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Ulster Transport Authority 1957 to 1961 (by Shane Conway)

Page last updated on 18th April 2023

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Northern Ireland menu:

Belfast Corporation diesel buses   Belfast Corporation trolleybuses   H M S Catherwood Ltd.   Citybus   Great Northern Railway Lough Swilly   NIRTB 1935 - 39   NIRTB 1940 - 48  

Sureline, Lurgan 1966 - 87   UTA 1948 - 56   UTA 1957 - 61   UTA 1962 - 66   U'bus 1967 - 72   U'bus 1973 - 76   U'bus 1977 - 82   U'bus 1983 - 88   U'bus 1989 - 2012

With increased demands on the bus fleet as a result of railway closures, a total of 119 Leyland Tiger Cubs were bodied in Duncrue Street works and placed in service in 1956 and 1957. As these were entering service, 158 of the Leyland Tiger PS2s were stripped of their 34 seat bodywork and rebuilt as Titans, receiving new Metro Cammell framed highbridge bodies completed by the U. T. A. The 119 Tiger Cubs had a total of 5,117 seats, while the 158 PS2s could have carried 5,358. In the place of this figure of 5,358, the company's new double deckers had now a total of 9,480 seats available. It was not quite the end of the road for the Tiger bodywork either, as seven of them were sold to Lough Swilly in 1956 for rebodying of three Leyland PS1s and four AEC Regals. As such they ran alongside seven PS2s which had been bodied for Lough Swilly by the U. T. A. in 1949 and 1950, probably the only example where the U. T. A supplied new buses to another operator.

During 1957, the Enniskillen based eight strong fleet of Cassidy's Erne Bus Service was taken over by the U. T. A., the company having escaped the mass takeovers of the 1930s because it operated in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. The oldest bus acquired was a 1932 Leyland LT4, new to the Irish Omnibus Company in Dublin. The Erne services centred around Carrigallen in Co. Leitrim passed to a new Erne Bus Service, run by a former employee of Cassidy's by the name of Ned Maguire, and survived in business until 1973, when it too was taken over, in that instance by CIE. Co-incidentally though, the U. T. A. was later to sell six former N. I. R. T. B. half cab saloons to Maguire in the mid 1960s. A further one off vehicle in 1957 was a Beadle-Commer TS3, which was to see eleven years service.

By early 1959 the programme for rebuilding of the Tigers had been completed, and they were followed by another new bus design into the fleet. Again using the idea of MCCW framing, the U. T. A. constructed 142 full fronted forward entrance buses on the larger Leyland PD3 Titan, these entering service during the period 1959 to 1963. The PD3s introduced a new livery of lighter green below the windows on both decks, with the rest of the bus in an ivory colour. The single deck fleet was to become more varied, with the arrival in 1960 of 58 Albion Aberdonian buses with U. T. A. completed bodies on Alexander frames. 1960 also saw the introduction of the first new AECs since 1946, with the arrival of two Plaxton Panorama bodied Reliance coaches. Like the PD3s, these also introduced a new livery for coaches of dark and light blue.

In 1961, three 20 seat Austin buses entered service, followed by a second pair of Plaxton bodied Reliance coaches. The 1961 batch of 45 PD3s included six fitted with power steering, intended for use on the Derry City Services, unusual in that with the low gates in the city walls, it was more common to find single deckers on these routes instead.

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