Routemaster versus BMMO D9 versus Lodekka

The 1950s was an exciting time for the British bus manufacturing industry.  The UK was starting to recover from the destruction and waste of the Second World War.  But the conflict had also accelerated technical innovation.  Many established bus builders moved across to war production and encountered the new materials and advanced techniques involved in aircraft manufacture.  They were able to use those to produce more efficient and productive bus designs when they could return to civilian work.

Even so, the basic design of the double-deck bus maintained the established layout of a front engine with the driver sitting in a half-cab next to the engine.  Bristol and Eastern Coach Works unveiled their Lodekka in 1949.  London Transport's technical team began work on what became the Routemaster around the same time.  Both followed that pattern because that was what the operators wanted.  Midland Red (which built most of its own buses) opted to retain that layout even though by the late 1950s, when the BMMO D9 appeared, the Leyland Atlantean was convincingly showing that the way forward lay with rear-engined double-deckers.

So the three models I am considering here managed to incorporate new technology (in many respects more advanced than that in the production Atlantean) within what was - by 1960 - looking like an outdated package.  They were - in my terminology - 'third generation' front-engined half-cab double-deckers.  To discover what I mean by that, press the first button below, then follow the others as you like.

By the way, getting a line-up of the three buses together in real life would take some doing, so I am relying on three 1:76 scale models to point out some of their major features.