THE SHOWBUS LONDON & HOME COUNTIES BUS IMAGE GALLERY
Wycombe Bus Company
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Distinctive vehicles in the Wycombe fleet were the three coach bodied Olympians, originally at Bracknell for the London - Reading express services. Leyland 242 (D824UTF) is seen in standard Wycombe Bus livery, descending Marlow Hill after a mundane school run. Indeed, the vehicles were losing their luxury fittings as the years rolled by. The original yellow Beeline livery was replaced by the black skirted version Wycombe version though one of the trio gained a short lived Wycombe Coach livery based on Oxford Citylink blue, yellow and white!
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Olympian 235 (G235VWL) is one of a number of Alexander bodied examples transferreed from Oxford to Wycombe. Originally these dual door buses were purchased for the 280 Aylesbury-Oxford trunk service. The investment was undermined when the lucrative Sunday, evenings and Oxford Brookes University contracts were pulled from under Oxford by the newly formed Motts Travel Yellow Bus operation. In a complicated deal, Yellow Bus, which competed with Wycombe Bus in High Wycombe as well as The Shires, was acquired by The Shires leading to a rationalisation of Wycombe, Oxford and Aylesbury services, which were carved up between The Shires & City of Oxford. Thus Oxford relinquished the 280 to The Shires and the Olympians used thereon were converted to single door and transferred to Wycombe!
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One of Aylesbury & The Vale's Olympians which took over the 280, 651 (G651UPP), shortly after replaced by a fleet of new Northern Counties bodied Olympians during 1998.
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 Perhaps not surprisingly, Oxford quickly got rid of Wycombe's Leyland National Mark Is, never having operated any of the type itself before. It did compromise by replacing some of them with Mark 2 Nationals transferred in from fellow subsidiary companies - Brighton & Hove in the case here, but also from the London fleets, these were converted from dual door and some did operate for a while in LT red before repaint. The Brighton buses are 11.6m variants, wheras the London ones were the shorter 10.6m models. |
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Rushing into Thame on the 331/332 services from Wycombe is one of four early transfers from Go Ahead London's fleets to Wycombe Bus. Fleet numbers 701-704 covered a motley group of G and H registered long wheelbase Mercedes/Reeve Burgess minis acquired piecemeal by LT and part of the very small MTL class. Shorter MT class Reeve Burgess Mercedes all sported tail lifts for disabled services, again they too were few in number.
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One of the London National 2 models, fleet number 391.
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