TheGrandWazoo
Veteran Member
But that stat of "10 to 20 awaiting repairs" is pretty meaningless without some other context - if, for example you had a fleet of 200 Nationals and 50 Bristol VRs then only 5 VRs off the road would mean that you had the same proportion off the road as the worst case with the National.
The engine was imperfect, but the National's longevity, even with a 510 engine was pretty much unheard of before then particularly given the sheer number of them - yes we can all cite an operator in the 80s or early 90s which were running a Leyland Olympic, Bristol MW or some other obscurity - but they were the exceptions, yet Nationals were still plying their trade up to the early 2000s in many areas.
LCBS did withdraw their early Nationals quite early - but that was true of most other types they ran, many RPs disappeared when quite young for example and a number made a journey directly to Wombwell diesels. There were two problems with LCBS's early Nationals - the very early ones were dual door which LCBS didn't like and these along with the first of the single door ones were 11.3m - and LCBS didn't like long single decks (in common with LT) because they tended to struggle around some of the housing estates and older towns. The 11.3m Nationals were replaced with alot of 10.3m examples the last of which were withdrawn in the early 2000s - I think The Shires still had some ex LCBS Nationals quite late on.
LCBS was really in a difficult position in the early 70s - separated from its parent LT, strugglng with high costs (a legacy of its LT parentage) and a declining income, an old fleet and a seeming problem with getting anything new to work - though again you might wonder whether that was another legacy of the LT "not invented here" syndrome of finding fault with new buses which other operators were managing to make work in a satisfactory way - it never made sense that LT struggled with Fleetlines which GMPTE, WMPTE and several other operators made work.
United Automobile Services was the firm and, at that time in the mid 1980s, had c.150 Mk1 Nationals so about c.10% were off the road awaiting new engines. They would have had a similar number of Bristol VRs and, in contrast, they did not experience the same level of issues. Hope that provides the context that you desire.
As I stated, whilst I did state that LCBS had disposed of their early examples, I also clearly stated that whilst a number were scrapped, a number did go on to serve with other NBC subsidiaries. Hence they can't have been that bad.