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LOTHIAN LEYLAND ECW OLYMPIANS
Information and inquiries always welcome.
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LAST LEYLANDS UPPER DECK INTERIOR
Park Royal to ECW The Eastern Coach Works 1980s bodywork on Olympians owed little to the bodies on their Bristol VR and Lodekka predecessors. It was really a development of the Park Royal and Roe bodywork of the 1970s as seen on Atlanteans and Fleetlines. It had the same internal window surrounds, the same neat angled coving, and flat rather than curved surfaces but with gently curving edges.
Park Royal Vehicles became part of the Leyland group along with AEC in the 1960s, and built probably the best looking bodywork anywhere, as seen on the Mancunian for Manchester and Salford in 1968-1971, the Park Royal standard bodies on Atlanteans and Fleetlines for Sheffield in 1968-1970, the similar Park Royal and Roe bodies on Atlanteans and Fleetlines in the early 1970s for municipalities such as Chesterfield, and the NBC standard bodies of the later 1970s. When the ECW factory at Lowestoft closed down in 1987, production was transferred to Workington.
Notice the beading strip above the windows, which consists of a cream-coloured plastic insert running along the middle of a metal rail. This feature also appeared thirty years earlier on the bodywork of the all-Leyland PD2/12s of 1952, except that their plastic insert was brown and the strip ran below (and possibly also above?) the windows. Atlanteans of the late 1960s and earliest 1970s with Alexander J-type bodies had a similar strip below the windows, but with a madder insert.
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