British Rail railbuses

British Rail Railbuses
Railbus no. 79964 at York Railfest exhibition on 3 June 2004. This vehicle is preserved on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
In service	Passenger: 1958–1968 Departmental: 1950–1997
Capacity	46–56 seats
Operator(s)	British Rail

British Rail produced a variety of railbuses as a means of both building new rolling stock cheaply, and to provide services on lightly used lines economically.

Terminology

Railbuses are a very lightweight type of railcar designed specifically for passenger transport on little-used railway lines. As the name suggests, they share many aspects of their construction with a bus, usually having a bus body, or a modified bus body, and having four wheels on a fixed wheelbase, instead of on bogies. Some, but not all, of the units have been equipped for operation as diesel multiple units.

First Generation BR railbuses

999507 Elliot on the Middleton Railway

In the late 1950s, British Rail tested a series of small railbuses, produced by a variety of manufacturers, for about £12,500 each (£261,000 at 2014 prices). These proved to be very economical (on test the Wickham bus was about 9 mpg_-imp (0.31 L/km)), but also somewhat unreliable. The lines they worked on were mainly closed during the Beeching Cuts and, being non-standard, they were all withdrawn in the mid-1960s, before being allocated TOPS classifications.

In addition to these railbuses, BR ordered three for departmental (non-revenue earning) service. The full list of passenger and departmental units is set out below.

Table of orders and numbers

Lot No.	Manufacturer	Diagram	Qty	Fleet numbers	Service life	Length over body	Seats	Notes
30483	Bristol / Eastern Coach Works	610	2	Sc79958–79959	1958–1966	42 ft 4 in (12.90 m)	56
30482	Waggon- und Maschinenbau GmbH Donauwörth railbus	611	5	E79960–79964	1958–1967	45 ft 10 in (13.97 m)	56
30481	D Wickham & Co	612	5	Sc79965–79969	1958–1966	38 ft 0 in (11.58 m)	48
30480	Park Royal Vehicles	613	5	Sc79970, 79974 M79971–79973	1958–1968	42 ft 0 in (12.80 m)	50
30479	AC Cars	614	5	W79975–79978 Sc79979	1958–1968	36 ft 0 in (10.97 m)	46
	D Wickham & Co		1	RDB999507 Elliot	1958–1997
	Drewry Car Co.		2	RDB998900-998901	1950–1990

Number W79978 at the Colne Valley Railway

Engines

• 79958/59, Gardner 6HLW of 112 bhp (84 kW) at 1,700 rpm
• 79960–62/64, Büssing, 150 bhp (110 kW) at 1,900 rpm
• 79963, AEC A220X
• 79965–69, Meadows 6HDT500 of 105 bhp (78 kW) at 1,800 rpm
• 79970–74, AEC, 150 bhp (110 kW)
• 79975–79, AEC, 150 bhp (110 kW)

Second Generation BR railbuses

The unique Leyland Railbus LEV1 is shunted at Weybourne Station, North Norfolk Railway

RB004 at the Telford Steam Railway

British Rail returned to the idea of railbuses from the mid-1970s, and a prototype four wheel vehicle was developed jointly by British Leyland and the British Rail Research Division. A number of single and two-car railbuses were built and tested, in co-operation with Leyland (hence the generic term for these vehicles as LEV (Leyland Experimental Vehicle) railbuses). The first three single car prototypes were essentially Leyland National bus bodies mounted on a modified HSFV1 four wheeled rail chassis. The prototype two-car railbus was allocated Class 140 and is dealt with on that page, but the prototype single car railbuses were not classified and are set out in the table below:

Number	Identity	Builder	Introduced	Withdrawn
RDB 975874	LEV1	Leyland/BREL Derby	1978	1987
-	LEV2/R3	Leyland/Wickham	1980	19??
RDB 977020	R3	Leyland/BREL Derby	1981	1990
-	RB004	Leyland/BREL Derby	1984	19??
-	RB002	Leyland/BREL Derby	1984	19??

In 1978 tests were carried out with a modified double ended Leyland National bus body placed on an unpowered wagon chassis derived from HSFV1, this was LEV1 (Leyland Experimental Vehicle 1). Whilst in its unpowered state this vehicle never left the Railway Technical Centre in Derby. In 1979 a powertrain was added to LEV1, the engine being a Leyland 510 diesel, and the transmission a mechanical type with self-changing gears.

Even though some of these vehicles carried numbers in the departmental coach series, they were actually used in ordinary passenger service. LEV1 was tested in passenger service at first in East Anglia, and then elsewhere, before being temporarily exported to the USA in the early 1980s. LEV1 was withdrawn and transferred to the National Railway Museum in 1987, it was until recently at the North Norfolk Railway where it underwent restoration. In 2012 it was moved to the NRM's Shildon site.

LEV2 was built especially for the USA at 15.3 m (50 ft) was a stretched version of LEV1 and sometimes known as R3. Following export around 1981 it was used on an experimental extension of MBTA (Boston) commuter service to Concord, New Hampshire. When that experiment was ended in 1981 the LEV2 was sold to Amtrak for use on the Northeast Corridor, but it was quickly put out of service after an accident at a crossing. It was subsequently sold to the Steamtown Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania for use as a shuttle, but was damaged during repair and sold for scrap. It was bought from the scrap dealer by the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad, a tourist railroad in West Virginia, and later sold to the Connecticut Trolley Museum, where it remains to this day.

Similarly, the BR version of R3 (RDB977020) was run in service on BR for a few years before eventually being sold to Northern Ireland Railways in late 1982, and being converted to 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) Irish gauge. R3, also known as RB003, was withdrawn in 1990 and preserved, initially at the Ulster Transport Museum, then in 2001 at the Downpatrick & County Down Railway Museum.

Another version, RB004 was built at Derby in 1984. The body was built at the Leyland plant at Workington and BREL Derby C&W were responsible for the underframe and final assembly. This is preserved in running order at the Waverley Route Heritage Association site at Whitrope.

Yet another BREL-Leyland product from c1984, RB002 was exported as a demonstrator to the USA and Canada and spent a considerable time there. It also went to Denmark and Sweden as a demonstrator. Afterwards, the RB002 was used in the Netherlands and Germany for a demonstration of light rail vehicles on the then defunct railway between Enschede and Gronau. It returned to the UK and was used as a classroom/office by BREL for a while and somehow it too ended up in Ireland. Its present location is believed to be at the now closed standard gauge Riverstown Old Corn Railway near Dundalk in Eire but it is understood to be in a poor state of repair.

These railbuses were sent abroad in the hope of gathering export orders, but they never transpired.

In addition, there was an experiment with a loco-hauled Leyland-built vehicle. A National bus-type body was placed on the 63-foot (19 m) underframe from Mk1 BCK coach number 21234. This was numbered RDB 977091 and was run in normal service around the London Midland region alongside ordinary coaching stock until withdrawn as being unsuitable. The only direct connection with railbuses was the use of the same type of bus based body shell to reduce costs to a minimum. The coach is now preserved at the Llanelli and Mynydd Mawr Railway.

Pacers

The result of these tests was that British Rail ordered a series of two- and three-car Railbuses, which became known as Pacers (or Skippers on the Western Region) and were allocated TOPS Classes 141–144. The next generation of Sprinter units were based on conventional railway design and bogie mounted bodies.

Routes

Lines regularly served by railbuses include:

• Cambridge to Mildenhall railway
• Saffron Walden Railway

Preservation

A number of the BR railbuses, both first and second generation examples have survived into preservation, as follows:

Vehicle No.	Builder	Year Built	Location	Comments
First Generation Railbuses
79960	Waggon und Maschinenbau	1958	Ribble Steam Railway	-
79962	Waggon und Maschinenbau	1958	Keighley and Worth Valley Railway	-
79963	Waggon und Maschinenbau	1958	East Anglian Railway Museum	-
79964	Waggon und Maschinenbau	1958	Keighley and Worth Valley Railway	-
79976	AC Cars	1958	Great Central Railway	Stored as sheeted-over carcass.
79978	AC Cars	1958	Colne Valley Railway	-
RDB999507	Wickham	1958	Previously Middleton Railway – moved to Lavender Line 2009	Elliot High-speed track-recording unit
RDB998901	Drewry Car Company	1950	Middleton Railway	Overhead-line inspection car
Second Generation Railbuses
RDB975874	Leyland/BREL Derby	1978	Wensleydale Railway	LEV 1
LEV2	Leyland/BREL Derby	1980	Connecticut Trolley Museum	There is a project to repatriate LEV2
RDB977020	Leyland/BREL Derby	1981	Downpatrick & County Down Railway in Northern Ireland	LEV3 aka RB3. Has been regauged to 5'3”
RB002	Leyland/BREL Derby	198?	Riverstown Old Corn Railway? near Dundalk, Eire	RB002 aka The Denmark
RB004	Leyland/BREL Derby	1984	Currently at the Whitrope Siding (arrived 31 May 2012)	Owned by Northumbria Rail Ltd. and The Railbus Trust. Moved from Telford Steam Railway to Llangollen Railway 20 May 2011 and then to Midland Railway Centre 19 August 2011

Additionally, AC Cars railbus 79979 was preserved, as a grounded body, on the Strathspey Railway. It was scrapped by MC Metals, Glasgow, in 1990.

External links

• EM2 Locomotive Society – owners of Drewry railcar DB998901.
• Old Dalby Test Track site – Pictures of the Drewry car RDB998901 in action at BR's test track
• Wickham Railbus Group – owners of Wickham railbus DB999507.
• Train Testing site – Pictures of the testing and travels of the early railbuses
• Train Testing site – Pictures of LEV1 in USA
• departmentals.com
• The Railbus Trust – Working to protect the future of Single Car Railbuses and Second Generation DMU prototypes.