A good friends interested in the semi trailer bus, i will p.m. you.

After seaching for many years for any book on semi-trailer buses a lady at the Adelaide library gave me Greg Travers address and I corresponded with him about the subject, I traded him a journal I had written for my daughters for one of his books on Australian articulated buses, there are no prizes for guessing who got the best deal! Well, it is the best account ever written on the subject down to every detail and loads of great pictures, I have always been fascinated by semi-buses probably from driving this one as a youngster, taking school children out on picnics or offsiding on the Darwin run if we had too much freight and few passengers, we had no freight trucks until we built our own, swishy probably correct in the law stepping in, or passengers likeing to see who was driving them. If ever I fly commercial I like to see the pilot : the greatest books on transport are those by Jack Maddox or Kurt Johannsen, One of my daughters, knowing my great interest in reading truckies stories of life on the road bought me for xmas a book of the best Australian trucking stories. I quickly grabbed a cold one and a quiet place to read, well, this book is the sorriest piece of work I have ever seen, completely self promoting by someone with no experience in trucking, mostly all about show people loosely connected to the transport industry, long drawn out stories by Lez Martin about the Government road train and Vesty's which have been written about so many times they are known by heart, a few incidents that are everyday occurances, giving someone a tow, about getting a ticket for some trivial act, a terrible truck accident that left much to be explained, which is why I believe that if the stories and pictures on these forums were edited and printed they would be a best seller for the Tarcutta museum, stories that stay in your memory like when sailorV one cold night came across a hitch hiker fallen off the back of a truck unconcious in the midle of the road, not having a blanket Peter lit spinefex fires around him to keep him warm, waiting with him until daylight when help came along to take him for medical care. or an extract from George Bush's book, quote: So dick Cheney explained to me how we could start a war just so we could funnel billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his company, Halliburton, and realize obscene, windfall profits off the increased stock price. I said to him "Dick, are the the Press and the American people going to stand for something like that?" And he just laughed and laughed and laughed, and pretty soon, I was laughing too, genuine touching yarns, so one has to very careful about the scam artists out there to make a quick dollar by cunning advertising a product that has no real content

Right here:
www.hcvc.com.au/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1352707645/2#2

Here's a nice Commer semi trailer bus for you, from the 1960s:

I wouldn' mind one of those bus trailers to stick behind the Commer. Where can I find one?

Here is a link to the Bus aust site showing the NEMCO White Trailer bus

www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=31283&start=25

Interesting that a former Mechanic of Bonds has also posted on the forum.
The grandson of the founder, Bruce also gave me this photo a few years ago and said they didn't keep the bus long as it used to pass the truck quite regularly and got its self into strife once hitting a bridge. Eventually New England Motor Co was taken over by Kirklands around 1970.

New England Airways was also started by George Robinson in the early 30's and suffered a big blow with the Stinson disaster on Lamington Plateau with only 2 survivors. Another one crashing at Archerfield not long after and subsequent Stinson aircraft seconded into the war effort they all didn't last long.

Brisbane City Council, Tramways Workshops built buses (amongst other things like wooden guns )for the Australian Government, the buses were very basic and were to take workers from Moorooka to the Rocklea ammunitions factory and Archerfield Aerodrome assembly plants during WW2.
There are a couple of photos in the Nat archives of these, but not as good as the Council one held at Toowong Bus Workshops, which I will try to post.
Some of the items were supplied by Fowlers' of which I have a copy of an invoice, and seem to predate the Landliners. Unfortunately these buses too didn't last long and one was hit by a drunk negro driving an American truck at the Ipswich Rd bridge over the creek at Granard Rd intersection and ripped out the side of the bus and killed several people inside.

There was also a White Semi trailer bus at the Sydney Bus Museum when it was at Tempe.

I found this while researching something else.
WA semitrailer buses (20 vehicles):
www.perthbus.info/prequery.php?qqid=7901...83736470000&ccid=790

I bet that investigation from the home page will bring up those in other states too.


Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

RE: I'm not aware that they were banned for any reason

Guess n out side the square here

Probly a law introduced 'No Passengers in Trailers"

The main issues with them were probably:
1) Expensive to run, needing a two man crew
2) Drop in bus passenger travel from the 1950s made their higher carrying capacity unnecessary
3) Size made them difficult to drive in increasing traffic
4) larger rigid buses becoming permitted allowed similar capacity in less length

I'm not aware that they were banned for any reason

Ripper pics, SalorV and the rest of you blokes..just great.
Anyone know why these went out of fashion / or became illegal? Did one come off or something? That wouldn't be too flash, would it....
cheers
Richard

Eggins comfort coaches of Taree had one of those trailer bus set ups in the early 1960s on the Harrington to Taree school bus run.It had a white 3000 as the prime mover.I can still remember riding in it on school excursions.A few years back it was located on a property in Brisbane. As to its where abouts now I dont know.

Beaver,
Sorry if I am wrong but I was told it was one of Murray Valley's by an old bloke a few years ago who was in the picture [I wouldn't know as I wasn't born yet] he also names for a fair few of the people in the photo,there is not many about to prove him wrong
Colin

Talk of semi buses got me looking for this one ,a Federal I think 1946 or there abouts of Murray Valley Bus Lines

Colin

Murray Valley Coaches got 3 or 4 semitrailer coaches in the mid 40s, but they had quite streamlined bodies. This one looks like a military specification bus, a couple of Melbourne operators had similar designs for industrial services.

A good reference on this design is "The Australian Articulated Bus" by Greg Travers (1987). Covers the semi trailer era through to the more recent "bendi-bus".

There is also a book on the history of MVC which is still in print available from specialist transport bookshops.

AEC Matador from Parramatta Bus Lines.

You,ve seen this one before! White Super Power.

Pells Comet from Nambucca.