Berlin buses to be Built in Britain

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MB engines part of the German deal i wonder, unless these new buses are hybrids.
They are most likely hybrids The powerpack is Cummins and the engines no doubt will be built in Daventry at Cummins UK .
This will mean they get UK/EU certification whereas Cummins in the US gets Fed & Calif certifications.
The powerpack is not unlike many high capacity buses already in proven service in the US with companies like Gillig Bus of Hayward Ca.

I was seconded to this company when I worked for Leyland Bus, and Gillig was buying the Leyland U66 underframe & suspension systems for their Phantom bus range.
I was recently recalling this, as I was a regular passenger on TWA leaving London at 12 noon out of LHR to JFK on Sundays.
As a side bar !
Often I would be greeted at the jetway by this hot shapely chick of a flight attendant with the "big hair " of that era . She used to do JFK LHR Tel Aviv or New Delhi run.
(Sounds corny but it was love at first sight)
I never dared to ask her for a date thought, since I was alway flying on to SFO, or down to South America way, Argentina Uruguay Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, all with TWA. Great airline & always got you a connection.
About 10 years on and doing something quite different, I ran into her in Denver . (what at a coincidence)
Got married 6 weeks later, and we have been together for 25 years now, our anniversary coming up on July 13th.
Wife, (from Sandpoint Idaho) business partner and mother of our 6 kids.
I suppose thank you TWA, now long forgotten like Leyland Trucks & Buses that was once upon a time a big foreign revenue earner for the UK.
Now it fiddles with everyone's money.
Tuercas viejas
TWA:-
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This thread brings back the time we had the contract to build the what we called the bumble bee engine ,so called because it was for those USA yellow federal school buses,you got the feeling they never tried to repair those engines they just put new ones in the bus,but I suppose there must have been many thousands of those buses clocking up big mileage,the contract eventually went to Brazil,something to do with less tax ? anyway good news about Dennis,the Cummins engines are good,we helped build the medium size truck engine they have,and going way back when Ford brought out the Transcontinental there was a number of engine options including Rolls Royce and a Gardener diesel lump but the buyers nearly always had the Cummins.
 
Industrial policy over the decades seems more or less to have been prioritised by industries that public schoolboys want to work in.

Banking and....err banks.

It's not just 'public schoolboys'.

The impact is on technical talent that would otherwise pursue jobs in industry - graduates end up getting drawn into finance systems by the money on offer. This has an impact on Universities and teaching as well. It becomes hard to recruit youngsters in cities where there are several large financial firms recruiting IT people for their own development projects.
 
It's not just 'public schoolboys'.

The impact is on technical talent that would otherwise pursue jobs in industry - graduates end up getting drawn into finance systems by the money on offer. This has an impact on Universities and teaching as well. It becomes hard to recruit youngsters in cities where there are several large financial firms recruiting IT people for their own development projects.

Having said that, in London at least, the likes of Google, and Microsoft Amazon are setting up big campuses away from the sterility of Canary Wharf and back into the interesting parts of town that are (a) easy to get to and (b) offer a much higher quality of (night)life.

If I was a youngster I know where I'd rather work and play.........
 
Err...we're actually extremely good at the financial services stuff. Massive contributor the country's finances.
But, yes, other sectors have been ignored.
Industrial policy over the decades seems more or less to have been prioritised by industries that public schoolboys want to work in.
Banking and....err banks.

There aren't many public schoolboys or girls amongst the 1,100,000 people working in UK commercial banks, insurance companies, commercial finance, and all their related service suppliers.

Head over to the advanced sciences, languages, arts, general services, legal, accounting, property, teaching, lecturing, and academia if you want to find people who were educated in the private sector, getting better academic qualifications and teamwork skills as a result of spending a third of a million quid on academically orientated teaching.

Our schools and colleges produce appalling artisans and senior engineers compared to Germany, Japan and the USA simply because BOTH political parties have emphasised "Academic" arts education over applied lifetime technical training and development and as a nation we're viewed engineering as a working class inferior skill.

On the other hand, compared to Spain, France, Poland, Hungary, Africa etc etc. we're still doing pretty well. The British love to whine that we're not in the top ten for this and that, while remembering that, despite being just 1% of the World's population, the other 160 nations are still often behind us.

Hand on your heart now, are you encouraging your daughter to go into Engineering, Science or Industry ? (I did - she's got a Masters in Physics, with perfect academic results - and what did she do? Went into Finance because it's academically more rigorous than the likes of JLR, Google, Tax and Accounting that her peers went into)
 
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Industrial policy over the decades seems more or less to have been prioritised by industries that public schoolboys want to work in. Banking and....err banks.
The heads of Banking and Insurance would argue that the sector has made its own fortune regardless of Government policy, both at UK and EU level. The success of Insurance or Aviation Finance, like British Film, Media, communications and creative arts lies more in the ability to access and meld a broad range of skills - from Sales to Accounting, from Recruitment to Property, from Legal to training.

You can recruit and get stuff done with people in the South East of England that you can't get done elsewhere. It's not "Government" that makes Insurance work, it's a broad mix of people.

.
 
This thread brings back the time we had the contract to build the what we called the bumble bee engine ,so called because it was for those USA yellow federal school buses,you got the feeling they never tried to repair those engines they just put new ones in the bus,but I suppose there must have been many thousands of those buses clocking up big mileage,the contract eventually went to Brazil,something to do with less tax ? anyway good news about Dennis,the Cummins engines are good,we helped build the medium size truck engine they have,and going way back when Ford brought out the Transcontinental there was a number of engine options including Rolls Royce and a Gardener diesel lump but the buyers nearly always had the Cummins.
Essentially the Rolls Royce diesel and the Gardener faded away because they couldn't meet emission reg including Euro 3 legislation at the time.

The Cummins 5,9 B series you mention has wide selectable power output for medium duty use at about 145 for urban operation.
Its what powers the Dennis Dart coupled to a selectable transmission on production being once upon a time ZF HP 500 , but now Allison or Voith.
The two principal manufacturers of school buses in the US are Thomas and Bluebird.
Thomas of High Point in the Carolinas has a build agreement with Alexander.

For info many of these Fed spec school buses back ten years or so ago did get the MB 900 series engine which frankly was service disaster, and supported by Freightliner/Detroit engine dealers over here .
Consequently they were thrown out and repowered by the Cummins B series powerpacks.
Many of these school buses find their way from Local State Gov disposal auctions to places in Central America to start a new life as public transport.

So far as Belin is concerned there is a bit of historical a back story turning hysterical laughing (in some quarters) from the 1980's & the Thatcher era.
Seconded as tech advisor to the Iraqi Gov at Rkab Baghdad, who operated AEC Regents traditionally post war , & they did buy a 1000 Leyland Atlantean deckers/Park Royal bodied units , which proved to be fairly durable but had mechanical cooling system issues.
It all turned into a fiasco, and the business political relationship definitely "already slightly soured" when a high level Iraqi delegation went off to the UK with view to buying another 1000 Leyland units. (IF they could thrash out the engineering problems with the cooling system by meeting with senior Leyland directorship. )
Well in short the anticipated meeting never happened, & they were snubbed.
I commented that the toffee nosed dicks didn't want to meet them as it was below their dignity.
Of course I was all furiously denied with lame excuses which turned out to be costly in loss of long term business, but it had deeper political overtones all the way up to the Saddam level .

In any case after two days in the UK the delegation abruptly departed without notice, and flew off to Berlin ,where they signed a purchase order for 500 MAN decker units as used by the Berlin City transport system. Leyland/UK got the scraps off the table and eventually selling 500 more units with Willowbrook bodies which suffered with awful build quality issues. UK production quality reputation took a nosedive.
Leyland Bus tried to salvage the relationship even sending a newer spec Olympian decker FOC named "tadge-rroba klatha" (demo #3) to try as a demo unit . It competed head on with the Berlin Spec MAN units.
It worked quite well, but they gracefully snubbed the offer & after a year and I was told to remove it.
Eventually I drove it after a lot of paperwork hassles, from Baghdad to Kuwait City where it was shipped back to Loughborough & Eastern Coachworks which was shortly closed down thereafter .

Its nice to see deckers being exported to Berlin & made in the UK & I only hope it works without serious incident & the Leyland Bus incident isn't repeated.
Tuercas Viejas .
 
You can recruit and get stuff done with people in the South East of England that you can't get done elsewhere. It's not "Government" that makes Insurance work, it's a broad mix of people.

Critical mass.

Trouble is if the economy becomes imbalanced then you drain other sectors of talent.

And this affects the geographic distribution of the economic goodness.

The government does have an impact on some sectors. The decision making / procurement also tends to anchor large businesses to the South of England. This seeds or adds to the critical mass.
 
Critical mass Trouble is if the economy becomes imbalanced then you drain other sectors of talent.
And this affects the geographic distribution of the economic goodness.
The government does have an impact on some sectors. The decision making / procurement also tends to anchor large businesses to the South of England. This seeds or adds to the critical mass.

Certainly critical mass. Geography, including weather, brings more people to the South East than Government, surely? Think of all the Scots who rush down to London on the trains and planes. Think of all the two career families who are drawn to major cities such as Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol or London.

Your insurance company or credit card company isn't based in the South East (and Cheshire) because of Labour or Conservative policy.

JLR is strong in the Midlands not because of Central Government - it's because of the skills and supply chain - even though the employees still, in this day and age, work "Flextime." (Unbelievably)
 
There aren't many public schoolboys or girls amongst the 1,100,000 people working in UK commercial banks, insurance companies, commercial finance, and all their related service suppliers.

Head over to the advanced sciences, languages, arts, general services, legal, accounting, property, teaching, lecturing, and academia if you want to find people who were educated in the private sector, getting better academic qualifications and teamwork skills as a result of spending a third of a million quid on academically orientated teaching.

Our schools and colleges produce appalling artisans and senior engineers compared to Germany, Japan and the USA simply because BOTH political parties have emphasised "Academic" arts education over applied lifetime technical training and development and as a nation we're viewed engineering as a working class inferior skill.

On the other hand, compared to Spain, France, Poland, Hungary, Africa etc etc. we're still doing pretty well. The British love to whine that we're not in the top ten for this and that, while remembering that, despite being just 1% of the World's population, the other 160 nations are still often behind us.

Hand on your heart now, are you encouraging your daughter to go into Engineering, Science or Industry ? (I did - she's got a Masters in Physics, with perfect academic results - and what did she do? Went into Finance because it's academically more rigorous than the likes of JLR, Google, Tax and Accounting that her peers went into)

Good answer.

Oddly enough my son is good at phyiscs & maths and is more interested in going into engineering than data science - I was seeing if I could nudge him in the latter direction as there's a massive demand. And loads of city-based jobs (city not City) which was by far my preference as a young man.

My daughter's also strong on STEM subjects but I've no idea what direction she'll take at this stage. I'll support her whatever she wants to do. She even, apparently wants to live in "the country" wherever that is. LOL. What's wrong with London !?! :)
 
It’s great news. There was quite a bit of ill feeling with Dennis in Guildford when they closed the chassis factory last year citing COVID, then outsourced to Turkey. But good if these buses will be built in the UK.
Let's hope so
 
Let's hope so
One of the fundamental issues today is steel slab production.
Only a few countries produce steel slab these days , China is the world supplier and Turkey isn't far behind them.
There is in fact a world shortage of steel at the moment, dominated by Chinese production shortages & supplies of slab for the rolling mills.
So it makes sense to produce chassis frame sections in Turkey since they make this slab & have rolling mills to produce chassis sections etc
Of course all this was once made by British Steel in places like Scunthorpe.
Nowadays it's a wise move to make it in Turkey, and let the lads in Sheffield & Scunthorpe do the Full Monty at the local ladies night out for a few bob! . :eek:
Tuercas viejas
 

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