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PICTURE OF THE WEEK
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Worthing Tramocar
After two weeks of electric buses we have a bus pretending to be electric, the replica Worthing Tramocar housed at the Amberley Museum in Sussex. The brainchild of the Tramocar was none less than Bill Gates - no not that Bill Gates, but a Londoner who made his fortune in businees in New Zealand who returned to settle in Worthing. He noticed how elderley folk struggled to board the local high floor Southdown buses and invented the Tramocar. It was based on the Shelvoke and Drewry Freighter, a truck with a very low load height (less than 2ft or 60cm). They were favourites in municipal fleets and widely used as dustcarts. Initially Bill ordered two dustcarts and got a coachbuilder in London to build suitable bodies, retaining the low load height. They entered service at Easter time in 1924 on a route between Worthing Pier and Sea View Road and became very popular with the locals. The route network grew and the fleet expanded, later models being bodied by Harringtons and fitted with pneumatic tyres. In 1938 Tramocar was acquired by Southdown who painted the last cars, ordered before the takeover, in their colours. Eventually, of course, they were all replaced with conventional buses. This particular Tramocar started life as a dustcart in Truro, and was acquired by preservationists in the 1990s, its replica body being built at the Amberley Museum, now registered BP9822 it gives rides around the site. The Museum has reopened post Covid and visits can be booked. Click here.

We are grateful to Graham Lelliott for this week's photo. It features as one in a series of limited edition postcards that he produces, which have a strong Southdown bias. He has requested copies of our images of Southdown Scania Enviro400 15586 in the livery commemorating the company's centenary and the 70th anniversary of VE Day. The Tramocar postcard - and later the one of 15586 - can be found in Graham's shop, UKWMO, on eBay.
We have thousands of pictures to choose from for our Picture of the Week but you are welcome to send in your own. If we do not feature it here, it may appear later in our picture gallery.
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Please email to rally @showbus.com with "Picture of the Week" as the subject
See May 23rd's picture of the week here.