Vehicles
The company mainly operated Leyland vehicles, built nearby in Leyland, Lancashire. However, there were some exceptions. In 1948/9 Sentinel had developed an underfloor-engined single deck bus, which increased the seating capacity significantly. Ribble took two batches of these buses. In the sixties Ribble ordered ten lightweight Bedford coaches for their extended tour fleet.
A batch of Bristol single deck vehicles was ordered before the government brought together Leyland Bus and National Bus Company into the plan to build the "Leyland National" bus factory in Cumberland. After the first batch of 10 fitted with Leyland engines showed poor fuel economy, a larger batch of 30 was delivered with Gardner diesel engines, which had better fuel efficiency. Some Bristol VR double-deckers were also acquired.
Another double deck coach was developed around 1968 for motorway running by Standerwick within Ribble ownership. This time a 60 seater built on a Bristol VRL/LH chassis driven by a Leyland Power Plus 680 engine mounted vertically and logitudinally behind the off-side rear axle. In total 30 were delivered starting with vehicle 50, which was used for trials; and followed by three batches, given fleet numbers 51 to 61, 62 to 71 and finally 72 to 79.
Ribble engineers were responsible for specifying and maintaining coaches for Standerwick and North Western (the coach fleet in Manchester left over when the original North Western Road Car Company was split between the SELNEC PTE, Crosville and Trent) even after they were transferred and became National Travel (North West) Ltd.
Two batches of the lowheight Albion Lowlander double deck service bus were purchased by Ribble, all with LR1 formation. 1851 to 1860, and a year later 1861 to 1866. They had a fully fronted cab, and were a replica of the highbridge PD3's that Ribble operated; they were not popular machines. Ribble acquired a seventeenth example, when they took over Bamber Bridge Motor Services, 747EUS the ex demonstraitor; this was Ribble's only half cab example.
Read more about this topic: Ribble Motor Services
Famous quotes containing the word vehicles:
“Only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing is so weak as an egotist. Nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles of a truth before which the state and the individual are alike ephemeral.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)