If you are one of us nutters who preserves old buses and coaches, you'll be very familiar with the commonly heard comment at shows and rallies: "I used to go to school on a bus just like that one".
Well, I used to regularly go to school on a Portsmouth Corporation bus service 148A, changing at Cosham, Red Lion for a Southdown service 137 for the journey up Portsdown Hill to school. The Southdown bus was always a PD3 (or a "Queen Mary" as they are sometimes called), but I never took much notice of exactly which one it was. But the Portsmouth bus was the same vehicle nearly every day - fleet number 236. And surprise, surprise, this is the very vehicle that has been preserved. So when a share became available, I bought it. Which means I can say with total honesty "I used to go to school on that bus".
Never thought I'd drive it, though.
Atlantean 236 is one of the vehicles that forms part of the collection of the City of Portsmouth Preserved Transport Depot.
There's lots more about this very fine vehicle at www.atlantean236.org.uk
Ann also wanted the bus she went to school on - but has had to settle for a model. She lived in Harow and school transport was either a 140 or 114. The 140 was one of the last routes in North West London that was operated by RT's, so a suitable model was acquired and repainted to represent a vehicle that might have operated from Harrow Weald Garage in around 1972. The 114 was at that time a Swift and an early sign of summer was to see one of them parked at the side of the road in the hillier bits of Harrow with a seat cushion resting against the back of the bus, billowing steam from the radiator and awaiting recovery.
