SORRY, NOT IN SERVICE

At least, that was the case for decades, but now this 1931 bus has been rescued and fully restored. John Evans drives it

Sent to London during the Blitz to help fill gaps in the capital’s bus fleet, then returned to Birmingham a few weeks later for the same reason after a major bus depot in the city is bombed. After the war, sent to a scrapyard but somehow spared and in 1969 discovered in a Herefordshire field being used as a home defended bya chap not afraid to use a shotgun to repel trespassers.

Bought, minus its engine, by a preservation society and eventually, after a series of false starts, embarks in 2012 on an extended period of restoration interrupted, in 2018, by the expensive realisation that the refurbishment of its replacement engine has been bodged. Finally, in June 2022, following a second

but this time successful rebuild of its mechanicals, AEC Regent 486, a former Birmingham City Transport double-decker, is unveiled to the public in all its restored glory, looking as fresh as the day it entered service from Harborne Garage, its home depot in Birmingham, on 4 December 1931.

The story of this AEC Regent, one of 60 commissioned and operated by the Birmingham Corporation Tramways and Omnibus Department, the predecessor of Birmingham City Transport, is nothing if not colourful. We’re telling it now because, this being Christmas, seeing it in all its polished glory at Wythall Transport Museum is just the excuse you need to escape the confines of home.

Just think: before they had cars, this is how our grandparents used to travel. Even then, when folk did have a motor, they never travelled like they did in an AEC Regent. This Rolls-Royce of buses, one of the first metal-frame models to leave MetroCammell’s Birmingham works, was richly appointed and, from its chromed fittings and thickly varnished trim to its reliable, chain-driven window winders and sculpted body, beautifully built.