Kit BRH 3

Daimler CVD 6    Brush Highbridge body 1947

The origins of Brush date back to the mid 1880`s when Brush Electric Engineering was formed to produce dynamos, motors and transformers for railway and tramway rolling stock.

Brush established a factory in Loughborough to build tramcar bodies and at the turn of the century they had produced open top bodies for Leeds, Liverpool and Plymouth Corporations plus several other undertakings.

The market was developing through the early 1900`s for petrol engined vehicles and in 1904 Brush produced a body for the chassis of a normal control Daimler.

From 1905 Brush had close connections with the BET and BAT groups in developing a single deck bus body, a relationship which continued until 1952 when Brush decide to cease production of bus bodies.

Photographs of built kits are shown below:

The kit is based on the visually identical buses, all 7’6” wide CVD6s, which were supplied to the Corporations of Bradford (10), Exeter (24), Leeds (10) and Nottingham (16) and to the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Transport and Electricity Board (SHMD) (10).

Alan Townsin recounts in the caption to a photograph of a Bradford bus: “… which had Brush 56 seat bodywork virtually to Derby specification, complete with unusually deep lower deck waistband bounded by a rubbing strip just above wheel arch level. Very similar buses were supplied to Leeds, Nottingham and Exeter – another example of a “package” deal, in this case somewhat austere in character, offered to allow quick delivery…”

Details common to the Derby buses were the upright rear dome, the four large roof ventilators on each side and the low placed rubbing strip on the lower body panels. Incidentally, while I have seen this referred to as a “Brushism”, I think that it is actually a “Derbyism” as the same was applied to all Derby buses up to at least the first Fleetlines and provided a panel in which the City (then Borough) Fathers could paint DERBY CORPORATION in big letters.

Fleet and registration numbers were:

The buses which went to the Trade Fair in Copenhagen in September 1948 were Bradford 546 (EKY 546), Nottingham 278 (KTV 278) and SHMD 40 (KMA 510). At least the Bradford and Nottingham buses continued thereafter to display a “GB” plate at the rear. This helps to date the rate of delivery as these were presumably all new buses.

The Samuel Ledgard book in the Prestige series has excellent side and rear views of the ex Leeds buses.

The timber frame on the SHMD buses is recorded as not lasting very long (perhaps because they were not built in Wigan) and new metal framed bodies were.

Maidstone Corporation Daimler CVG6s

Six Daimler CVG6s were delivered to Maidstone Corporation Transport in 1949, with straight sided bodies with square front corners similar to the Wolverhampton CVG6s. Like the Wolverhampton buses, these had sliding cab doors and a thick first upstairs window pillar but the opening windows had top sliders. These were 77-82 (LKJ 777-782) and 77, 79 and 82 were delivered new in 1949 on loan to London Transport, where they worked from Sutton Garage alongside the “indigenous” Park Royal bodied Ds until September 1950. A good pictorial source is “Routes to Recovery” by Ken Glazier (Capital Transport). Ken Blacker’s “London’s Utility Buses” has an excellent front view of 79, which is useful in showing the body proportions.
 

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