea of the Aldershot & District Bus Interest Group (ADBIG) and Aldershot & District Bus Owners Association (ADBOA) was conceived and 503 soon became a vital part of the early ADBIG events.
The End or the New Beginning? In late 1995 Len Wright's Beeline Company was sold to London General, but Len Wright yet again retained ownership of 503. Although the bus remained at Cranleigh she now found herself on the books of yet another Q-Drive Group Company, this time it was Scan Coaches Ltd of Acton, a company operating not buses, but a large fleet of high spec London tour coaches catering for American tourists. Around this time 503 began to get something of a celebrity status. One day, out of the blue, I was asked if I could take the bus to the
MOD tank factory test circuit at Longcross in Surrey for the filming of
an item on unusual vehicles to be broadcast in BBC 2's motoring programme
"Top Gear". We duly arrived at Longcross to meet up with the show's
presenters who were to do the "test drives" and a motley collection
of vehicles ranging from an electric milk float to a giant tank transporter.
The young lady presenter detailed to drive 503 conspicuously failed to master
the art of changing gears on 503's constant mesh gearbox and she was eventually
filmed cautiously trundling around the test circuit with the bus remaining
firmly in second gear. I then drove around the circuit changing gears normally
with a sound recordist in close attendance and when 503's two minutes of
television fame was shown on the programme the film was cleverly speeded
up, with the sound of my efforts dubbed onto it, so that it appeared to
all the world that the presenter drove the bus around the circuit at about
60 mph. All continued to go well for 503 for a while, but in October 1996, after a particularly busy season for the bus, things suddenly went very wrong. Her engine gradually developed a distinct knock, particularly on the over-run when going down hills. Although this little more than a slight rattle at first, this gradually got worse and on the way home from a rally at Crowthorne Road Research Laboratory the rattle suddenly turned into a heavy knocking. After a hasty phone call to Q-Drive Engineering Director, David James, it was agreed that the bus should be taken back to Scan Coaches workshops at Battersea for inspection. The engineers there decided that a big end had "gone" and that a complete engine re-build was required. This rebuild took place at their Acton workshops during the winter of 1996/97, with firm promises made that the bus would be ready in time for the ADBIG Aldershot Running Day in May 1997. Disaster Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. A week before the big day I received a call to say that the repairs to 503 were complete and that she was ready for collection. Fellow "Friend of 503" Roger Greig (the engineering expert of our group) and I went to Acton one evening to collect her. I drove the bus back to Cranleigh without any problems, with he engine running as smoothly as ever, although a hole in the exhaust made it sound rather more "sporty" than usual. We knew about this and the bus was scheduled to go back to Acton for a new exhaust pipe after the Running Day, so this caused no concern. All seemed well and on the Friday before the running day I took 503 to London & Country's Leatherhead Garage, where she was put through their super new bus wash to remove the grime which had accumulated whilst she was parked outside at Acton waiting for attention. The journey to Leatherhead and back was made without any trouble, although the engine did seem a little noisier than usual, this was put down to the hole in the exhaust. The bus wash had worked well and after returning to Cranleigh and refuelling I parked the bus and took a photograph of her looking immaculate in the evening sunshine. Little did I know what was to come! Next day we arrived at Cranleigh Garage early on the Saturday morning with the cleaning kit ready to give the old girl a spring clean inside and a final polish on the outside. I needed to move the bus and although the engine started up with out any trouble, I noticed that the oil warning light refused to go out. I called over the Guildford & West Surrey fitter on duty at the garage. He lifted up the bonnet and pointed out a rather ominous "chuffing" noise, together with excessive oily smoke and engine fumes coming from the engine breather. "I don't like the sound of that", he said, "It sounds like a broken piston ring". Ironically, by that time the oil warning light had gone out, but the engine continued to "chuff" and fume. After much heart-searching we decided against using 503 at the Running Day and instead of participating at Aldershot the bus was towed back to Acton to await a decision regarding her fate. The engine was examined and a broken piston ring on No. 2 piston was indeed diagnosed as the cause. It seems that one of the piston rings that had been replaced when the engine was repaired had been damaged when it was re-assembled. David James, Q-Drive Engineering Director, did his best to sound hopeful. "I can't believe it. We've just spent a fortune on that engine. Don't worry - we should be able to put it right, but it will have to wait a while until our coaches have been put through their MOT tests and we can find a slot in the maintenance programme", he said cheerfully. After several months and many telephone calls enquiring about progress and as many optimistic assurances from David James, it slowly became obvious that no repairs were going to be made and for the next eighteen months 503 was to remain at the Scan Coaches premises, parked in a corner of the workshops, apparently quietly forgotten by her Q-Drive owners. Q-Drive management obviously had more important matters on their minds
and what these matters were became apparent in November 1998 when rumours
started to emerge in the trade press that Len Wright's Q-Drive Empire was
facing serious financial problems. Eventually Len was forced to resign from
his position as Chairman of Q-Drive Holdings and he suddenly disappeared,
reportedly to South Africa, with his businesses and all his assets, including
503, ending up in the hands of the Official Receiver. At first all seemed lost, particularly when further reports in the trade press stated that all Scan Coaches assets, including 503, had been sold intact as a going concern to a company called London Omnibus. However, it transpired that all the luxury coaches operated by Scan Coaches were leased (503 was the only vehicle that they actually owned!) and these coaches were unexpectedly re-possessed by the leasing company. This resulted in the London Omnibus deal falling through at the last minute and leaving 503 without an owner. The Official Receiver invited bids to be made for the remaining Q-Drive assets, including 503, on an individual basis. Word of this eventually reached me from the Curator of the Oxford Bus Museum late in the evening of Thursday 17th December. On Friday 18th December 1998, after a frantic morning's telephoning session, I eventually made contact with Allan Leggett, the person at the Receiver's Office dealing with the sale of 503, at around 3 p.m., only to find that there was less than two hours to go before the 5 p.m. deadline for bids to reach the London Bridge office of the Receiver's Agents. In addition, I learned that it was a condition of sale that the successful bidder had to remove the bus by midday on Christmas Eve. I had not seen 503 for 18 months or more and there was no time to go to Acton for an inspection to be made before a bid had to be submitted, so an instant decision had to be made regarding whether to bid or not, and if yes, how much to bid. My bank balance was examined and the decision was made to put in a bid. Another phone call to the Receivers Office confirmed that they would accept a faxed bid, providing a copy sent by registered post backed this up. A quick estimate the value of the bus was made and the bid, defined largely by the state of my bank balance rather than the true value of the bus, was duly faxed. The deed was done. I would have to wait until the Monday of Christmas Week to know the result. The initial excitement of making the bid soon passed and a long and worrying weekend followed. Bearing in mind that I had not seen the bus for so long:- If the bid was successful, was the bus still OK?
Who could I get to move a dead bus at such short notice on Christmas
Eve? When nothing was heard from the Receiver's Office by mid-day on Monday 21st December a phone call was made, but Allan Leggett was out. His secretary could only promise that she would make sure that he would call me back later. Eventually at 4.45p.m, when all hope was just about lost, the phone rang, Allan Leggett was on the other end and I suddenly found myself to be the new owner of 503. It was agreed that Allan would meet me on site at Acton at 9 a.m. on Christmas Eve morning to accept payment and to formally hand over the bus. As mentioned above, it was condition of the sale was that the bus had to be removed from the Scan Coaches premises by Christmas Eve Midday at the latest. The only person that I could think to ask was Bob Smith, resident engineer at our ADBIG Running Days and who was the proud owner of a preserved AEC tow truck. It was absolutely vital to persuade him to turn up at Acton with his faithful AEC tow truck at very short notice on Christmas Eve morning and tow 503 back to Cranleigh Garage. I telephoned Bob at his home in Southampton and my heart sank when he said that normally he would have been delighted to help, but that he was going away for Christmas on Christmas Eve morning and would not therefore be available until after the holiday. However, when I went on to explain the desperate situation that I was in and that the future of 503 was at stake, he began making sympathetic noises and had a quick rethink. You can imagine my relief when he said that as long as he could make Mother-in-Law's for tea rather than lunch on Christmas Eve it was on. Fellow "Friend of 503", Roger Greig, was roped in to help and at 7 a.m. on a very cold, dark and icy Christmas Eve morning we set off from Guildford in Bob's tow truck on our rescue mission. Being Christmas Eve traffic was light but when we arrived at the Scan Coaches premises rather early at around 8.15 a.m. things did not look too promising. These premises were located on a rather run down industrial site set in a triangle formed by the Grand Union Canal, the main West Country railway line, and sidings where diesel locomotives waiting to enter Paddington Station were noisily ticking over in a smoky haze. There had been a hard overnight frost and everything was dank, damp and derelict and, more worryingly, there was no sign of 503. On seeing Bob's tow truck arrive, two men emerged from the unit next door and, just to help the gloom and doom, one said, "There's nothing in there mate, it's all gone!" All we could do was to sit in the cab of Bob's tow-truck waiting for Allan Leggett to show up, hoping for the best. The minutes ticked by and after a while Roger became restless and decided to investigate the rear of the building. He picked his way through heaps of debris and eventually peered through a small crack in a paint covered glass door and found himself face to face with a very dusty 503. A few minutes later Allan Leggett arrived and unlocked the Scan Coaches building. Our fears soon evaporated and the sombre mood turned to one of delight when 503 was found to parked up in a remote corner of the deserted workshops in an area apparently used for body repair work, apparently untouched since being left there eighteen months earlier. Even a toolbox and its contents were still in place under the stairs. Although covered in a thick layer of fibreglass dust her body remained in excellent condition, inside and out. Not surprisingly her batteries were flat, but to everyone's amazement the engine fired immediately on being bump started by Bob's truck and this was left ticking over for the journey home to keep the air brakes fully operational. (I don't know what would have happened if the engine had not started, as Lolines do not have any means of receiving air for their brakes from any source apart from their own compressors. 503 dwarfed Bob's truck and it would have been impossible for it to have towed the bus 50 miles to Cranleigh without any air in the brakes. Luckily I didn't think about this until after we arrived safely at Cranleigh!) A banker's draft and the logbook were exchanged and hands were shaken. Bob fixed one end of the tow-bar securely to his tow truck and the other to the Loline's front axle and we started on the long, cold journey to Cranleigh. After a completely uneventful journey home via the M40, M25 and A3, 503 arrived back at Arriva's Cranleigh Garage around midday on Christmas Eve. A parking space for 503 was waiting next to her preserved stable mate, ex-A&D AEC Reliance, 543. WE HAD MADE IT - 503 WAS SAFELY HOME!!!
Back on the Road Again Having safely rescued 503 at literally the eleventh hour, our first task was to give her back a bit of respectability by cleaning away the layers of fibreglass dust and drifting paint spray that covered her, inside and out, after being parked in the Scan Coaches body repair shop for over eighteen months. Our next problem was what to do about the sick engine. It was obviously not as sick as we first feared or it would not have started so easily after lying idle for eighteen months, but it obviously required a serious amount of attention before the bus could be used again. There was no shortage of well meaning advice about what to do. Our first thought was to obtain a reconditioned engine and do a straight swap. However, we soon found that this is not as easy as it sounds, the main difficulty was obtaining the special tools required, especially the heavy lifting gear essential to lift the engine up and out from under the Loline's half cab bonnet. Also, it is one thing to work in the warmth and comfort of a bus garage with a pit, where expense is no object and something quite different working outside in the concrete yard laying on a roller board under the bus, with every penny having to be carefully counted before it can be spent. A pressure test confirmed that the problem was confined to number two cylinder, so before trying anything too drastic Roger decided to partly dismantle the engine in situ to try and find out what the problem really was. He spent many happy hours seemingly for much of the 1999 summer lying on his back underneath the Loline undoing what seemed like hundreds of engine bolts holding the sump on, but eventually he was rewarded by being able to remove the offending piston by dropping it out of the bottom of the engine. It soon became clear what was wrong. At some stage the engine had seriously overheated causing the piston ring on No. 2 piston to stick, compressed inside its groove around the piston. The cylinder liner appeared to be relatively undamaged and this could be honed to remove the scoring that had occurred, however the piston and the main rings were damaged beyond repair, so a replacement had to be obtained. Amazingly fellow ADBIG member Peter Trevaskis announced that he had a brand new piston for a Gardner 6LW engine still in its original packaging stored in his shed. Even more amazing was that this new piston was checked and found to be of the correct size and type. After many countless hours of honing the inside of the bore, the new piston was fitted and the engine re-assembled with all the multitude of engine bolts carefully tightened in the correct sequence to the correct torque. Some dismal Jimmies said that we would not get away with replacing just one piston and that the engine would shake itself to bits, however when the big day came to fire up the engine it started without any problems, albeit with a rather pronounced diesel knock. This has subsequently quietened down as the new piston has worn in and the Gardner engine now rumbles along with 503 sounding as good as she ever did. The next move was to put the bus through a Class V MOT test. An initial
test date was arranged with the expectation being that the bus would fail,
but that we would then know what work was required to successfully pass
a subsequent test. However, much to everyone's surprise, she passed initial
test with flying colours. The bus was rewarded with a complete new set of
roof panels to overcome an embarrassing problem occurring on wet days, when
upstairs passengers had to put their umbrellas up inside the bus, and a
partial repaint of the upper two thirds of her body to finally eliminate
the grime that accumulated during her enforced stay in Scan Coaches yard.
On January 1st 2005 she celebrated her 40th birthday by taking part in the annual Friends of King Alfred Running Day at Winchester with her twin sister, preserved Dennis Loline III 506, owned by fellow ADBIG member Phil Jacob. 503 operated the 08:45 Service 14 journey from Guildford and both buses met up at Medstead, where 506 lives, and travelled together in service to Winchester. On arrival in the bus station the buses posed for photos whilst a 40th birthday celebratory cake was cut. 503 again got her photo in the press, this time as part of the Buses magazine report on the FOKAB event.
Later in the spring of 2005 a determined reluctance of 503 to start from cold caused a few concerns, but this was something that a new set of heavy duty batteries soon cured. The only other recent major expense has been a set of new Michelin X radial tyres, fitted to replace ones with badly cracked side-walls, to ensure a successful 2005 MOT test. During the winter of 2005/6 her lower panels will be re-painted. When this has been done, a retired ex A&D sign-writer has already been engaged to re-paint the legal lettering and gold A & D scrolls on either side of the bus, ready for the big event of 2006 when the centenary of the Aldershot & Farnborough Omnibus Company's first motor bus service between Aldershot and Farnborough will be celebrated by a Centenary Running Day at being held at Aldershot on Sunday 4th June. There is a possibility that as part of the centenary celebrations, 503 will hired to Stagecoach and put through a Class Vl MOT test, so that on the 1st June, exactly 100 years since the first motor bus operated on the route between Aldershot and Farnborough, she can again operate in full PSV service for the day over this same route. Today 503 continues to live at the Arriva Cranleigh Garage with her AEC single deck sister 543. She most certainly has many more years of active life in her and is proud to be part of the ADBIG preserved A&D fleet, bringing back memories, not only for countless residents of Surrey and Hampshire of a certain age, most of whom claim to have travelled to school on the bus, but also the thousands of military types who fondly remember "Tracco" from their army days in and around the Aldershot, Bordon and Guildford areas.
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