Station Name: PADSTOW[Source: Martin James]
Here we see CVF 842 looking immaculate in Southern National livery in that company's Riverside Works, Bideford and which was located close to the terminus of the one-time Bideford, Westward Ho! & Appledore Railway. The relationship between Southern National, Western National and Royal Blue can be confusing. In essence it was a single company using different branding according to the sphere of operation. Southern National's sphere was North Devon, North Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset while Western National's sphere was the remainder of Cornwall, Somerset, East Devon, South Devon and Wiltshire. Royal Blue was the coaching arm although both Southern and Western National also had a small fleet of coaches in their own liveries. The company, collectively, also operated alongside other operators such as Devon General and Wilts & Dorset. Irrespective of branding, be it Southern/Western National or Royal Blue, the fleet numbering system was universal and thus CVF 842 would carry fleet number 377 regardless of which branding the vehicle carried. The photograph is undated but some clues are offered. The Austin Cambridge on the left has a registration number issued in 1962 and we know CVF 842 took up residence at Padstow station in 1967 so the date is somewhere within that five year period. Quite why CVF 842 was at Riverside is not known. It may have been still in service but in for some sort of repair, or this may be the time it was being prepared for use as a staff restroom. The advertisement on the side of CVF was for A1 Tobacco and for many years was a very common advertisement seen on and in buses.. A further point of interest concerning CVF is the box-like device with pipework just visible beneath the canopy to the right of the driving cab as we view the bus. This device was an 'Autovac'. This was part of the fuel supply system and comprised a vacuum pump which drew fuel from the main tank located on the chassis to a small header tank which was an integral part of the Autovac unit. From here, fuel was fed to the engine by gravity. The advantage of the Autovac was that its header tank provided an instant supply of fuel when the engine was being started, thereby eliminating the delay which would otherwise result if fuel, at starting, had to be pumped from the main tank on the chassis. Part of the driver’s duties was, officially, to close the supply valve on the Autovac when shutting down the engine (such as when garaging the bus) and opening it prior to starting the engine. The Autovac was a pre-war device once very common but by the Second World War it had largely been replaced by conventional fuel pumps but Bristol Commercial Vehicles persisted with it until circa 1950, around the time their K and L type bus chassis' were superseded by the longer KS and LL types. Just visible towards the bottom of CVF's radiator is the opening for inserting a cranking handle. Many vehicles, cars included, continued to have provision for hand-crank starting long after electric starters became the norm. This extremely useful facility eventually disappeared partly for image reasons but mainly with the advent of transverse, underfloor and rear-mounted engines. Crank-starting a heavy diesel engine was not a job for the less fit and usually required two people. Elsewhere has been described how CVF had been rebuilt from its original 'L' type form with a new 'LL' type body in 1954. The bus peeping at the camera in the right background had a similar history. It was one of a batch new in 1947 on the L6B chassis (Bristol L type with 6-cylinder Bristol engine) and with Strachan bodies. They were rebuilt in 1958 but instead of being given the by-then-obsolete type of body fitted to CVF they were given a full-fronted, front-entrance body suitable for One-Man-Operation (OMO), as it was then known, similar to that fitted to the little Bristol SC4LK buses but with the less common style of radiator grille. Rebuilding of buses was once very common. It should be remembered that bus chassis' of old were rugged affairs capable of many decades service, unlike bodywork. It was therefore prudent, especially in the years following WWII, to give buses (and coaches) an extended life by rebuilding and re-bodying. The advent of OMO operation was another reason for rebuilding, avoiding the expense of completely brand new vehicles. Of the Southern/Western National rebuilt L6B's, after withdrawal many found use with independent operators and contractors while at least one has survived into preservation.
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