A winter’s tale of two buses – one just rescued, the other restored
Roger Malone is seeing double with a couple of Beadle-Bedford buses
IF you didn’t realise decades of neglect stand between the pictures of two former Western National sister vehicles, now residing in Devon, it could almost be a timelapse trick of the camera.
Last month, Colin Billington, chairman of the Thames Valley & Great Western Omnibus Trust, acquired a splendidly preserved 1948 HOD66 Beadle-Bedford from a fellow bus enthusiast at Ipplepen. The single decker, No 2015, was then driven to the South Hams where this former Totnes and Dartmouth based vehicle now resides.
Restored to pristine condition it has joined another member of its class also built in 1948, which fate, until relatively recently, had been less kind to. With a registration separating one from the other by only two digits, HOD68 Beadle-Bedford was discovered by Colin in 1999, languishing in a field near the village of Efailwen on the Pembrokeshire/ Carmarthenshire border.
Interest shown by Colin in preserving the abandoned bus was not encouraged by a less than affable landowner accompanied by “a large growling dog”. So the bus remained under an advancing cloak of brambles until it was ‘rediscovered’ 19 years later.
By this time there was a new, friendly owner keen to clear the site – and the fortunes of HOD68 were about to change for the better.
Colin and a team of fellow enthusiasts set to work clearing the site and preparing the vehicle for a return to Devon.
Over the years the Bedford-Beadle had subsided, up to its axles, into the soil. The first job was to jack it up, fill in the holes in the ground, and fit serviceable wheels and tyres.
Struggling against difficult conditions, the team managed to recover the bus from its resting place on Feb- ruary 6, 2018.
It had snowed the night before, but they managed to extract the vehicle from the field using a 4WD pick-up and a long webbing strap.
Winched out onto the tarmac, this was the first time HOD68 was back on the road for 51 years!
There was another flurry of snow ensuring the removal of this veteran vehicle was never going to be an easy job. Colin climbed on the roof to deploy the cargo net to ensure no bits fell off en-route to Devon.
Once loaded, netted and strapped down, the bus was ready to return to the South Hams for the first time since 1958 – 60 years before!
Now, safely housed and protected from the elements, full restoration will take place.
“For the time being we will keep it in mothballs and in good condition so that it will not deteriorate any more,” says Colin.
“We recovered this vehicle because these finds are few and far between. There were times long ago that people lived in them. They were everywhere. After the life as a road vehicle had come to an end they were put to other uses. Several were built into homes,” says Colin.
“HOD68 was a Western National vehicle that had spent most of its life
in the South Hams, and was allocated to the Kingsbridge depot. It ended up in Wales because ,when Western National got rid of it, the vehicle was sold to a dealer – and a local operator up in Wales used it for school runs until it was finally sold for scrap.”
It, and sister vehicle HOD66, are two of only three 1948 Beadle-Bedfords to survive.
Colin says the expertly restored HOD66, which hasn’t been or the road for ten years apart from its ‘change of address’ journey last December, will be making an appearance in the annual Kingsbridge Vintage Bus Running Day later in the year.
We recovered this vehicle because these finds are few and far between
COLIN BILLINGTON