British Buses in New Zealand

British Classic Buses in New Zealand (Page 2)

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Last updated 4 December 2007

Here is a second page of material about buses of British origin in New Zealand. Please feel free to send any suitable items and I will be happy to post them.

New Zealand buses Page One is here and Page Three is here.

CARAVAN CONVERSIONS

Mat and Molly Foster emailed to say "Hi, just found your site and think you are lacking pictures of one bus - ours ! We have a 1954/55 Seddon bus converted to housebus. We bought the bus in July 2006 and have spent every waking minute rebuilding so, although its old skin got lots of new parts, we are now living in him full time. Still a few things to be done but we will do that as we go travelling around New Zealand. So far we have not seen any other Seddon Mk6 on the road or no pictures of one to compare to ours. So if you get anything, that would be cool. It's a Seddon Pennine 1954/55 with Perkins R series straight 6 diesel (is this a 6534?), David Brown 4 speed box, 2 speed Eton diff, approx 9.2 metres long and round about 7.5 ton."

Mike Butler from the NZ Bus Museum website (http://www.geocities.com/nzbusmuseum/) kindly sent me this;

"I have done a bit of research on XR1171. It is a 1955 Seddon Mk.6HR with Mulliner B30F body new to Gisborne City Council Transport Department as number 1. It passed to Findlay Motors, Taupo in 1969 (believed to be Number 8, but not confirmed). When Findlay Motors were taken over by Hawkes Bay Motor Co. in 1973 it became their Number 78. In 1976 it went to Turly Motors, Te Aroha, followed by a brief spell with Katikati Bus Co. in 1980-81, before becoming a movan. The original registration is unknown, but its 1956 plate was P.1208, in 1961 it was P.1119, and its permanent registration in 1966 was EM2195."

Thanks Mike, and thanks also to Mat & Molly for sending the picture. Here's another photo of it;

Meanwhile here are some more pictures they kindly sent me of other caravan conversions. Below is a 1952 Leyland Comet, still with original engine but not fired up or moved since 1997.

And here is another Leyland Comet, named the "Country Comet".

Next is a 1954 Foden with a Commer TS3 2-stroke supercharged 3,261cc engine. Again this has not been started for 3 years, but they told me "we are going to attempt to get it up and running next weekend".

Whenuapai Bus Co. of Kumeu bought three Fodens in 1953 (Fleet numbers 19-21, EN 6948, 6950 & 6951), and another two in 1954 (numbers 22 & 23, EN 6949 & 6952), so it looks likely that this could be one of the latter pair. All five were bodied locally by Hawke (B41F).

Now we have a series of Bedfords, of various types. If anyone can provide some clues to identity I'd be interested to hear from them.

Next we have an example of the charismatic 3-axle Bedford VAL. Quite a few Bedford VAL 14 chassis were delivered to New Zealand in the mid 1960s and were bodied locally for various customers (particularly Suburban, Midland Motorways, and H & H). My good friend Richard Haughey kindly informs me that this is in fact a VAL 14, chassis number 1238, with a Hawke B52F +17 body, delivered to Greenhalgh Blue Buses, Auckland in February 1967 as their fleet number 7 (they bought one other VAL in 1964, fleet number 10).

And finally an AEC. Could this be another ex-Wellington Reliance? Please let me know if you can identify it.

Thanks again for the pictures. There's obviously hidden treasure out there !

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New Zealand buses Page One is here and Page Three is here.

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