• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Midland Red Early Days

The Fountain on Hagley Rd was situated in a trangle of land at the junction with Sandon Rd, and bordered to the west by a small extention of Meadow Rd. I can remember this area as a patch of grass in my younger days, only a few yards from where I lived. The fountain itself was scraapped during WW1, stories of it being broken up and taken away by a traction engine were told to me when I asked about it. I don't know when it was built, or why - housing in the area dated from c1870, and there is a large undergound water reservoir on the south side of Hagley Rd just there. The grassy area remains, with only a 30s electrical sub station at the Meadow Rd end, and the low wall which once supported an elaborate cast iron fence, visible behind '251' in the view above (post #657) - I can remember small holes (just over 1" square) in the capping stones, some retaining the lead used to anchor the cast iron fence legs that once fitted them.

Did you notice the words 'HAGLEY ROAD' on 251, partly obscured by the conductor? Is this the first example of 'route branding' so in favour by todays bus operators?
 
Re: D Napier and Son Ltd.

Sorry the Castle Car Works staff photo is undated, although there is an enlargement of the young workers at the front. Childhood ended very early at the turn of the last century.
 
Lloyd said:
Did you notice the words 'HAGLEY ROAD' on 251, partly obscured by the conductor? Is this the first example of 'route branding' so in favour by todays bus operators?
Click to expand...

No I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Very interesting. The practice was quite common in horse bus days, especially in London. And Alec Jenson's Birmingham Transport contains a lovely 1860 picture of a "knifeboard" horse bus (probably owned by Reynolds & Co) which carries the fleetname "BRISTOL ROAD" in big bold lettering. That would be a lovely picture to post if someone can scan it (unless it has been posted somewhere already).
 
The World's First Petrol Motor Bus Service 1895.

2010-06-28 23:20:38
[While we're on the subject of very early motor buses, I would like to put on record the prime claimant to the title of "first petrol-engined motor bus service in the world". It was a long way from Birmingham, but the story might be allowed a place here in accordance with the "liberal tradition" of the MRED thread! :rolleyes: As usual, corrections, additions and comments are welcome.]
On 18 March 1895 at Netphen in Germany, a company named Netphener Omnibusgesellschaft began the world's earliest petrol-engined motor bus service. The Siegen – Netphen – Deuz route was traversed four times a day, starting from Netphen at 6.45 am and returning to base at 8.55 pm. The bus was a modified lorry built by Karl Benz (25 November 1844 – 4 April 1929), which the company purchased for 5,000 marks. It was powered by a five horsepower horizontal single-cylinder rear-mounted engine. The landau body seated eight inside and two outside, with accommodation for luggage. The 15 kilometer journey from Siegen to Deuz took about one hour twenty minutes, for a fare of 70 pfennigs. Problems were experienced with steep gradients and inadequate solid tyres, but the bus carried 10,600 passengers and raised 3,100 marks in revenue in its first fifteen weeks of operation. On 1 July a second vehicle was purchased in anticipation of continued success, but the buses were neither powerful nor reliable enough for the arduous route. The service was discontinued on 20 December 1895.

[Sources: Wikipedia articles linked to in the text; Daimler Global Media Site article; Mercedes-Benz Classic article.]
 
Thylacine & Lloyd your are unearthing some fascinting facts and pictures.

The pic in post-#665 is lovely and when 5HP actually meant something (though obviously not enough to get up hills reliably) and when 70Pf could buy something realistic

I love the Charabanc in post#648 & the Hagley Road bus in post#657 but what is it?
 
Aidan, I'm glad you approve of these old motor buses! We're back in very early days now. The Hagley Road bus pictured on the left in post #657 is the Birmingham Motor Express Co Ltd 1903 Mulliner bus with Napier engine (number "251") referred to in the BME history (post #648). In post #661 Lloyd miraculously came up with a modern view of the location of the picture!
 
Thanks for the layman summary - were these the ones that were taken off in the mid-1900s due to unreliability and reverted to good old horsepower (real)?

Re: the story behind the triangle of land in post#661 - I always think that strange bits of greenery in urban landscapes must hold a history and certainly a story of their own. In this particular case a mystery fountain and obviously some story of ownership (or it would be undoubedly be built on by now)
 
The Mulliners disappeared even earlier (before national motor registration was introduced at the beginning of 1904). So they didn't last very long at all.
 
Funny how the 5 hp Netphener motor bus was inadequate for the task, whereas two or three (real) horses would probably have been sufficient.
 
Think it is to do with the measurement/advertising - my modern car is supposed to do 50mpg according to the Govt & the advertising splurge - they fail to say exactly how this was measured though as the real-life measurement is somewhat less.

You can imagine Mr Netphener's boys extolling that you'd get equivalent of 5 horses power with this mate, das ist gut neine? (until it gets delivered...).

They didn't seem to do bad out of it though even given the limited lifespan, I wonder what the contract/warranty looked like though?
 
I would like to know who the proprietors of Netphener Omnibusgesellschaft were - they deserve their place in history after all. I haven't found anything about them (it would probably help if I could read German!). The early motor bus pioneers were very brave (or perhaps foolhardy!). All the early motor bus ventures that I know about ended in disaster or near-disaster. Midland Red gave up on them in October 1907, but many London operators also found them too unreliable and expensive to run. The naysayers must have had a field day: "I told you the motor bus would never replace the horse bus!" Yet by about 1910 the motor bus was back with a vengeance, and horse buses were on the way out (World War 1 finished them off for good).
 
Pictured below are Natalie, Sheila, Melanie and Charles Western-Kaye.

Sheila is nee Garcke, Kenneth Garcke and Dorothy nee Davison's daughter, so Emile Oscar Garcke's great granddaughter. Natalie and Charles are two of her children, and Melanie nee Howe is Charles' wife.
They run Snowball Farm, Dorneywood Road, Burnham, Buckinghamshire (which Kenneth Garcke bought c 1952) as an equestrian centre of good repute. There was a link to a streetview of it in post #604 - here it is again if you missed it.

If that isn't clinging to the topic by a (horse's) whisker, I don't know what is :D!
 
There is a modern replica of the Netphener Omnibusgesellschaft bus which I think lives in Deuz - and here is an excellent model as well.
 
From...The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield.. by Douglas V Jones


In 1912 Sutton Coldfield Corporation entered into negotiations with the Birmingham and Midland motor omnibus Company. ( The Midland Red ) and a number of other undertakings with a view to commencing motor omnibus services. One of the difficulties was that at the time, the Midland Red Company only had double decker buses, and the corporation were anxious to ensure the operation of single deckers on the proposed routes.


Eventually the Midland Red undertook to comply with the requirements by providing sinngle deckers, and on the 13th February 1913 at a meeting of the Town Council was decided that the Council should grant licences to the company on the following terms.


A the service to be daily including Sundays and to be run on such roads and to a timetable with such

stages and fares as are approved by the council;
B the cars to be run new. 30 to 40 hp and single deck;
C The licence to be for 12 months only.
D no goodwill or monopoly to be created and the Council to reserve the right to refuse to renew the

licences or to grant others on the expiration of the same.
E the service to commence at Easter.


The proposed service was to be half hourly ( to be increased as traffic warranted ) between Chester Road tram terminus, Sutton Parade and the Barley Mow at Mere Green. There was also to be a service between Chester Road and the park entrance via Boldmere Road. Four buses were to be provided with an extra vehicle on the Park route at holiday times.


The company were unable to provide the single decker vehicles in time for Easter 1913 and the first run were two buses hired by them from the British Automobile Traction Co. Ltd.


The service to the Barley Mow started in August of that year.


The early Reds were 40hp Tilling Stevens with solid tyres seating 27 passengers and with roof racks for luggage.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks mike-g. Here's one of those buses (new bodies on identical 30 hp 'TTA2' as the existing double deckers) with route board for 'Chester Rd, Sutton & Four Oaks' on the side. The later TS3 type were 40hp.
 
Last edited:
Thanks mike-g for that fascinating piece of Midland Red history, which incidentally brings us right back to the centre of the Midland Red Early Days topic (we do stray a bit!). Your post is of special interest to me, as I lived in Sutton in the years 1959-1964 and it was where I first became a Midland Red enthusiast. The information you posted is very interesting and previously unknown to me. Lloyd's picture complements it nicely! :)

Lloyd, it's fascinating that the Sutton service at first used two buses hired from BAT! I wonder what they were and where they came from?

And thanks for the new Garcke family history and the great colour pics of the replica and model of the Benz 1895 motor bus. As Aidan pointed out, it's a lot like a stage-coach (with a motor strapped to the back).
 
Lloyd, I don't think it's my imagination: the Sutton-bound TTA2 in your picture is missing a window (next to the woman and child passengers: if the glass was there we wouldn't see them so clearly!)

And the conductor seems to be wearing a driver's "cow coat" instead of the regulation Traffic Department "military" uniform.
 
And of course, Lloyd, we expect a modern view of the brick wall behind the TTA2. (Like a "top gun" in the Wild West, you're always having to prove your prowess! ;))
 
I think the windows in their frames are removeable - I have a similar picture of another bus with the same window out. These are the six non-standard Birch bodies with rear entrances bought only because of immediate delivery in 1913. (BB37-42) and fitted to new TTA2 chassis in 1913. They were withdrawn in 1919/20, five of them (bodies at least) being sold to C.F. Rymer in Liverpool and the other to Ribble Motor Services, Preston - although two of the chassis went to Warrington Corporation.
(It's a TTA2, as well - small bottom tank on the rad!)

Re the wall - sorry, I don't recognise the scene although I did use to drive the 112 B'ham - Sutton - Lichfield - Burton route in the '70s and early '80s.

My best guess would be a wall to the gardens formerly ajoining the Barley Mow, Four Oaks - where "Joe's Pizza" is in this view. The Barley Mow is now "Barley's - The scene on the Green." Nuff said.
 
Thanks Lloyd, but whyever would they remove the window? Surely not just for the photograph!. Do you know which chassis went to Warrington?
 
Ah, they were obsessed with 'Fresh Air' in those days! This design, restored by a friend, is a saloon bus convertable to open top and sides!

A 11/2, O 9940/1, Tilling TTA2 chassis 46/5 were sold to Warrington Corporation (possibly without bodies) and were re-registered ED 1632/3 in 1920.
 
Fascinating picture of Mike Sutcliffe's ex-United Counties "charabus" BD209 (I've never seen it before! ;)). Thanks also for the Warrington TTA2 information (and for the modern view of the "Barley Mow" - an informed guess!).
 
For any of our readers (like myself) who haven't come across the book on Sutton Coldfield referred to in mike-g's post (#676), here are the full details:

Douglas V Jones. The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield: A Commemorative History. Boldmere: Westwood press Publications, 1984. ISBN 0950263672.

There's a page here on the author, a prolific local historian.

Incidentally, the webpage on D V Jones sometimes doesn't complete loading for me. This happens with quite a few pages on the West Midlands Literary Heritage website, which is a shame because it's the host of Chris Warn's excellent pages on the history of public transport in Shropshire (highly recommended to all our readers, with much of Midland Red interest):

Shropshire Buses and Coaches. This one, and the chapters linking from it work OK for me. If you want the whole story in one hit, here is a pdf file (sometimes problematic for me).
A Century of Bus Services in Shropshire (a superb collection of annotated pictures). Sadly this doesn't work well for me: it tells me that it is "not optimized for my browser" (which is Mozilla Firefox version 3.6.6, so should be OK). If I go into it anyway the pictures and text are all distorted or missing.
Shropshire Buses (another superb picture collection of buses in Shropshire town and village settings). This works OK, but the "slide shows" linked to have the same problems as the "Century" collection.

Does anyone else have problems with these pages? :rolleyes:
 
Unknown Chassis Numbers.

2010-06-29 14:14:35
Lloyd:

 Thanks for giving the chassis numbers for O9940 and O9941 in post #683. Hardy doesn't give the chassis numbers for these buses, which he records as passing to C F Rymer Ltd in 1919. So Rymer must have sold them on to Warrington Corporation in 1920, confirming the theory (see posts #82 and #87) that Rymer was just a dealer (agent for Tilling-Stevens) at this time, not a bus operator. The registrations O9940 and O9941 were kept by Midland Red and re-used in 1920 on TS3s A259 (ex-NWMOT originally registered AC33) and A280 (ex-WD) respectively. You must have found those chassis numbers in a Warrington fleet history.

On the subject of unknown chassis numbers, are there any others from this list that are known to you?

any of the "first generation" buses; O8203; O8208; O8210; O8211; O9918; O9919; O9921; O9922; O9925; O9926; O9929; A1 (O9930); A4 (O9933); A8 (O9937); A10 (O9939); A13 (O9942); A15-19 (OA344-OA348); A20 (OA2549); A257 (AC31); A258 (AC32); A260 (AC43); A263 (E1844); A264 (S4443); A266 (S4445).
 
Thylacine said:
A Century of Bus Services in Shropshire[/SIZE][/FONT] (a superb collection of annotated pictures). Sadly this doesn't work well for me: it tells me that it is "not optimized for my browser" (which is Mozilla Firefox version 3.6.6, so should be OK). If I go into it anyway the pictures and text are all distorted or missing.

Does anyone else have problems with these pages? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


I think you need to get a "proper" browser - try the quick & free Google Chrome https://www.google.com/chrome

I like the quote against the 1905 "19 seat Milnes-Daimler 20hp bus (DA 118) is seen here at Shipley in 1905. Two of these buses registered DA 117 and DA 118 were used between Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton from January 1905. These managed to get up the hills with less pushing by the passengers than the Clarkson steam buses they replaced, although one driver reported that it was easier to ascend steeper hills in reverse gear. Given the rough roads and poor brakes of the time, reversing a fully loaded bus up a hill required a huge amount of skill."
 
There are stories that early Midland Red buses had to ascend Mucklows Hill, Halesowen, in reverse as it is so steep - but I can't understand which vehicles this refers to - the Tilling petrol-electrics would have had no problem, as 'reverse' and 'low gears' are switched electrically on these designs, there is no difference in torque availability in forward and reverse directions (An electric motor delivers maximum torque when stationary, just at the point of first movement).

Chassis numbers-
O8203 - 48 (but so is O 8202!)
O8208 - 3
O8211 - 17
O9918 - 9
O9919 - ?
O9921 - ?
O9922 - 5
O9925 - 10
O9926 - 29? (same as O 9931)
O9929 - 30
A1 (O9930) - 27
A4 (O9933) - 32
A8 (O9937) - 43
A10 (O9939) - 28
A13 (O9942) - 44
A15-19 (OA344-OA348) - 51/2/4/5, 62
A20 (OA2549) - 63
A257 (AC31) - 88
A258 (AC32) - ?
A260 (AC43) - 136
A263 (E1844) - ?
A264 (S4443) - 173 (but this is the same as OA 4559 - I think it should be 273, as S4444 is 277)
A266 (S4445) - ?

Gosh, the anorak's warm this time of year!!!!
 
The subject of early Tilling chassis numbers is a difficult one - the numbers I have are not all necessarily correct for a vehicle's whole life or even overall for one moment in time. Sources include the few company documents surviving at the time the PSVC history was written in the 60s, and Peter Hardy's later diligent crawling through Birmingham Motor Taxation Office's documents ( which were mostly stupidly destroyed when the licencing system was computerised at Swansea under the DVLA name).
There was no legal requirement for chassis numbers until the 1931 road traffic act (indeed two SOS chassis never carried them, being dismantled before that date and one other, the first SOS built not using Tilling -supplied frames, became chassis 1513 when a chassis number was 'needed'. That was A346 which also re-used registration HA 2330, allocated to a Garford that was never bodied.) and registrations therefore vehicle identities could be retained by bodies (which saves a lot of repainting and signwriting!) or just swapped at will. Interestingly The LGOC and later London Transport were allowed to do this throughout their existance - RT types going to Aldenham works rarely emerged with the same identity applied to either the body or the chassis, in fact more chassis frames and bodies existed than there were stock numbers for! A routemaster I was working on last weekend is an example, it is RML 2369 but the body (remember they are chassisless) started life on RML 2408. The registration 'identity' remained with the front sub-chassis, carrying the engine and front wheels!
Most of the existing information is from a point in time (different for each vehicle) when road tax was applied for, thus occasional duplication of numbers. For some vehicles, no data was found.
ALSO, it is possible that T-S duplicated early chassis numbers for different customers as often they were order reference numbers as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top