Notes About This Vehicle

Following London Buses Ltd being formed as one stage of privatizing bus operations in London, with routes to be tendered, many ex-London Transport garages were closing and new operators like Metrobus, London Country, Transcity and others were gaining routes. To combat this a study was made on how a low-cost subsidiary could be set up in the Orpington area to complement a network review of all services in the area. The result was Orpington Buses Limited which was to run the strongly branded ‘Roundabout’ group of routes using smaller vehicles than before. The route numbers were originally to be lettered L1 to L6 (for local), but later this was changed to R for Roundabout.

Five new 25-seater minibuses with bodies from Optare mounted on Volkswagen (VW) chassis were bought. They received fleet designations OV1 to OV5 and for whatever reason each was named after a wind, sequentially: Typhoon, Hurricane, Tornado (as in this drawing), Chinook and Whirlwind. This vehicle type had greater capacity than their contemporary Ivecos with 21-seat Robin Hood (RH) bodies, which were named after birds. As it turned out both were too small and were later displaced by 33-seater Mercedes buses. The Ivecos were replaced on routes R1/11 with MCW long Metroriders owing to capacity issues and later with Dennis Darts. The OVs were replaced with Mercedes buses mostly through reliability problems.

There were many more RHs than OVs, all presented in a very smart maroon and blue/grey livery. The Ivecos were tough basic little buses, generally reliable but suffered with electrical and corrosion problems. The OVs were far less reliable.

The significance of these buses is that they were the first proper bus bodied minibuses rather than the van conversions previously seen. They were mostly used on route R3 from Petts Wood to Green Street Green, but could be seen on any of the other routes occasionally. They were unpopular with the drivers, had no power steering, a very sloppy gearbox, weak brakes and a very hot cab in the summer because of all the glass. Mechanically they were poor too.

The Roundabout clutch life was between two days and four weeks, mostly owing to drivers not using 1st gear. Overheating of a very stressed engine was caused by it being totally encased under the floor with restricted air flow owing to the body design. Many electrical problems centred round the way the VW wiring was mated to the Optare body. Wiper failure was common because of a reverse polarity motor to change directions of the blades.

The automatic OVs were mechanically not much better than the manuals, having the small VW engine with an Allison AT545 gearbox that was far too big for it. Overheating of the engine was an even bigger problem and they were modified with additional vents on the front and electric fans to assist the engine driven one. Front brake pads would not last a full rota cycle and were changed about them every three weeks.

There was no formal relationship between Roundabout and any of the other companies in the area although they helped each other with breakdowns etc unofficially. Up until the early 1990s Orpington Buses had little to do with anyone. Though falling under the umbrella of Selkent it did its own thing. This was deliberate to keep the family feel and not let Roundabout get dragged down by industrial problems in the red bus garages of the time.

Buses initially operated from Unit 17 Nugent Trading estate, but after a short time, about 1988, moved to Unit 5 that was bigger. The garage code, not always displayed, was OB, for Orpington Buses.

Stagecoach purchased Selkent including Roundabout on 6th Sept 1994. The network was lost upon tender to Centrewest and the operation closed on 1st December 1995. Centrewest branded the network Orpington Buses.

The OVs spent a short time in the training fleet (in red) before disposal in 1991. OV2 is now in the London Transport Museum collection and OV3 survives in private restoration.

Notes About This Drawing

The drawing is based on about 160 close-up and general photographs taken at the London Transport Museum Depot at Acton, followed by extensive measuring of the vehicle.

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.