British Rail Railbuses
Waggon- und Maschinenbau railbus no. 79964 at York Railfest exhibition on 3 June 2004. This vehicle is preserved on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
In service	Passenger: 1958–1968 Departmental: 1950–1997
Capacity	46–56 seats
Operators	British Rail NI Railways

British Rail produced a variety of railbuses, both as a means of acquiring new rolling stock cheaply, and to provide economical services on lightly-used lines.

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, rather than bogies. Some units were equipped for operation as diesel multiple units.

First generation

In the late 1950s, British Rail tested a series of small railbuses, produced by a variety of manufacturers, for about £12,500 each^[1] (£261,000 at 2014 prices).^[2] These proved to be very economical (on test the Wickham bus was about 9 mpg_‑imp (31 L/100 km)),^[3] but were somewhat unreliable. Most of the lines they worked on were closed following the Beeching Cuts and, being non-standard, they were all withdrawn in the mid-1960s, so they were never classified under the TOPS system.

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

Engines:^[4]

• 79958/59, Gardner 6HLW of 112 bhp (84 kW) at 1,700 rpm
• 79960–62/64, Büssing, 150 bhp (110 kW) at 1,900 rpm
• 79963, AEC A220X
• 79965–69, Meadows 6HDT500 of 105 bhp (78 kW) at 1,800 rpm
• 79970–74, AEC, 150 bhp (110 kW)
• 79975–79, AEC, 150 bhp (110 kW)

Second generation

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. Several 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,^[5] 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 used in ordinary passenger service. LEV1 was initially tested in passenger service in East Anglia, and then elsewhere, before being temporarily exported to the US in the early 1980s. LEV1 was withdrawn and transferred to the National Railway Museum in 1987, ^[6] before moving to the North Norfolk Railway, where it underwent restoration, then moving in 2012 to the NRM's Shildon site.

LEV2, built especially for the US at 50 ft (15.3 m), 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,^[7] 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 was eventually scrapped.^[8]

In 1985, SEPTA tested a British Rail railbus on the Fox Chase Line as part of an effort to restore service to Newtown. Though the trial runs were relatively successful, ride quality was lacklustre, and SEPTA never purchased the railbuses.^[9]

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, where it was converted to the 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 and County Down Railway.^[10]

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. It is preserved in running order at the Waverley Route Heritage Association site at Whitrope.

RB002, another BREL-Leyland product from 1984, was exported as a demonstrator, going to the US 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.^[11][12] It was returned to the UK, having gained the nickname "The Denmark", and was used as a classroom/office by BREL for some time, but 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, but it is in a poor state of repair.^[13]

Those railbuses^[which?] 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. It 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

As a result of those tests, British Rail ordered a series of two- and three-car railbuses, which became known as Pacers (or Skippers in 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:

Scotland

• Ayr – Dalmellington 1959–1964^[14]
• Craigendoran – Arrochar 1959^[15]–1964^[14]
• Darvel 1959–1964^[14]
• Devon Valley 1959–1964^[14]
• Falkirk – Grangemouth 1967–1968^[14]
• Gleneagles – Crieff / Comrie 1958^[16]–1964^[17]
• Kilmarnock – Ardrossan / Ayr 1962-1964^[14]
• Larbert – Alloa 1967–1968^[14]
• Lugton – Beith 1959–1962^[14]
• Speyside 1958–1965^[14]

East Anglia

• Cambridge to Mildenhall railway
• Witham-Braintree branch line^[14]
• Witham-Maldon branch line^[14]
• Saffron Walden Railway^[18]

Midlands

• Bedford – Northampton / Hitchin 1958–1959^[14]
• Millers Dale – Buxton 1966–1967^[14]

Western

• Bodmin – Wadebridge 1964^[19]–1967^[20]
• Kemble – Cirencester Town and Kemble-Tetbury 1959^[21]–1964^[22]
• Yeovil Junction – Yeovil Town 1964^[23]–1966^[24] – Pen Mill 1966^[25]

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. It was the first of the railbuses to be delivered and spent all its working life in Scotland. In 1968, it was moved to Craigentinny where the chassis was scrapped, and it was used as a battery store. It was moved to make way for the TMD in 1977 and the grounded body sold to the Strathspey Railway in 1977.^[26] It was scrapped by MC Metals, Glasgow, in 1990.^[31][32]