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Live and kicking Several of the UK passenger transport industry’s best-known names were noticeable by their absence from the exhibitor list at the second biennial & Bus Live show. But one thing the event did not lack was engineering and business news, as David Wilcox discovered.

Optare The radius of lower front corner Solo SR: on a roll with a he tenth anniversary of Optare’s Solo is being celebrated by panels has been increased on the curvaceous roof inherited from the the introduction of a new version, the SR, with redesigned front and SR to lessen the risk of accident Versa. Trear sections. Officially this is an additional model rather than a damage. This looks a sensible replacement, but it is likely that the current Solo, available in six overall precaution given that front overhang is 100mm greater. Wheelbase is lengths (7.1–10.2 metres) and two overall widths (2.34 and 2.5 unchanged. At the rear the SR is pure Versa, including lamp clusters. metres), nevertheless will be phased out in due course as customers opt Headlamps apart, all exterior lights are light-emitting diodes ( LED ) as for the SR. It comes in only two lengths (8.9 and 9.6m) and one width (2.5m). Optare managing director Bob Coombes says other lengths and narrow versions will follow “if there is customer demand.” The curvaceous bulging roof-line introduced a year ago on the ( Transport Engineer December 2006) is inherited by the SR. But its front-end styling looks rather cleaner than the Versa’s because the destination box is integral with the roof’s curve and does not protrude. So drag coefficient is lower, helping to counter the effect of the larger frontal area resulting from the bulbous roof. Optare technical director Glenn Saint explains that the readability of electronic destination displays has improved enough to allow them to be used behind sloping glass. “We have carefully balanced the need for clarity of the display with the style benefit offered by the roll-over top design,” says Mr Saint. Operators unconvinced by this compromise can still opt for a conventional destination-box.

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standard. Side windows are curved instead of flat, thus making them example appeared ( Transport Engineer November 2005). Since then only stiffer them and less prone to “flutter” when the bus is stationary with the one more has made it into service in the UK, far short of the sales target engine idling. of 30 in the first year alone. Richard Jaffa, BMC (UK) managing director, The Solo’s trademark design features, including integral tubular frame, of the British subsidiary of the Turkish commercial vehicle manufacturer, front axle ahead of the doorway, and quickly-detachable engine and blames this on the time taken to complete European homologation and cradle are all retained with the SR. Unladen weight is up by on unavailability of Euro-4 engines. Now the plan is for a dozen King 100-200kg, according to Mr Saint, but he is confident that this will not Long coaches for the UK to go into production in China next month, all to jeopardise the Solo’s reputation as a lightweight, fuel-efficient midibus. satisfy firm orders, we are told. “And we’ve ordered another batch of 26 Unladen weight remains below six tonnes, though maximum plated for early in the new year,” says Mr Jaffa. weight has been raised to the full 11.3 tonnes design weight by virtue of The first King Long XMQ 6127 had a rear-mounted Euro-3 Cummins a tyre-size change, from 215/75 R17.5 to 235/75 R17.5. ISM 10.8-litre power unit. But there is no Euro-4 version of this engine, Front and rear axles are largely unchanged, though gear meshing is so its place is taken by a Cummins 8.9-litre ISLe. This develops 250kW said to have been refined in the Albion drive-axle’s differential, making it (335hp) at 2,100rpm, with peak torque of 1,500Nm at 1,200- quieter. Further noise reduction comes from improved insulation in the 1,400rpm. Most of the rest of the King Long running gear comes from floor and engine bay, like that of the Versa. ZF, including both axles, steering box, and six-speed gearbox (manual or The only suspension change is the introduction of “frequency selective” automatic). The 12-metre body on the two-axle chassis is 3.75 metres dampers from Koni. Their damping response varies with suspension tall. input. So less damping is generated by short, high-frequency suspension Mr Jaffa is hoping the King Long coach will help bolster BMC’s movements than by long suspension travel during cornering. flagging sales in the UK coach and bus market where its share has fallen Engine options with the SR are the familiar Mercedes-Benz four- slightly this year. A new showroom for BMC trucks, buses and coaches is cylinder 4.25-litre unit at 154hp, MAN four-cylinder 4.58-litre unit at due to open soon at the company’s UK base in Coventry. 177hp, and Cummins six-cylinder 6.7-litre ISBe unit at 201hp. Introduction of the MAN engine option with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR ) rather than selective catalytic reduction ( SCR ) for cutting oxides of nitrogen ( NOX ) at Euro-4 has proved an Optare masterstroke. Fully 40 per cent of Euro-4 Solo and Versa models are now specified with this engine, reports Mr Coombes. SR list prices will be higher than those of the current Solo but Optare is not yet ready to say by how much. SR deliveries are due to start next March.

King Long he long wait for the King Long is almost over, it seems. At the TBirmingham coach and bus show of 2004 came the first announcement from BMC (UK) that a 12-metre coach from King Long of China was about to go on sale in the UK ( Transport Engineer December King Long XMQ 6127: powered by 2004). But it was not until the rear-mounted Euro-4 Cummins 8.9- following year’s show that the first litre ISLe at 335hp.

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Indcar Topless crowd-puller: the o vehicle at this year’s coach and bus show stopped more Mago 2 Cabrio is based on an Nvisitors in their tracks than the Indcar Mago 2 Cabrio on the EuroMidi chassis. stand of Esker, the coach and bus supplier based in Kilbeggan, Irish Republic. Bulbous bodywork and huge overhangs front and rear already attract an ugly-duckling epithet for the standard version of the Spanish-built Indcar Mago 2 midicoach. Removing the roof to make a 10-tonnes-gvw, 8.9-metre cabriolet for open-air sightseeing does nothing to take it nearer to a beautiful swan. The vehicle, with a list price around £95,000, is based on an Iveco EuroMidi chassis (conventional ladder-frame) with front-mounted 5.9-litre, six-cylinder Tector engine rated at 160kW (215hp). Even without a roof, the coach passes the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Regulation 66 rollover test, courtesy of steel roll bars front and rear. The bodywork is mainly glass-reinforced plastic (grp), with all glazing bonded to enhance rigidity. The left-hand-drive example at the show includes a wheelchair lift at the rear nearside. There is a roof section over the driver’s cabin but all passenger seats (34 or 29 plus a wheelchair) are in the open. The plastic Fainsa seats incorporate lap belts and drain holes. A concertina-style folding roof is an option. Esker’s first customer for the Mago 2 Cabrio is Paddywagon Tours, a Dublin-based backpacker travel company.

MCV CV has been busy tidying up the styling and Mfinish of its Evolution, introducing options such as bonded side windows to do away with clunky- looking gaskets, and a one-piece windscreen to allow wipers to be parked less obtrusively. Every lower panel used to be dotted with half-a-dozen fixing bolts, but now their mountings are out of sight on the lower edge of the panels. This 10.2-metre Evolution, part of a batch for London operator Metroline, keeps the two-piece screen and gasket-fixed side windows. It is on an MAN 12-tonne underframe with rear-mounted and vertically-installed, six-cylinder, 6.9-litre D08 engine rated at 236hp. ’s specification includes a two-door layout, power- operated ramp at the rear doors for wheelchair-users and a Johnson Matthey/Eminox CRT More Evolution than revolution: (continuously Transport for London’s regenerating trap) specification for the MCV diesel particulate Evolution includes two doors and filter. a powered ramp at the rear door.

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Darwen Group

his show provided the first opportunity for the new Towner of East Lancashire Coachbuilders to set out its stall in public. Darwen Group was established in August, only days before buying East Lancs Coachbuilders from administrators. The main Darwen Group shareholder is Roy Stanley, founder and chairman of Tanfield, the Washington, Tyne-and-Wear-based parent of companies such as Smith Electric Vehicles ( Transport Engineer September) and UpRight Powered Access, a manufacturer of aerial lift platforms. Rumours of plans to transfer manufacturing from the East Lancs plant in Blackburn to the north east are ill-founded, according to Darwen chief executive Andrew Brian, a mergers and acquisitions specialist whose background is in industrial design and who has spent much of his career to date in the manufacture of digital printing equipment. Acknowledging that there are some potential synergies between a bus-building business and the Smith Electric Vehicles operation, Mr Brian nevertheless stresses that these are separate, stand-alone businesses. Darwen is not part of Tanfield and there are no plans to share sites, he emphasises. The East Lancs Blackburn site has been sold but the business is remaining in the locality, according to Mr Brian. “The company will be moving next year to a new site within a short drive of Blackburn,” he says. “We have a skilled workforce and Darwen chief executive Andrew Brian: confident David Powell, have left. The third, sales director John Horn, remains in we don’t want to lose that demand for double-deckers will recover. that job under Darwen ownership. them.” Details of the The redundancies of two months ago are an essential element in new site are expected to be made public this month. Far from Darwen’s plans to turn around the East Lancs business, according to Mr retrenching, Darwen Group plans to expand the East Lancs business, Brian. “We have outsourced some operations that were in-house, such as according to Mr Brian. “The new manufacturing plant will be bigger than the glass-fibre shop,” he says. “We have to become a bus assembly the old one, not smaller,” he says. “It is a £7 million investment.” operation, not a coachbuilder. We have to move to lean manufacturing East Lancs was building about 250 buses a year and turning over and manage the supply chain better. We have a healthy order book and around £25 million before the crash. “We plan to do more than that in we have retained the confidence of our customers.” Manufacturing has 2008,” says Mr Brian, even though the workforce was cut from 370 to continued uninterrupted during the change of ownership, he points out. 270 at the end of September. Two of the three directors who owned East Weak current demand for double-deck buses in the UK, the core of the Lancs since a management buy-out of two years ago, Mike Kilroy and East Lancs business, is seen by Mr Brian as a temporary problem, even though UK double-decker registrations are expected to total no more than 500 this year, compared with a peak of over 1,500 in 2003. Affirming Darwen’s commitment to the East Lancs Esteem single-decker, unveiled last year, Mr Brian also is confident that the double-deck market will grow healthily over the next few years not only because it is cyclical by nature but also driven by the London Olympics of 2012. Mr Brian makes no secret of Darwen Group plans to move rapidly into hybrid buses. “We will launch a hybrid next summer, leveraging Roy Stanley’s contacts,” he says. Smith Electric Vehicles’ driveline suppliers such as Enova Systems are active in the hybrid business. Delivering a hybrid bus so quickly nevertheless seems ambitious. “We plan to develop the business by acquisition as well by organic growth,” explains Mr Brian, hinting that acquisition of a company with a hybrid platform may be on the cards. The first Darwen hybrid will have a series driveline, says Mr Brian, but he does not rule out parallel hybrids in future.

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MAN oach and bus operator Whitelaws Coaches of Stonehouse, CLanarkshire is the first customer for the Meridian, a 12- metre single-decker based on MAN’s A22 underframe and powered by the 10.5-litre D20 engine, installed horizontally in the rear nearside corner with a T-drive to a portal axle and offset differential. In trucks D20 power outputs go as high as a nominal 440hp but in this application is pared back to 199kW (267hp) at 1,900rpm with peak torque of 1,250Nm at 1,000-1,400rpm. A 240hp rating is optional. In either case the engine drives through a six-speed ZF gearbox or Voith four-speed gearbox, both epicyclic automatics with torque converters. Acknowledging that a swept volume of 10.5 litres might seem unduly generous for a stage-carriage bus at 18 tonnes gvw, Whitelaws boss The Meridian’s low, flat floor Whitelaws Coaches: first customer George Whitelaw, a self-declared fan of Wrightbus bodywork, extends back to just behind the rear for the MAN-powered Wrightbus nevertheless hopes that the Meridian’s fuel-economy will be close to that axle. The body can be specified with Meridian and expecting first-rate of an East Lancs-bodied Kinetic single-decker which has covered one, two or three doors. MAN hopes fuel economy. 55,000km in the 40-vehicle Whitelaws fleet. The Kinetic is built around the Meridian will win over operators the MAN A69 underframe, with 6.9-litre D08 engine. Its fuel economy of other heavyweight single-deck bus chassis such as the Mercedes Citaro has impressed Mr Whitelaw. “It is doing 9.5mpg, compared with about and Scania OmniCity. Its multiple-door options are expected to appeal in 7.0mpg for our Volvo B7RLEs,” he reports. particular to airport car-park operators.

Solbus mployment costs are a crucial factor in the labour- Eintensive business of bus-building. This helps explain why , where wage rates are well below western European averages, has attracted so many bus and coach manufacturers. Volvo, MAN and Scania all have bus plants there. Now an indigenous Polish bus- builder, Solbus, is aiming to break into the UK market. Solbus has grown out of a state-owned bus overhaul and refurbishment operation, one of seven in Poland. Following privatisation in 2001, Solbus switched to bus manufacturing but within two years ran into financial problems and was sold to the Slizak family, a bus operator. Now the firm is said to be manufacturing 150 vehicles a year. Solbus managing director Jakub Slizak was at this Birmingham show to Solbus of Poland: grown out of launch the state-owned bus-maintenance company’s UK sales operation. and marketing effort.

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diameter, rather the 22.5-inch Soltour 10 integral coach: built in variety usually found on 10-metre Poland by Solbus. JB Travel of coaches. Apart from glass-fibre Leeds is the first UK customer. mouldings front and rear, the body is panelled in stainless steel bonded to stainless-steel rectangular-section framework. JB Travel’s Soltour has 32 seats, making room for a toilet and servery at the back. An 11-metre Soltour can accommodate up to 47 seats. Soltour 10 prices start at about £125,000. The UK distributor is Kettering, Northampton-based Solbus (UK), Solbus also intends to compete in the UK city-bus market, with plans owned by independent dealer Phillip Hodgson. His first Solbus sales to introduce next June the Solcity SN, a low-floor bus available initially at success is a Soltour 10, recently bought by JB Travel of Leeds. 10.5 and 12.0 metres, and later as an 18-metre artic. This is another The Soltour 10 is a 10-metre rear-engined integral coach powered by a all-stainless-steel integral design but with an offset T-drive and ZF portal 296hp, six-cylinder, 6.7-litre Cummins ISBe engine. This drives through axle. Power unit choice in the rigids is between a six-cylinder 5.9-litre a ZF six-speed automatic gearbox to an ArvinMeritor axle. The front axle, Iveco Tector and six-cylinder, 6.7-litre Cummins ISBe, mounted vertically with independent air suspension, is from Voith. Wheels are 19.5-inch in with the radiator above.

Beulas ore and more coaches have entrances designed to satisfy the MDisability Discrimination Act 1995 and Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000. One of latest comes from of Spain. The doorway on the 3.425 metre-high Cygnus body has been widened to incorporate the same PLS NX Magic Floor lift as used originally on Caetano Levante bodies for National Express ( Transport Engineer November 2005). The lift cassette is behind the riser of the second step. The floor section at the top of the steps rises to match the height of the aisle. This example is built around MAN R33 chassis modules, using a 10.5-litre D20 engine installed vertically at the rear and rated at 294kW (394hp). The gearbox is ZF’s Beulas Cygnus: doorway widened to 12-speed AS Tronic. K accommodate wheelchair lift.

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