Bristol Lodekka: books - history, types and construction

Bristol Lodekka

Lodekkas first appeared in service during a period when the passenger-transport industry was enjoying a peak in popularity. Passenger numbers were among their highest ever in the provinces, and most members of society relied on public transport for journeys to and from work or school, or for leisure activities.
The Lodekka was supplied only to state-owned transport operators, as a result of sales restrictions imposed on the manufacturer, yet some 5,217 examples were built between 1949 and 1968, making it one of the most familiar British double-deck bus types throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

This book, which features a huge variety of photographs, including a number of official views which will be of great interest to modellers and enthusiasts alike, recalls a period when Bristol Lodekkas not only formed the mainstay of many provincial bus fleets but also one in which company liveries were closely associated with specific areas of the country.
It gives a colourful look at the life and times of the Bristol Lodekka, portraying it in different liveries and locations as it worked the country with a variety of operators.

Bristol Lodekkas

The Bristol Lodekka derived from a prototype of 1949. It offered the solution to a problem familiar to almost every bus operator: low railway bridges. An ingenious re-design of the transmission in which the propeller shaft was offset to the side and drove a drop-centre, double-reduction rear axle eliminated the conventional step up from the platform to the lower saloon, allowing a flat floor and reducing the overall height of a double-decker by a foot.

The production vehicle, known as the LD-type, began to appear from 1953. All Lodekkas were bodied by Eastern Coach Works of Lowestoft, who embraced the post-war fashion for enclosing the engine in a rounded `cowl'.
The result was rather inelegant, but subsequent refinements of the design and the relaxation of the Construction and Use regulations to permit buses 30 feet long, made the final form of the Lodekka - the FLF-type - a handsome and imposing vehicle.

By the period covered here, the LD was down to a handful of survivors south of the border, but considerable numbers still ran in the fleet of the Eastern Scottish company. Later variants were still to be found in large numbers, but production had ceased in 1968 and even the last examples were approaching the ends of their lives.
The author, who was for twenty years a busman, developed a considerable partiality for the Lodekka and took pains to build up a collection of photographs which depict the type at a time when it was still, just, a familiar sight the length and breadth of Britain.