British Rail railbuses

Terminology

Railbuses are a very lightweight type of railcar designed specifically for passenger transport on little-used railway lines. As the name suggests, they share many aspects of their construction with a bus, usually having a bus body, or a modified bus body, and having four wheels on a fixed wheelbase, instead of on bogies. Some, but not all, of the units have been equipped for operation as diesel multiple units.

First Generation BR railbuses

In the late 1950s, British Rail tested a series of small railbuses, produced by a variety of manufacturers, for about £12,500 each (£261,000 at 2014 prices). These proved to be very economical (on test the Wickham bus was about 9 mpg_‑imp (0.31 L/km)), but also somewhat unreliable. The lines they worked on were mainly closed during the Beeching Cuts and, being non-standard, they were all withdrawn in the mid-1960s, before being allocated TOPS classifications.

In addition to these railbuses, BR ordered three for departmental (non-revenue earning) service. The full list of passenger and departmental units is set out below.

Second Generation BR railbuses

British Rail returned to the idea of railbuses from the mid-1970s, and a prototype four wheel vehicle was developed jointly by British Leyland and the British Rail Research Division. A number of single and two-car railbuses were built and tested, in co-operation with Leyland (hence the generic term for these vehicles as LEV (Leyland Experimental Vehicle) railbuses). The first three single car prototypes were essentially Leyland National bus bodies mounted on a modified HSFV1 four wheeled rail chassis. The prototype two-car railbus was allocated Class 140 and is dealt with on that page, but the prototype single car railbuses were not classified and are set out in the table below:

In 1978 tests were carried out with a modified double ended Leyland National bus body placed on an unpowered wagon chassis derived from HSFV1, this was LEV1 (Leyland Experimental Vehicle 1). Whilst in its unpowered state this vehicle never left the Railway Technical Centre in Derby. In 1979 a powertrain was added to LEV1, the engine being a Leyland 510 diesel, and the transmission a mechanical type with self-changing gears.

Even though some of these vehicles carried numbers in the departmental coach series, they were actually used in ordinary passenger service. LEV1 was tested in passenger service at first in East Anglia, and then elsewhere, before being temporarily exported to the USA in the early 1980s. LEV1 was withdrawn and transferred to the National Railway Museum in 1987, it was until recently at the North Norfolk Railway where it underwent restoration. In 2012 it was moved to the NRM's Shildon site.

LEV2 was built especially for the USA at 15.3 m (50 ft) was a stretched version of LEV1 and sometimes known as R3. Following export around 1981 it was used on an experimental extension of MBTA (Boston) commuter service to Concord, New Hampshire. When that experiment was ended in 1981 the LEV2 was sold to Amtrak for use on the Northeast Corridor, but it was quickly put out of service after an accident at a crossing. It was subsequently sold to the Steamtown Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania for use as a shuttle, but was damaged during repair and sold for scrap. It was bought from the scrap dealer by the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad, a tourist railroad in West Virginia, and later sold to the Connecticut Trolley Museum, where it remains to this day.

Similarly, the BR version of R3 (RDB977020) was run in service on BR for a few years before eventually being sold to Northern Ireland Railways in late 1982, and being converted to 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) Irish gauge. R3, also known as RB003, was withdrawn in 1990 and preserved, initially at the Ulster Transport Museum, then in 2001 at the Downpatrick & County Down Railway.

Another version, RB004 was built at Derby in 1984. The body was built at the Leyland plant at Workington and BREL Derby C&W were responsible for the underframe and final assembly. This is preserved in running order at the Waverley Route Heritage Association site at Whitrope.

Yet another BREL-Leyland product from c1984, RB002, was exported as a demonstrator, going to the USA and Canada, then Denmark and Sweden. Afterwards, the RB002 was used in the Netherlands and Germany for a demonstration of light rail vehicles on the then defunct railway between Enschede and Gronau. It returned to the UK, having gained the nickname, "The Denmark", and was used as a classroom/office by BREL for a while and somehow it too ended up in Ireland. Its present location is believed to be at the now closed standard gauge Riverstown Old Corn Railway near Dundalk in Ireland but it is understood to be in a poor state of repair.

These railbuses were sent abroad in the hope of gathering export orders, but they never transpired.

In addition, there was an experiment with a loco-hauled Leyland-built vehicle. A National bus-type body was placed on the 63-foot (19 m) underframe from Mk1 BCK coach number 21234. This was numbered RDB 977091 and was run in normal service around the London Midland region alongside ordinary coaching stock until withdrawn as being unsuitable. The only direct connection with railbuses was the use of the same type of bus based body shell to reduce costs to a minimum. The coach is now preserved at the Llanelli and Mynydd Mawr Railway.

Pacers

The result of these tests was that British Rail ordered a series of two- and three-car Railbuses, which became known as Pacers (or Skippers on the Western Region) and were allocated TOPS Classes 141–144. The next generation of Sprinter units were based on conventional railway design and bogie mounted bodies.

Routes

Lines regularly served by railbuses include:

Preservation

A number of the BR railbuses, both first and second generation examples have survived into preservation, as follows:

Additionally, AC Cars railbus 79979 was preserved, as a grounded body, on the Strathspey Railway. It was scrapped by MC Metals, Glasgow, in 1990.