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| Having seen the photo of the uniform issue unit and trailer published last month, Ian sent in a couple of photos of the trailers taken after their disposal. These were taken at the Cobham bus museum in Spring 1975 and show two of the trailers parked outside. There is no sign of the UTx fleetnumbers officially allocated to these trailers, though they do carry the numbers of the units that they worked with. These are rather indistinct (being in white lettering) but appear to be 1466W on the left trailer and 1467W on the one on the right (with the pallet leaning against it). Three trailers were built by BB Trailers of Leamington Spa, being taken into stock as UT2-4 in July 1968, almost a year after the former buses had started work in their new role. The number UT1 had already been applied to a trailer new to British European Airways (BEA) as their N173. One of 88 baggage trailers (numbered N101-188) built by Marshalls in 1966-1967, these were used in combination with 65 new Routemaster double-deck coaches on the services run by LT between Heathrow Airport and central London on behalf of BEA. These replaced a fleet of AEC Regal coaches, 4 of which passed back to LT for use as mobile uniform issue units. N173 was also taken into stock by LT (officially on loan) on 4th October 1967, three days after the AEC Regal uniform issue units entered service, and was given the number UT1 (for Uniform Trailer). The Marshalls trailers had a distinctive appearance with sloping sides. The trailer behind 1468W in the photo bottom-right (taken by Alan B Cross at Chiswick Works on 24th July 1973) is evidently N173/UT1. Which leads me back to the identities of the BB trailers. Since the 'parent' vehicle number was painted on the trailers, it was suggested that they were semi-permanently associated, and that this would have been done in numerical order. This would mean that the trailers marked 1466W and 1467W would have been UT2 and UT3 respectively. However, the Alan Cross photo shows 1468W with UT1, so perhaps UT2-4 worked with 1465-1467W, meaning that the two in the photos are UT3 and UT4. I guess we will never know for sure. Another unknown is what happened to these trailers. The Regal uniform units remained in use until 1976/1977, when they were replaced by new Ford D-series lorries. However, the four trailers were reportedly sold to the British Bus Preservation Group in August 1974. This tallies with them being at Cobham in Spring 1975. What happened to them after this is not clear, though it is fairly certain that none survived. |
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| Photographer: | Photo ID: | 6610 | |
| Photo date: | 24/07/1973 | Size: | Regular. An extra large copy of this photo is available. |
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| Date added: | 18/02/2021 | ||