Now That IS A Bus! ...

  ... And It Comes From Bristol

When fbb was a little sprog at Northampton Grammar School (form 2AL) a chum, Graham Askew, arrived one day with an alphabet poem.  It began ...

A tor Horses

B for Mutton

C for Yourself 

D for Hard of  Hearing

... and continues similarly. Young Askew claimed his dad had written it - but reference in 2023 to the interwebnet reveals it has been known for ages and ages as "The Cockney Alphabet". 

But it does give fbb an excuse for mangling his alphabetic Blog ideas. So today w have ...

 K  for Bristol

... and here is one, namely a Bristol K. It is from the Isle of Wight, rebuilt as an open topper.

Here is a closed top version with narrow body ...

... and the wider KW on United |Counties route 402 which passed the end of fbb's road.

Bristol Commercial Vehicles (BCV) was created in 1943 as a subsidiary of Bristol Tramways. The Transport Act saw the nationalisation of the Tilling Group into the British Transport Commission (BTC) in 1948. BCV and ECW body builders : Eastern Coachworks)  soon found themselves restricted to selling products to other BTC operators. Nationalisation also brought the task of supervision of the Ministry of Supply's motor repair works at Kingswood. In 1955 BCV became an independent company owned by the BTC.

Changes in government policy in 1965 allowed the Leyland Motor Corporation to buy some shares in BCV and ECW so that their products could once again be sold to independent operators. The last new chassis to carry a Bristol badge was a VRT/SL double-deck bus built in 1981. For a while the factory continued to build buses with Leyland badges, notably the Olympian which had been designed by the staff at Brislington. All work ended in October 1983 when the final Bristol-built Olympian chassis was sent to ECW to receive its body for Devon General (where it was registered A686 KDV).

But for a little and slightly chubby fbb, the iconic bus was either a green double decker with a big noisy bonnet as with the 402 above OR a big red double decker with a big noisy bonnet.

And the Northampton version was, of course, always a Daimler!

Bristol types were lettered alphabetically from the Bristol A double decker from 1925 and the Bristol B single decker from 1926.

The Bristol K was followed by a Bristol L single deck.

A Bristol M was designed and built but never bodied.

Something over 4000 Bristol K buses of various sub-classes were built and operated by "Tilling" companies all over the country. Likewise most were either green or red (with a smattering of cream ines for rebuilt open toppers). But the original Bristol Bristols were blue, the colour of the Bristol Tramway Company ...

... and non Tilling operators also bought them as below for Rotherham Corporation.

After the unfinished M, designations became directly relevant to vehicle types as is FS (short) for the Lodekka ...

... with the prototype lacking its canned radiator design that soon became universal.

It was coded FS - F for flat floor and S for short. Then along came the FLF - L for long and the second F for forward entrance.

To add to the mix there were a few FLs - long with conventional back platform ...

... and FSFs - short with forward entrance.

But the K was still the real bus for fbb.

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Joshua was the last of the great tribal leaders of the Hebrews (now best called The Israelites). The various tribes were domiciled throughout the Promised Land and, originally, one central leader was probably not appropriated. So after "Joshua" the Bible has a book called "Judges".

Please note : ordinary judges do not wear long wigs in the UK and no UK judge has and bangs a gavel. But the cartoon is even less like a judge in the eponymous Bibe book.

Some did a bit of judging as above sitting under a tree and sorting out people's legal problems. But mostly these leaders were charged with sorting out the enemy (as above, Jabin) and calling the people back to a trust in God.

Then the people would stray again (sin again, worship false idols etc) and another "judge" would be raised up.

And so the pattern continued until the people demanded a "proper" leader; they wanted a King like all the other nations that shared borders with the Israelites.

 K aleidoscope of

 K ings

There are six Bible books that tell of the various Kings that followed on from the Judges. 

1 and 2 Samuel

1 and 2 Kings

1 and 2 Chronicles

There is an awful lot of "stuff", much of it repeated as it was complied by at least three different authors - maybe more. This brief blog is very brief indeed.

At first the Kings were OK but even most of the the goodies became baddies  i.e. turned from God and messed up.

First King - Saul

He did OK for a while and then, in impatience and arrogance, failed to wait for the Religious Leader to take the solemn service and promoted himself. It doesn't sound much to us - but he was usurping the duties of God's anointed man. 

His success became mental disturbance and violent jealousy of the next chosen King.

Second King - David

He was far from perfect as we see in his "affair of lust" with Bathsheba.

But he managed to begin the process of turning the tribes into a viable nation and he was (Bathsheba's bath excepted) a repentant upholder of God:s ordinances. He was justly remembered as the best and spiritually strongest of Israel's leaders.

 Third King - Solomon 

His wealth and wisdom certainly held the Kingdom together BUT ...

... it was not long before he turned yo the worship of false gods and roused the disappointment and anger of the one true God.

It is not at all surprising that after the death of Solomon, there was a massive rebellion which led to the Kingdom being split into two; and they were very weak "halves".

From now on, the route was inexorably downhill. And the Bible knows why!

A Typical King - Baasha

You are, of course, right ...

... nobody knows what Baasha looked like"

Baasha by name and Basher by nature!

Things are not looking good for God's Chosen People who seem to have NOT CHOSEN GOD!

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N.B.

The fbbs are travelling back from IoW today. Better weather that the outward run was forecast. Tuesday's blog may, however, be curtailed or delayed.

 Next L ABC Blog : Monday 12th December