D694 on evaluation in Portsmouth, UK, 1974
The former VanHool-McArdle works at Spa Road, Inchicore was responsible for the building of many D-type deckers used by CIÉ. It was hoped in its heyday that the facility would lead to it becoming a major player in the bus and coach production field - not only at home, but overseas also. To this end, a few Atlantean deckers were sent on trial to some operators in the UK. In the two pictures below, D694 was seen in October and November of 1974 in service in Portsmouth.
This bus also also went to Brighton Corporation and then on to Sheffield and trialled with South Yorkshire PTE (Public Transport Executive) who made the only significant order of about 60 deckers on Volvo Ailsa chassis. The picture below shows one of those buses, LWB 389P at the Spa Road works in the final stages of preparation.
Eventually the South Yorks types were sold to London Transport and gave good service there in the late 1980s and 1990s . . . and here's the above same bus again, as fleet number V1 at Finchley Depot, London in 1989, with preserved R788 which was on tour round the UK at the time:
VanHool decker D621 was also seen here in Doncaster, 1976 and another of the finished Spa Road Ailsa export was pictured here at Showbus UK in 2005.
VanHool also built a number of coaches in the Spa Rd works during the mid 1970s for customers other than CIÉ, many of them going to Doigs of Greenock, UK - only ironically to be leased back to CIÉ for tours work. One such example can been here undergoing restoration work for preservation.
My thanks to Dave O'Connor for his invaluable assistance with this article. Picture Nos. 1, 2 and 4 shown on this page
are copyrighted to him.
Picture No. 3 - author unknown, credit pending
June 2007