Description
The Routemaster was first introduced in the early 50s by London Transport.It emerged as the most popular double decker bus of all time. As one man operated buses came more into use , some of the Routemasters were sold off to a variety of fleets throughout the U.K. Some vehicles were even exported for use in other countries. Shown here at a scale of 1:148 N gauge.
This history of Oxford Diecast and production in Swansea means the lineage of this model is quite interesting. Many rememember the Corgi (Mettoy) Routemaster that was manufactured in huge numbers. Back in the 1970’s when ever we were short of production orders, we just inserted 250,000 buses into the programme. I recall many punch ups with the sales force, who would object strongly as they had the reponsibility of selling whatever was made. Needles to say when they were sold out and the warehouse was empty of Routemasters, they would quickly criticise the factory !
The Mettoy (Corgi) Routemaster was copied by many of the Hong Kong and Chinese manufacturers over the years. My favourite recollection was seeing a terrible copy by an Indian manufacturer. They had bought a sample, but the roof was not straight, there was a ‘hump’ on the top at the rear; on an internal cavity of the mould there was an insert that came lose from time to time – some production had slipped through with the ‘hump’ (probably night shhift) and that is what the Indian company had purchased for their sample.
In London there was a company called Seener, named after the owner, we tooled up a version for him. He wanted a smaller model around 15/20% smaller to save costs, so we chose 1:76 scale – a lucky scale for Oxford. These carried the brand name SEEROL, named after the owners son ROLand SEEner. We made around 500,000 of these during the 1980’s. The tooling eventually fell to pieces and the newly produced Oxford 1:76 variant appeared – it had for once wheel hubs that looked correct.
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