Notes About This Vehicle

The SMA class was never a London Transport (LT) vehicle, though its origins and Green Line coach operation very much were.

From 1965, built on AEC’s ‘Swift’ chassis, LT commenced running what would develop into a series of one-man and crew-operated single deck buses. Government intervention required LT to support the UK bus industry, giving it a lesser input into design and build quality, and with greater involvement of outside suppliers.

The new vehicles were to come in a variety of interior and exterior configurations, but more notably very much paved the way for the demise of the conductor. They were to spread throughout the Central and Country Area bus networks, variously as, MB, MBA, MBS, SM, SMD, SMS, XMB and XMS.

The new buses came in 36ft and 33ft 5ins lengths. Despite AEC labelling them all as Swifts, for some reason LT called the longer ones Merlins. Body builders included Strachan, Metro Cammell Weymann and Marshall.

A (UK) National Bus Company (NBC) came into effect on 1st January 1969 and one year later, to the day, LT’s Country Area and Green Line coach network became a subsidiary of it as London Country Bus Services Ltd (LCBS), acquiring the relevant vehicles and garages from the LT ‘green’ fleet. Though now an independent operation from LT, inevitably it was some time before ties were fully severed, with its parent continuing to provide some overhauling and other help for its child that had left home.

LCBS had inherited a fleet of reliable vehicles of varying ages from LT, many of which were coming to the end of their lives. Alongside these were many newer Merlin, Swift and Reliance type AECs which were far from reliable. The Green Line fleet was causing a further economical problem in that LCBS could not justify continuing to run crew-operated Routemaster RMCs and RCLs.

An opportunity presented itself to divert to LCBS a batch of fifteen 36ft long Swifts that had been ordered and delivered to South Wales Transport. These were an obvious departure in styling from any LT predecessor. They were designated SMW 1 to 15, the first three with Willowbrook bodies and the rest with those from Marshall. All fifteen entered service between July and October 1971. A further six came straight to LCBS without going to Wales.

An italicised interpretation of LT’s Johnston lettering had been applied to its Green Line fleet and LCBS retained this. The shapes of the LCBS fleet numbers were reminiscent of Johnston, though a bit odd relative to those in use by LT. Despite LT’s understandable protectiveness of its lettering, it continued in use for the legal lettering and passenger messages for a while with LCBS.

The destination blinds were also continued in LT’s Johnston variant designed for the purpose and almost certainly still sourced from its Aldenham Works. The rear box was unconventionally low, owing to the height of the rear windows.

After not very long the NBC corporate identity police decreed that the liveries of all its subsidiaries should adopt the same appearance, including a new ultra bold block sans serif letterform for their fleet names. The revised livery put NBC vehicles into a somewhat lighter ‘leaf green’.

SMA8 entered service from Northfleet garage in March 1972 and was re-painted in August 1976. It had a short working life, being withdrawn in September 1981 and was sold in 1982. Very nicely restored to its original livery, it is now in the ownership of The London Vintage Bus Hire Ltd. It displays its unladen weight now in metric but probably had it in imperial tons, cwts and qrs when new.

Notes About This Drawing

The drawing is based on about 120 general and close-up photographs of SMA8 in its current state of private preservation, with extensive measurements taken to ‘reverse engineer’ it.

The detail should not be viewed with any certainty in terms of its appearance when in service, as of course it has been restored, and none of it can be regarded as definitive.

It should be understood that all four elevations are seen here as one would see each part of the vehicle at a truly perpendicular angle. In real life this is of course impossible.